Annika í Dímun - 2011 FAROES

Annika of Dímun killed her husband and took one of the farmhands as her lover. She was condemned to death because of her crime but managed to get three men on the island of Dímun to guard and protect her and prevent the authorities from capturing her. The island was defended for three years until one of the men betrayed her and Annika was captured and drowned in Tórshavn harbour.

There is some uncertainty as to the identity of the real Annika of Dímun. The legend says she was the daughter of the Sheriff and niece to the priest on Sandur. She may well have been, but even though her family were fine, they weren't necessarily good people because the legend explains that Annika's father lost her in a game of cards to a peasant on Dímun. Even though she was already engaged to another man she was forced to live on Dímun. If this is correct we can understand her desire to take revenge on her unwanted husband. But whether she actually did kill him is another question.

A woman named Anna Isaksdatter, was drowned in Tórshavn harbour in 1664. She had been condemned for incest, in her case because it was said she had borne children from two men who were brothers.

Jakob Jakobsen believes this was the very same Annika of Dímun. But the legend says nothing about incest and the court case says nothing about a murdered husband. But Jakob Jakobsen may well be correct, because legend is rarely reliable or without error. The death penalty was still imposed in the Faroe Islands in the 17th century. So that part could be correct.

The legend does not place the father in a favourable light and sympathies lie with Annika even though she killed her husband. Not only had the father lost her in a game of cards, he also mocked her. "What dress shall I wear?" she asked her father as she was taken to Tórshavn. "It doesn't matter," he is supposed to have said. "It's not a wedding you're invited to."

The legend's pity for her is evident in the way it describes how she cared for her son. When the men dragged her away she shouted that they must not forget to give her son his usual cup of morning milk.

It is notable that the woman is the only one among the men in the legend: her father the Sheriff, her peasant husband on Dímun, her lover who failed to defend the island well enough and not least the foreman of the men who came to take her away. A legend says that the foreman was her brother, who would have his own death penalty dropped if he could capture his sister.

Drowning Annika wasn't easy. Her beautiful flowing hair kept her afloat and so her plaits had to be cut before she drowned. The legend describes her as astonishingly beautiful, full of love for her son - a woman who was betrayed by those she trusted.

A sad fate indeed.

Eyðun Andreassen

Caption:
There are two places where it is possible to climb onto Dímun - at the east side of the island and on the west side. Two men guarded these locations.
Annika could defend the island for three years and no unwelcome visitor managed to get onto the island, be they the authorities or otherwise. But in the end, her guards failed her.

Europa 2011- Forests - 2011 FAROES

Forest Growth on the Faroe Islands
Forests - not exactly what one associates with the Faroe Islands - rather the contrary. The North Atlantic archipelago is known for its treeless appearance. Climatic and geographic conditions, human influence and centuries of sheep-breeding have left the islands practically treeless.

Forests of the Past
But it has not always been that way. If we go back to the volcanic period millions of years ago, we note that there have been periods of extensive forest growth. Charred wood residues, and prints from leaves and needles are found in the coal strata in Suðuroy and Mykines. These finds indicate more favorable times on the mini-continent, which the current Faroe then were part of. Cypress, yew and juniper, giant sequoia and various kinds of deciduous trees - it's hard to imagine today.

After the Ice Age and the Settlement
When the Faroes were colonized, there were some natural woods on the islands. The only indigenous conifer was juniper, which is thought to have been quite common back then. Today this wood only appears in its original form, on the island Svínoy, but we have found roots of juniper in the peat layers on other islands as well.

Of deciduous trees were Dwarf Willow, Woolly Willow and Arctic Willow quite widespread, but Woolly Willow and the Arctic Willow are almost extinct because of the extensive sheep farming.

Birch has also grown wildly in the Faroe Islands since the last ice age, but rather dispersed - and disappeared after the colonization.

We also know that hazel has grown in the Faroe Islands around year 1000, but whether it was a native Faroese tree or it was planted by the early settlers, is uncertain. The hazel tree disappeared again around the 13th century when the climate became colder.

