The Faroe Islands are stunning. I don’t think I’ve ever been someplace with so much natural beauty stuffed into such a small area. If you’ve seen any stunning pictures of fjords from Iceland or Norway or Scotland¹ it’s largely that sort of geography, except largely isn’t the best term for it because the Faroe Islands are tiny, only 1,400 square kilometers or ⅔ the size of Luxembourg. But that area is almost all coastline, which means it’s nearly all scenic bluffs and waterfalls and breathtaking inlets. As an added bonus the territory sits right in the middle of the Gulf Stream, so despite being an hour’s flight north of Scotland the weather’s generally mild and, if not exactly warm, it’s also not especially cold, even in winter. It’s also less expensive than, say, Iceland.² If you’re the sort of person who likes hiking up dramatic-yet-accessible mountains and then retiring to a cozy cabin to sip hot chocolate and dry off³ this place may very well be paradise.

I’ve tried to split my time here between touring and resting. I didn’t rent a car, so I’ve relied on a couple tours where they pick you up and drive you around to see the islands. Otherwise I’ve wandered down into Tórshavn⁴ from my hotel on the outskirts⁵ and grabbed a beer at the Mikkeller bar or dinner at a restaurant⁶ or wandered around the harbor a bit. But otherwise I’ve kept to myself.

The Faroe Islands are one of those weird, in between places. Geographically it’s halfway between Norway and Iceland. It was settled by vikings and ruled by Norway, which subsequently entered a union with Denmark, and when that was dissolved Denmark ended up with the Faroe Islands along with Greenland and Iceland. During World War II it was occupied by the British.⁷ The British built the airport at that time, which is why it’s eminently defensible against U-Boats and not all that convenient to get to from the capital.⁸ After the war there was a push for independence which succeeded in narrowly winning a non-binding referendum but the attempt to actually carry it out resulted in the former government getting thrown out and the new government reversing the policy.⁹ It’s been an autonomous part of the Kingdom of Denmark ever since.

The language is Faroese, which is apparently mutually intelligible with written Icelandic if not spoken Icelandic. And it does have a lot in common with Iceland, historically and culturally and geographically. But the overall vibe of the place felt a little more like Ireland to me. There’s fog that will periodically descend over the islands¹⁰ giving the whole place a bewitched feel. You get some of that in Iceland, but it’s something that’s been lost in the more eastern Nordic countries.¹¹

It’s really a beautiful place. It’s undergoing a lot of change. You can no longer make a living as a farmer here — not that that was ever a great choice, given how little grows on the island — and fishing is significantly less lucrative than it used to be. But they’ve got scenic views and cozy Scandinavian cottages, and there’s no shortage of people willing to pay through the nose for that. We’ll see how it goes.

An important part of Faroese culture is whale hunting. It’s a big deal. During the summer hunting season they’ll kill about 700 pilot whales and about 300 dolphins. My tour guide even brought some whale blubber and whale meat on the tour so we could sample it.¹² They spent a lot of time describing the whale hunt: the history of it, the modern regulations, its early importance as a source of food and current importance as a source of identity. But there was a bit of a tense, defensive undercurrent in their voice while they talked about it; the islanders know it’s often a point of contention between locals and tourists.

They certainly made a lot of reasonable points. The Faroese almost exclusively hunt pilot whales, which aren’t endangered. The hunt isn’t done commercially. That 700 number sounds like a lot but pilot whales are really a kind of particularly large dolphin, so each one only weighs about what a cow does. And it’s almost certainly better to kill and eat something that had a reasonable chance at a natural life than something raised on a feedlot and slaughtered as soon as it reached adulthood.

And yet. Despite some changes made over the years — they’ve banned spears and harpoons — it still involves surrounding a school of whales with boats, throwing stones attached to lines down into the water to force the school into the shallows, using hooks to catch them by their blowholes and drag them by the dozens up the beach where they can have their spinal cords severed with a special knife. The beaches are literally soaked with blood. And it’s a community thing. When the hunts are on people come out from all over to help. In all my time traveling around Nordic countries this is the first thing I’ve encountered that actually kind of felt like Midsommar, villages coming together in spirit and celebration and pride to kill hundreds of whales. After the hunts they’ll broadcast out on the radio where locals can pick up their portion of the blubber and flesh, free of charge.

I’m a vegetarian, so I don’t have to feel uneasy about eating hamburgers or chicken nuggets while being uncomfortable with the Faroese whale hunts.¹³ The Faroe Islands are notoriously inhospitable to agriculture; it used to be that the success of the yearly whale hunt determined whether villages starved to death, and that time wasn’t all that long in the past. But it is in the past. Now the Faroe Islands gets most of its food from imports. Much of the commercial fishing in the islands has switched to aquaculture. So I understand the pull of culture and tradition but, like, whale meat is traditionally served here with a side of potatoes. That certainly wasn’t the case a millennium ago. Times change. So do traditions.

There’s kind of a quirk in the political status of the Faroe Islands. It’s an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, without question. But it has specifically opted out of both the EU and the EEC. This has, at times, caused some diplomatic headaches. Just last year they renewed their long-standing agreement with Russia over fishing rights, since they aren’t bound by the sanctions the EU put in place. It’s disagreements over fishing rights that convinced them to opt out of the EU in the first place.

