Steve and Cathy's Blog

Steve awakens at 6:00am and begins uploading photos to the blog app, and gets a sense that the ship isn’t moving but is so wrapped up in cursing the glacial pace of the uploading chore that he doesn’t look out until 7am. And lo and behold, we are docked! Around 8, Cathy arises.

Shortly thereafter, while we are watching the “Sirena Today Show” with Cruise Director Julie James, the captain come on the public address system. Hmmm. Unless it’s noon time and he’s giving his obligatory daily report, it can’t be good news. 

Well, it’s not all bad. Apparently, the weather at Torshavn is so inclement that port officials have moved where we dock from that port to the cargo port in the village of Kollafjordour (when the captain says the name, it is incomprehensible to Steve. Destination Services provides the name and spelling to him on his visit later). The captain adds that shuttle buses will be provided to take us the ten miles to Torshavn.

We both prepare for the day and have breakfast at – where else? – the Grand Dining Room. Maitre d’ Mary Ann recognizes us and greets us by name and stateroom number. We are quite proud of that. Granted that they are all professionals that work on all Oceania ships, but it is flattering just the same.

At 9:30, shortly after we get back to the room after breakfast, we receive a phone call from Destination Services. Steve answers. Our four-hour Vestmanna Sea Cliffs excursion is canceled due to the high winds that are apparently with us all day today. The young lady that calls begins to tell him about two excursions that are open, but Cathy insists we go down to Deck 4 to talk with them in person.

Off we go. We only have to wait less than a minute before a staff member asks what she can do to help. She shows us the two tour options available, and we choose the three-hour Torshavn: The Capital excursion. It meets at 1:00pm in Sirena Lounge, giving us more time for other activities. 

This change actually works to our advantage. On the “second cruise” of this trip, we will be back in the Faroe Islands on September 9^th. Inadvertently, for that day we had booked the same excursion that was just canceled on us today, Vestmanna Cliffs. So now we actually have a second chance to take that excursion. 

Okay, so we have a couple of hours to spend on our favorite activities: reading and blogging. Because we ate breakfast so late, lunch at noon isn’t so appealing. So Cathy also makes a quick trip to the Barristas coffee bar on Deck 5 to pick up some cookies for nibbling on our tour this afternoon. (She is always planning ahead!). 

The weather is an issue today. It is raining when we arrive. When the captain came on to explain why we ended up at the cargo port, he gives a rundown on the weather. Rain until noon, gradually clearing – or not – for the rest of the day. Winds will remain in the 20-30 knot range – or not. So far on this cruise, the weather has cooperated amazingly, even when the predictions were otherwise. We hope for the best that our improving weather karma stays with us.

It does! We disembark at 1:10pm and the rain has stopped. We board our bus and, much to our surprise, the front row seats are open. This never happens for us, primarily because the guide or people with mobility issues are in them. Things are really looking up. Our guide, who sits in a jump seat by the front door of the bus, introduces himself. His name is Samson, and he welcomes us to the Faroe Islands.

As mentioned before, we are about ten miles from Torshavn, our destination. Samson begins filling us with information. He is a fantastic guide, a veritable encyclopedia of knowledge about his homeland. Steve is madly scrambling notes, while taking photos out of the windshield of the bus (few of them are worth saving – too much reflection). The scenery is gorgeous, despite the dark, low clouds. 

As we motor along toward town, Samson covers a wide variety of subjects, too many for Steve to record. But here’s what he did manage to scribble in his notebook:

• The population of the Faroe Islands is around 50,000, 40% of whom live in the capital city to which we are headed.
• Despite being “part” of Denmark, Danish is not the language most widely spoken. That language is Faroese. This was not always the case. The Faroes have been a Danish possession for centuries (the word ‘possession’ is no longer used, and the Faroe Islands are referred to as a country that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark), and Danish was indeed the language spoken. But some prominent authors from the island reintroduced the native language, the younger people began to adopt it, and now it is the most prominent of the three most common: Faroese, Danish and English.
• The Danish military have been considering putting a new radar installation on the Faroes for some time. Now, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that plan is getting top priority. The Faroes are located in an ideal area of the Atlantic Ocean for such equipment, given the Russian’s recent belligerence.
• During WWII, the islands were occupied by the British (more specifically, the Scots), and a large airbase was built by them. It now serves as Torshavn’s airport.
• If you look at the topography carefully, in many places the hills/mountains have several layers. This is due to having been formed by a series of volcanic eruptions over a long period.

