… on a quarter century of working in the Faroe Islands
Stan Abbott faroese days
Faroese people are not so polite, she ventures; but their doors are always open.“ You are just sitting eating your breakfast and someone comes in and sits down at the
table. You make an arrangement and then the main islands are connected by long, subsea tunnels: in about 2035, the opening of the 23-kilometre tunnel from Sandoy to Suðuroy, the southernmost island, will mark the crowning glory of a tunnelling
I have done my bit to help deliver that growth over recent decades. But the islands’ tourism team are also super-innovative, with eye-catching campaigns like Faroesetranslate( prompting Google to add
… on a quarter century of working in the Faroe Islands
someone just randomly changes it. You could invite someone for dinner and they turn up two hours late.”
You might say it takes a bit of grit to settle: Jackie had to learn two new languages – Faroese and Danish – while being careful not to muddle them. She has to get used to being asked“ Where are you from?”, to which her answer is always“ Vestmanna!”, the fishing village where she and her husband, who runs boat trips to the towering bird cliffs, have a house with a commanding view across the strait to the island of Vágar.
But what I chose to write about was far broader than the niceties of Faroese manners: it was the extraordinary strides I have witnessed since my first visit, back around 2000. Then, even getting to Tórshavn from the airport was a challenge, involving a ferry crossing through choppy waters. There were only a couple of hotels in town, only one of which even began to approach international standards. Eating out meant bad pizza; having a drink, meant weak beer only.
In an unusually religious society( by European standards), gays could be persecuted and strangers of darker hues were welcome only insofar as someone had to do the unpleasant work in the fish factories that Faroese people no longer fancied.
Fast forward 25 years and now most of mania that has also seen mountains regularly tunnelled, with new weather and landslide-proof roads completed on a regular basis.
The country’ s airline, Atlantic Airways – for which I worked for more than 20 years – pioneered, with Airbus, a highly effective sat nav system to enable the islands’ weather and wind-prone airport to remain open in all but the most adverse conditions – thereby avoiding costly and inconvenient diversions to Iceland, Norway, or Scotland.
Indeed, look at any economic activity – from salmon farming to cutting edge IT – and you’ ll see Faroese innovation delivering a competitive edge.
And as for the lousy food, well, now, read Michelin Star-grade fine dining, and the best collection of coffee houses you could want for. Societal change has seen much greater openness, including adding anti-gay discrimination to the statute book.
And did I mention music? The Faroe Islands have more recorded musicians per head of population than surely any other country in the world; equivalent to everyone in Manchester having a music career – not just Oasis et al. I’ m happy to have shared coffee with Eivør, the Faroese superstar, who pulls in stadium-size crowds across Europe and America these days.
A key component to the astonishing pace of change in the islands has been tourism growth, and I’ m pleased to able to say the language to its service) and Google Sheep View, when arriving visitors could pick up a special camera at the airport, while many of the islands’ 75,000 sheep carried their own cameras, transmitting online. This year’ s big innovation is hire cars preprogrammed with customised itineraries, designed to spread the tourism benefits away from Tórshavn and across all the islands.
I have introduced the delights of these wind and sea-swept islands to many OWPG members and together we’ ve delighted in hiking, sea fishing, sailing, horse-riding and many of the other activities on offer in this dramatic landscape.
During Covid, when my work there came to end, I reflected I had a story to tell: Faroese Days: Tradition, Change and Innovation in the North Atlantic is that story.
The UK edition of Faroese Days is now published under the Gravity Books imprint, ISBN 978-1-7393686-6-1
Footnote: there was a great turnout for my event at Jacobsens … the majority had not responded to my RSVP; only about half of those who said they’ d come turned up on the day. A good result!
LEFT TOP Stan Abbott on location LEFT BELOW Yarn bomb at Sandoy MIDDLE Surf hut at Tjørnuvik BELOW Bird cliffs
Spring 2026 OUTDOOR FOCUS 13