This means you can be a citizen of Denmark without being considered a citizen of the EU. Islanders can even choose between a Danish EU passport or a Danish-Faroese passport. But it’s a really bizarre status. The Faroese are explicitly not EU citizens, but as Danish citizens they are still permitted to work and travel anywhere in the EU.¹⁴ And reciprocally EU citizens wouldn’t automatically have the right to live and work in the Faroe Islands, although the Faroese have passed laws permitting it, so it doesn’t really affect anything.¹⁵

The relevance to me is that the Faroe Islands isn’t part of the Schengen Area. As a US citizen, I can stay in the Faroe Islands without a visa for 90 days, regardless of how long I’ve spent in Denmark or Spain or Italy. This would make the Faroe Islands a great place to hang out when I’m getting close to the visa restrictions in the Schengen Area. Except there’s literally no passport control between Denmark and the Faroe Islands, so I don’t have any direct proof I haven’t been in the Schengen Area for the past four days. I have no idea what would happen if I tried to leave Schengen having overstayed owing to my time in the Faroe Islands. I assume I’d be taken to a back room where I’d have an opportunity to prove where I was due to hotel receipts, but it’s not exactly the kind of thing I’d want to try.¹⁶

For me it’s all just evidence of how odd these rules and regulations get when you delve down into the details. What seems like a straightforward rule — you’re either in or out of Schengen — has broken down at the margins. My time in the Faroe Islands isn’t in the Schengen Area, but it may or may not count as such depending on what immigration authorities I talk to and how lenient they’re feeling on any given day. If I had flown from Scotland I’d have gone through proper immigration checks, but those are fully integrated with Schengen security, so you’d end up in basically the same situation.¹⁷

I’m off now to Copenhagen, back to what is definitely in the Schengen Area, where I’m attending Knutepunkt. I’ll be there the full week leading up to the convention, where I’m expecting to overdose of social interactions before spending some weeks on my own recovering.

If I were to come back to the Faroe Islands, and I would like to come back, I’d want to do it right. Rent a car and a cabin for a week or three. Travel with friends and a lot of wine and a couple bottles of single malt.¹⁸ Pack board games and sturdy hiking boots and rain gear and books on existentialism. And spend the whole time cooking, and hiking, and writing, and talking, locked up somewhere far, far away from the rest of the world.

Next: Copenhagen (CPH) to Vienna (VIE)
Prev: Copenhagen (CPH) to Tórshavn (FAE)

Footnotes

¹ Scotland has over 111 fjords. They just call them firths or sea lochs.

² Although lacking in volcanoes

³ That’s not quite me, but I can certainly fake it for a week. There’s a significant Scotch-Irish element in my background and I am far more comfortable on some soggy forlorn cliff gazing out over an angry sea than on any of the more sunny beaches one might find elsewhere.

⁴ The capital, population 20,000. This passes for a metropolis around here; there’s only 50,000 people in the whole territory.

⁵ It’s a 20 minute walk. Like I said, the place is small.

⁶ Like the ramen place. There’s a ramen place. It’s decent.

⁷ Not that the locals minded all that much, since Denmark had been occupied by Nazis. Fun story: up until that point the Faroese were forbidden from flying their flag by the Danish authorities. When the British arrived they pointed out they were fully prepared to sink any ships sailing under a Danish flag, so it was suddenly mandatory to flag the Faroese flag.

⁸ It used to be a two-hour drive, including a ferry, to get from Tórshavn to the airport. Even better, the ferry had limited spots so you couldn’t even be assured of that. They’ve been opening a number of undersea tunnels which has greatly improved the connections around the islands; the drive now only takes 40 minutes.

⁹ Sad Brexit noises

¹⁰ If you’re visiting, plan to spend a little time; coming in for a weekend runs the very real risk that you’ll see nothing but heavy fog for the couple of days you’re here. My tour guide referred to the place as the “Land of Maybe” given how often boat trips would be cancelled because of waves or drives would be cancelled due to fog.

¹¹ The whole thing has really made me think about what Ireland would have been like if England hadn’t invaded. It doesn’t take much to imagine an alternate history where Ireland ends up being a Nordic country.

¹² I declined

¹³ As a vegetarian but not a vegan I get to feel uneasy about the egg and dairy industry.

¹⁴ This is, I think, different than most Danes, who are considered both Danish and EU citizens. It’s very confusing.

¹⁵ There’s an additional 20,000 Faroese living in Denmark, including a lot of young people who left for college and haven’t returned. I couldn’t find figures on the number living outside of the Kingdom of Denmark but it’s got to be minuscule, which means all these quirks of citizenship just don’t come up in practice.

¹⁶ When I was looking into this all I found online was somebody who asked the Danish embassy about it and was told it was “not advised” which I take as embassy-speak that you’re right you haven’t broken any rules but good luck convincing the authorities. I tried to get a stamp in my passport, but despite multiple people online saying that was possible I was politely but firmly rebuffed at the police station in the airport.

¹⁷ It’s also possible to get a visa permitting you to visit the Faroe Islands but not the Schengen Area, although there’s absolutely nothing stopping you from catching a ferry and heading wherever you like in Europe if you so chose, other than it being horrendously illegal.

¹⁸ Alcoholic drinks — especially spirits — are very expensive on the islands. A 15€ bottle of Aquavit in Copenhagen can go for 45€ here after they add all the taxes. The duty free store at the airport is very popular.

Alcohol used to be completely forbidden, and there was a period while they were loosening the regulations where locals had a quota and could only order it to come in on the ferry from Copenhagen. It’d be shipped in distinctive white boxes with the recipient’s name on it, and apparently it was fairly common practice to head down to the docks when the ferry arrived to see who was getting a shipment, so you could plan your social calendar for the week.