Plantations
There has, through time, probably always been a few trees at farms and in gardens on the Faroes, but not in any large scale. In 1885 there was an attempt to replant trees on a large scale outside Tórshavn, but this failed. In 1903 they tried again and this time it worked. This plantation became what we today call “Viðarlundin” in Tórshavn - a recreational area in a valley, which today is centrally located near Tórshavn City. In 1969 the plantation was expanded and again in 1979, and is now the biggest "forest" in the Faroes. Besides the plantation is also a grove surrounding the former TB sanatorium in Hoydalar, now high school, and on the field called Debesartrøð, where the Provincial Library and the Faroese University is located.

In December 1988 a violent hurricane-ravaged the islands. Wind speeds were up over 60 meters per second and the hurricane caused extensive damage on houses and trees. A very large proportion of the trees in the Plantation in Tórshavn were destroyed in the hurricane winds. The subject of the 10 DKK stamp depicts a cluster of these trees which are still lying on an incline. Extensive work has since been done to restore the plantation, and today it appears as a very beautiful area with young and old trees.

Besides in Tórshavn more plantations were planted in the early 20th century on the surrounding islands. In 1913, for example, the almost equally famous plantation in the small settlement Selatræ was planted, and the following year the plantation in the village Kunoy, which is depicted on the 12 DKK stamp. The plantation in Kunoy was originally larger than it is today, 17,000 square metres were planted - but today only approx. 7,800 square metres are covered by trees, and the grove is thus the smallest plantation in the islands. One oddity of the plantation in Kunoy is that it is planted around a giant rock, which in ancient times probably has fallen from the mountain Urðarfjall above the plantation. The rock, called Eggjarsteinur, can also be seen on the stamp.

There have since been planted several groves around the Faroes. In Vágur and Tvøroyri on Suðuroy - in the villages Miðvágur and Sandavágur on Vágoy - in Mikladalur on Kalsoy - and also the beautiful park, "Uti í Grøv", by the city Klaksvík on Borðoy.

Mountain flowers - 2011 FAROES

Red campion, Silene dioica

The plant is widely known as red campion, while its botanical name is Silene dioica. Red campion is a member of the carnation family, of the genus Silene. In addition to the red campion, its relative the moss campion (Silene acaulis) grows on the Faroe Islands. The Faroese name bjargablóma (mountain flower) is given to the flower because it is a mountain-dwelling wildflower that grows in attractive dense cushions with pink and occasionally white flowers. Only in the Faroe Islands is the word ‘mountain’ linked to the plant’s name, so the Faroese name is accepted as being original. Red campion grows in steep rocky slopes and in inaccessible lower-mountain areas. Red campion is a rare plant. It is not found on any of the smaller islands or on Sandoy or Eysturoy. It is considered to be an indigenous Faroese plant, i.e. it was brought to the islands by the wind, ocean currents or birds and not by human activity. Red campion is an herbaceous perennial and can grow to just over a metre in height. It flowers in July. The vertical stalks grow from a slender, creeping stock. The plant has two kinds of hairy leaves. The upper leaves are pointed and without stalks while the lower leaves have long, winged stalks and are oval-shaped. The red and occasionally white petals are large and the flower has a central ring of flaps. Red campion is a dioecious species, with separate male and female plants. The male plant has a 10-veined calyx and the female plant has a 20-veined calyx. The fruit is an ovoid capsule that opens up at the apex with ten teeth, which curve back.