• After WWII, the Danes received significant funding for rebuilding through the Marshall Plan. 1% of that funding was used to build a hydroelectric power station and well to begin a fund for ships, a fund that still exists today to help fishermen purchase their ships.
• Energy is provided by the aforementioned hydro, but some natural gas is also used. There is development ongoing to build wind turbines, and a biogas plant is also to be built as well. A Swedish firm is studying the idea of using the tides to supply energy as well.
• We pass by a large new building that our guide says houses mobile broadband Internet communications equipment and offices of the Swedish company Ericsson. The Chinese company Huawei was considered, but large security concerns were raised. Their bid was rejected, despite efforts by the Chinese government to persuade the Danes that the Faroes’ fishing industry would receive favorable treatment. [good grief, how clumsy and transparent].
• The fishing industry and fish-related products comprise a large percentage of the economy in the Faroes. Tourism is becoming more significant, and sheep farming has always been important.

We pass through the city and up a steep hill that overlooks the city. Our guide Samson tells us that it is the fastest-growing and most popular area to live right now. In fact, he lives in the area, and we pass by the school where his son attends 7^th grade. We also see quite a bit of multi-family housing, and this is where many young people who can’t quite afford a single-family house live. 

Our bus makes its first stop on our tour to give us an opportunity to take photos. We all pile out to do just that, and the wind is howling. Fortunately, the weather gods have smiled upon us again. It’s windy but dry and in the temperature is in the high 50’s. As we take pictures, we see sheep grazing below us. We have been noticing on our drive that there are sheep and horses grazing everywhere, even in small areas of the city. 

Back on the bus, and Samson continues supplying us with information about his country:

• There are two breeds of horses here, Icelandic and the Faroe pony (it’s technically a pony because of its height only being 45 to 49 inches, but is referred to as a horse because of its strength. The Icelandic horses are the primary breed and they do well. Unfortunately the Faroese horse, as it’s also called, is not doing well because there are only around 100 of them left – not enough to create strong breeding stock.
• Sports are really important on the Faroes, and, for such a small country, they produce a lot of champions in various sports, most recently swimming, but also in football (our soccer, of course), and handball. 
• Handball is very popular, and two champions in that sport have recently brought glory to the islands. How did they get so good? Well, the story goes that they constantly hounded the owner of the handball court where they practiced, so much so that he finally gave up and handed them keys to the place so that they could practice as much as they wanted. Their obsession has paid off!
• The national sport, however is rowing, which should be no surprise in a culture with its Viking history and economy so dependent on the sea. In fact, the boats are based on a Viking design, and there are competitions all summer long at every age and skill level for both genders. The boats are rowed by teams of 4, 6 8 or 10 (plus a person calling out the tempo that sits in the stern). Here is a short article about the sport from nordicrowing.com: “Rowing is considered the national sport of the Faroe Islands. The Faroe Island Rowing federation is in 2020 celebrating 40 years anniversary with 33 rowing clubs with a total of 136 boats consisting of a mix of boats for 5, 6, 8 and 10 rowers. These boats are traditional open Faroe boats that are different from the coastal boats used in FISA Coastal rowing regattas. This boat type has now also been introduced to the Faroe Rowing clubs so hopefully we will see strong Faroe Island rowers participate in the FISA Coastal rowing regattas.

“There are no inland rowing venues. All regattas take place in the ocean with race distance from 1000 to 2000 meters in tough water conditions which means that the rowers in addition to racing against their competitor boats also has to fight against the wind, waves and currents from the open North Atlantic sea. 

“The rowing season is short, from early June to late July. There are seven rowing races held individually at regional village festivals. The final race is held in late July during   St. Olavs Day which is the National holiday of Faroe Island.

“With a short rowing season due to the sea and weather condition indoor rowing has grown considerably in the Faroe Island. Strong Faroe rowers participate in various big indoor regattas in Scandinavia and the Worldrowing indoor rowing championships.”

[Our guide Samson is so enthusiastic about the sport and its popularity in his homeland that we just had to include it in this post about the Faroe Islands. As he said to us, there are 18 islands in the Faroes, and much of the culture is tied to boats.]

Our next stop is to be a tour of the ‘old town,’ an extremely historically and politically important part of Torshavn. We disembark the bus adjacent to one of the ferries that serve the islands, this one plies the waters between Torshavn and Nolstoy, about a twenty-minute ride.

