Iceland review - 2006, Blaðsíða 87

84 ICELAND REVIEW ICELAND REVIEW 85
The Faroes have been an autonomous region of Denmark since 1948.
The islands have their own prime minister, government, parliament,
f lag, national airline and, of course, the national football team. The
Faroes are self-governing, but receive annual subsidies from Denmark
amounting to roughly USD 100 million, or about 10 percent of GDP.
Matters of defense fall under Danish responsibility, as does the small
police force of about 90 officers.
But, like its territory neighbor Greenland, the Faroese government
has not figured out a way to save its outlying villages. “The Faroese
parliament and government are talking about how to make a policy
so people can stay in these [outermost] islands like Mykines and Fu-
gloy,” said Arge. “But it seems to me that it’s very difficult to make a
policy that can save them.”
Nowhere is the thread between the Faroes’ past and the present more
precarious than in the rough tunnel that connects Gásadalur, a village
on the island of Vágar, to the rest of the world. The tunnel has made
this once-isolated village, home to less than 20 residents, a 15-minute
drive to the airport.
In an area where the mailman formerly had to traverse a mountain
or be helicoptered in, you’d think a tunnel like this would be life-
changing. But when I asked Petra, a woman who resides in a purple-
trimmed farmhouse at the edge of the village, when the tunnel was
built, she said it was about a year ago. Later, in town, three men
gathered around a rusty yellow tractor had a different response: it had
been three years.
In any case, it looks like it was yesterday. Two small signs at the
tunnel’s entrance read, in succession: “Travelling in the tunnel is at
ones [sic] own risk,” and “Travelling trough [sic] the tunnel requires
permission from the road adm.”
We read them, and continue driving. The tunnel is leaking, icicles
precariously hanging from its rocky ceiling.
When on the road in the Faroes, it’s impossible to stray far from the
white-capped waters of the North Atlantic. The furthest you can
travel “inland” is about four kilometers on an unnamed road (un-
named at least on our map) that leads to Saksun, a town of fewer than
30 people that feels quite literally like the end of the earth. High,
rocky knolls and sheer craggy cliffs rise above the town on three
sides, dwarfing its sod-roofed church and meager sampling of wood-
and-stone houses.
Homes here face the sea. And churches. And cemeteries. Little has
changed in the last century – or forever, for that matter – regarding the
importance of fishing to the Faroese economy. The country would be
belly-up without it. Fish and fisheries products account for 95 percent
of total Faroese exports, or about half of their total gross domestic
product, according to the Ministry of Fisheries and Maritime Affairs.
The harbors of Tórshavn and Klaksvík are veritable parking lots for
hulking seafaring vessels with names like “Thor,” “Pegasus,” and
“Goliath.” Lines the width of my fist keep these trawlers tied se-
curely to the dock. On a cold, windy Sunday afternoon, men wield-
ing body-sized blowtorches repaired the rusty, weathered hull of a
dry-docked long liner.
As of 2003, there were a total of 186 registered fishing vessels in the
Faroes, 78 of which are the mammoth-sized steel trawlers that bring
home this natural resource. A total of 105,000 tons of demersal fish
(fish that dwell at or near the bottom of a body of water), which in-
cludes species like cod and haddock, were caught in Faroese waters in
2004. And, like most fishing economies, the industry is dominated
by men. While they are off fishing, sleeping in windowless cabins and
eating food from a mess tray for months at a time, women like Erla
Mikkelsen are home caring for the family.
Her children, now ages 11 and 14, are in school while she works full-
time at Trygd, a large insurance company in downtown Tórshavn.
Mikkelsen’s husband now has what she says is a better schedule: six
weeks away, six weeks home. Until 2002, he spent four months at sea
followed by ten days at home. Every third trip he was home for four
months.
“It was always hard, really hard, the two weeks before he left, and the
two weeks after. It was terrible,” said Mikkelsen, as we talked in the
office’s institutional lobby. “You make a life without him while he’s
away. It was like that for 13 years.”
It’s the sea, though, that unites the Faroese both young and old. It’s
one of the primary reasons why many of the Faroese are devout Evan-
gelical Lutherans, and also one of the primary reasons why natives
often return to the Faroes after traveling or living abroad after a few
years.
Rúni H. Johannesen had just finished docking his new boat when I
interrupted him tying a bowline. Johannesen is in the banking indus-
try, and moved back to Tórshavn from Denmark three years ago to be
nearer to his home, family and the simplicity of island life.
What surprised Johannesen most after his time away was the explo-
sion of restaurants and cafés around Tórshavn. “We are on our way
to becoming part of the global economy,” he said. “We’re more and
more internationally focused, and still we have all these gifts to soci-
ety – the islands, this nature.”
If Norwegian oil company Statoil and the seven other oil compa-
nies working in a consortium discover oil deposits in the explor-
atory drilling projects that begin this summer southeast of the Faroes,
these islands could be on the brink of becoming the next Abu Dhabi.
Previous attempts have proven unsuccessful, but this one, with the
benefit of more time and research, could be the jackpot. “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