Wood Cranesbill, Geranium sylvaticum

The plant is widely known as Wood Cranesbill, its Faroese name “litingarsortugræs” (colour black grass) and its botanical name is Geranium sylvaticum. It is the only species of Cransebill found on the Faroe Islands. Its Faroese name refers to the fact that the plant is used to make natural black dye. The Icelandic name also refers to the plant’s natural black dye. The name of the plant in other countries derives from the special five-sectioned stalk, which looks like the head and beak of a crane when the petals have fallen off. Hence its common Danish name “Storknæb” (storksbill). Similar plants in the same genus are commonly called cranesbills and heron’s bill. Storksbill grows on the Faroe Islands. It is considered to be an indigenous Faroese plant, i.e. it was brought to the islands by the wind, ocean currents or birds and not by human activity. It is not found on the smallest islands and is rarely found on Suðuroy or Sandoy but is common on Streymoy and Eysturoy. It grows on low-lying land and is never found growing on heights greater than 300 metres. It is a perennial plant that flowers in June and July. It can grow up to 50 cm in height and has a vertical stalk with long hairs at the top and short hairs at the bottom. The leaves are very large and divided into fine leaflets. The flowers are typically blue and sometimes red. Fully-grown, the flowers are 10–18 mm in diameter and grow in pairs. In general, the plant is dioecious. It has five blue or red petals, and the centre of the flower is light, almost white. The flower and seed pod is divided into five single fruits.

Juniper berry and crowberry - 2011 FAROES

Juniper berry and crowberry

Of the more than 400 species of plants that make up the wild flowers of the Faroe Islands, only a few woody plants occur. Two of these ligneous plants are the juniper berry and crowberry.

 

Common juniper (Juniperus communis subsp. alpina)

Today, several species of conifer and shrub grow in the Faroe Islands. Most of these have been imported and planted here. The only indigenous plant species in the same family as conifers is the juniper. In some areas, the names “juniper” and “juniper berry” are used indiscriminately to describe these plants.

 

The juniper is a low-growing, evergreen shrub. Its needles measure approximately 1 cm and have a light, grey-green colour. Juniper is normally a dioecious species, which means that it has separate male and female plants. The male flower is yellow and oblong with an abundance of stamens. The female flower is greenish in colour, making it difficult to see. The fruit consists of so-called berry cones that take two to three years to mature. The berry cones are green in the first year, and mature in the second and third year to a deep blue colour.

 

During the period after the last Ice Age, juniper was relatively widespread throughout the Faroe Islands. As the climate became wetter, the juniper bushes gradually disappeared. Some 5,000 years ago, however, another change in the climate occurred and the growing conditions for juniper improved. In many areas, juniper stumps can be found in strata from this period. Around 600 BC, however, the climate became wetter again and juniper dispersal came to a complete halt. This decline continued when the islands became inhabited by people and, today, juniper can only be found on the island of Svínoy and a small number of other locations in the Faroes.

 

Juniper trees are low growing and, therefore, cannot be used as timber. Nevertheless, they have a number of other useful purposes. In the Faroe Islands, juniper was used for smoking meat and, a type of rope made of twisted juniper stems was found in the Viking excavation in Kvívík.

 

The berries, which are not actually berries but seed cones, are also used as a spice and medication. For example, gin derives its distinctive flavour from immature juniper berries.

 

Crowberry (Empetrum nigrum)

Crowberry is a genus of dwarf shrub that is commonly found in the Faroe Islands. It grows particularly well on dry heathland and is also among the most common plants on moorland. As with the juniper bush, the crowberry is an evergreen which means that the leaves remain on the plant throughout the winter.

 

Two subspecies of crowberry grow in the Faroe Islands: common crowberry (Empetrum nigrum subs. nigrum) and mountain crowberry (Empetrum nigrum subs. hermaphroditum). Mountain crowberry is found on all the islands, while the common crowberry only grows on the island of Streymoy and the southern islands. In Scandinavia, common crowberry only grows in Finland, Denmark and Southern Sweden, while mountain crowberry grows in Finland and the greater part of Sweden and Norway.

 

Common crowberry and mountain crowberry are very similar to each other but the crucial difference is that the common crowberry is a dioecious species, like the common juniper. Mountain crowberry, on the other hand, has hermaphrodite flowers.