As we walk to this area, Samson takes us to a basement storage area where some of the beautiful rowing boats are stored so we can take a look at them.

Then he takes up us through a neighborhood of narrow cobblestone streets and small sod-roofed homes, some of which are four hundred years old. We stop at one spot that is reputed to be the first main street of Torshavn, named Gongin Street. It is now home to several fine restaurants (as Cathy will attest, checking the menus):

We continue our walk through the neighborhood, where he asks us to be respectful of the fact that the houses we see are indeed people’s homes (“No peeking in the windows, please.”). He is careful to describe the sod-roofed homes. In the past, before the sod was laid down, a base of birch bark and/or wood was laid down. If not birch, then straw was used. Presently, plastic sheeting is used. The birch log that we see where gutters would ordinarily be hanging is still maintained on the most historically significant homes, and the entire area is carefully regulated to preserve it as it has always been.

We then arrive at “Tinganes is the historic location of the Faroese landsstýri (government), and is a part of Tórshavn. The name means “parliament jetty” or “parliament point” in Faroese.

The parliament met there for the first time in the Viking ages when Norwegian colonists placed their Ting (parliament) on the location in 825. It is one of the oldest parliamentary meeting places in the world, along with Tynwald hill on the Isle of Man and Þingvellir in Iceland. The Løgting has since moved to the north of the city, but the home-rule government still sits here.” [quote taken from Wikipedia] Many of the ‘home-rule’ offices are located here, as well as the Iceland Embassy. 

Here is a paragraph from Wikipedia on the development of home rule in the Faroe Islands that makes for interesting reading: “The  1946 Faroese independence referendum resulted in 50.73% in favour of independence to 49.27% against. The Faroe Islands subsequently declared independence on 18 September 1946; however, this declaration was annulled by Denmark on 20 September on the grounds that a majority of the Faroese voters had not supported independence and King Christian X of Denmark dissolved the Faroese Løgting on 24 September.  The dissolution of the Løgting took place in November, followed by the Faroese parliamentary election of 1946 in which the parties in favour of full independence received a total of 5,396 votes while the parties opposed to it received a total of 7,488 votes. As a reaction to the growing movements in favour of self-government and independence, Denmark finally granted the Faroe Islands home-rule with a high degree of local autonomy in 1948.”

There are thirty-three members of Iceland’s parliament, and they are elected to four-year terms. The Faroes – and Greenland – also elect two full-voting members of the 179-member Danish parliament to a four-year term. Our guide says that the Faroe Islands usually choose one from the left and one from the right sides of the political spectrum [how they manage that would be of interest, wouldn’t it?].

We walk down the hill from Tinganes and cross the street. On our way to boarding the bus, we pass by some very interesting small pleasure craft. The design is similar to the rowing boats we saw, and Steve asks Samson if they are built here in the Faroes. He answers yes, proudly. 

We motor through the city up another hill to our last stop, the National Museum of the Faroe Islands. It is a fairly new two-story building that we enter on the top floor because it’s built into a hillside. We have an hour to spend there, which we can see already is not going to be nearly enough time, but it is what it is.

One reason we won’t have enough time is that we want to stop to eat the snack Cathy packed. There are some tables for just that purpose near the entrance, and we spend ten minutes doing that. First we look at an exhibit about the history of the boats and ships that have been used to supply the islands in its history. The area is filled with gorgeous models of them from every era. Steve could have spent the entire time there, but we move on to other subjects, all presented expertly. 

We spend the remainder of our time in three specific exhibits: sheep farming, knitting (for which the islands are famous), and some of the original rowing boats. 

• Sheep farming: There are two basic breeds of Faroes sheep:

And here is some of the topics discussed regarding the sheep farming industry and its impact:

• Knitting: This is of special interest to Cathy, of course, but Steve was duly impressed with how beautiful were the sweaters and other knit objects.

• Rowing boats: there are several on display, and the rowing and pleasure boats of today take their design from these originals. These were used for fishing, of course, but also for transportation between the eighteen islands that make up The Faroe Islands.

Our visit to this well-done museum is all too quickly over, but it did give us an introduction to the rich culture of this fascinating country. Steve takes a couple of more photos outside the museum:

It’s back on the bus for a 30-minute ride back to the ship. We had rain all morning, then it cleared up for the afternoon and begins again as we motor back. Our weather karma continues to be good. 

We feel blessed to have had the chance to see a place that we have heard about for many years. We sail for Lerwick in the Shetland Islands at 5pm, 229 nautical miles away.