Atlantica - 01.04.2006, Page 46

44 AT L A N T I CA
a MANCHESTER
19th and 21st centuries. “There are people here who work in a bank and
who also have ten sheep to take care of,” he explains, the glow of his laptop
illuminating his round face.
As of last year, approximately 19,000 people, or 38 percent of the Faroes’
total population of almost 49,000, lived in or around Tórshavn. It’s a modern
European capital, with improving schools and infrastructure, museums, a
burgeoning fashion and music scene, and as I saw, even the occasional hipster
café.
It hasn’t always been this way. It’s been just within the last decade, if not
within the last five years, that Tórshavn has seen such a significant popula-
tion influx. At first glance, life in the Faroe Islands is simple, uncomplicated
and pristine – a place where time follows the parameters of weather instead
of inboxes and voicemail. But the pace is picking up, and many of the inhab-
itants in rural villages are migrating towards the capital, where a more con-
venient life awaits them and their families. In my three days on the islands, as
I coursed down the black asphalt and whizzed across the metal sheep guards
in the roads, I wondered how long can the Faroes balance here, with one foot
in this century, and another in a century past.
“The Faroese people want to live in a town where they have many pos-
sibilities,” Tórshavn Deputy Mayor Jógvan Arge told me. “We have to find
out how we can have all these people living here. We have to build new
houses.”
And speaking of possibilities, the Faroese are holding their breath for the
next few months. If Norwegian oil company Statoil and the seven other oil
companies working in consortium discover oil deposits in the exploration
drilling projects that begin this summer southeast of the Faroes, these islands
could be on the brink of becoming the next Abu Dhabi.
“It is a very high-risk and expensive drilling this summer because it’s
through one or more kilometers of basalt, which is a big challenge,” says
Hilmar Simonsen, an oil geologist working in Tórshavn. “I think people in
the Faroe Islands will go crazy [if oil is found], and if they don’t find any-
thing, it will be a disappointment.” The stakes are high: the Faroes will have
full ownership of the resources if oil deposits are found.
One night at Marco Polo, one of the more well known restaurants in
town, I ordered the only vegetarian option on the menu, a margherita pizza.
My server told me she wasn’t sure if that was a possibility, and said she would
be right back. By right back she meant walk to the window, squint her eyes,
and peer across the street. Upon returning to my table, she told me that the
pizza wouldn’t be possible tonight because the pizza joint across the street
was closed.
But cuisine was not what brought me to the Faroes. The landscape – and
maybe the mood – was. While Tórshavn evolves, I’ve come to see the places
in these islands where time really does stands still.
ISLAND HOPPING
I was off the road and on a 25-minute ferry to the island of Sandoy when I
asked a couple of 18-year-old boys in soccer jerseys where they were headed
to play their game. They were clustered around like schoolboys, tossing soc-
cer balls in the air and pegging one another with Haribo gummy bears.
“In the middle of nowhere,” one of them blurted, deadpan. When asked
what he meant by in the middle of nowhere, he said they were playing on
a turf field in Sandur, a village on the southern coast of the island. I could
see what he meant: there are fewer than 1,500 people on the entire island of
Sandoy. There were 1,500 kids in my high school alone.
If you don’t count the sheep, there is one permanent resident in Sandoy’s
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