 

The stems of the common crowberry are low and trailing. On the lower part of the bush the stems are mat-forming, making the common crowberry closer to the ground than the mountain crowberry which has more upright stems.

 

The first pink flowers begin to develop around April and May, while the familiar glossy black crowberries mature in July and August. Consumption of the ripe berries by people as well as animals plays an important part in the distribution of the seeds. When eaten by birds, it takes some time for the seeds to pass through the bird’s digestive system. During this period, it is likely that the bird will have moved some distance away from the original crowberry plant, thus ensuring its seeds are dispersed over a wide area.

 

In the Faroe Islands, crowberries are picked and eaten raw, cooked in porridge or used to make jam.

 

Art: Bergithe Johannessen - 2011 FAROES

Bergithe Johannessen – watercolour painter from Vestmanna

Bergithe Christine Johannessen (1905-95) was the first Faroese to be admitted to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Born in Vestmanna, she was the daughter of Madgalene and Niels Skaale Johannessen, merchant and grocer. Bergithe Johannessen was 18 years old when she travelled to London to study painting. She went to the Sidscup School of Art from 1923 until 1925 and specialised in watercolour painting. She then moved to Copenhagen, where she attended the School of Painting at Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 1925 until 1931. After completing her studies, she continued living in Copenhagen, where she worked as a porcelain painter at the Royal Danish Porcelain Factory. In 1939, she married semi-skilled worker Arnold Rönnow Torp – Bergithe Johannessen was her artist name.

She travelled frequently to the Faroe Islands to paint and she participated in many Olaj Exhibitions from 1956 until 1980. She was also represented at the major exhibitions organised by the Faroe Islands Art Association in the 1950s: Faroese Art at the Free Exhibition Building in Copenhagen in 1995; Faroese Art at Iceland’s Museum of Art, Listasavn Íslands in 1961 and Faroese Art at the Bergen Art Association in 1970. The Faroe Islands Museum of Art has ten of her watercolours in its collection.

Bergithe Johannessen primarily painted landscapes; colourist watercolours featuring land, sea and skies. Sometimes the paintings have houses and sheep, but never people.

“Skærfyldt strand” (“Glowing beach”) is a watercolour painted in 1964. A green summer landscape unfolds in the foreground. In the middle of the picture is a fence and a sheep standing close to the edge of the rocks. The fence draws the eye towards the middle distance, from the edge of the beach, light, and rocks into the inlet, which takes over. On the other side of the inlet, another rocky landscape can be seen off in the distance, with thick green foliage under a heavy fog that hangs in the background.

“From Nolsø” is also a watercolour from 1964. Here, the foreground is split. On the right is an open view to the water in the middle distance; on the left, rocks rise up and block the view. Some of the forms in the foreground are similar to the other watercolour, but here the middle distance is painted more intricately. A stone dyke runs from the rocks to a field of grass. What appears to be driftwood along the dyke creates depth in the picture. A blue-grey cape spreads across nearly the entire middle distance, separating it from the background, which is a distant landscape on the other side of a strait. The sky is a heavy, light grey plane with scattered indications of clouds, emphasising the enclosed look. The inlet in the foreground is separated from the strait in the middle distance, which ends at the heavily clouded sky. Against the grey and white, the green colours in the grass and blue water create suspense in the painting.

Bergithe Johannessen also painted oil paintings. The Faroe Islands Museum of Art has one of these paintings from 1932. The main scene is a stream winding through a green landscape with grass hanging over the stream banks. A brown fell rises up fills the entire middle distance. In the background, a thin veil of fog covers the top and opens occasionally to reveal a light sky.

In the catalogue from the 1955 exhibition in Copenhagen, the author William Heinesen wrote that Bergithe Johannessen made “the fine, gentle watercolour her speciality”. In the Weilbach encyclopaedia of artists, the artist Bárður Jákupsson writes that she mastered the technique of watercolours in a brilliant and artistic way and that she portrayed atmospheres in the Faroese landscape, with a particular focus on villages and coasts.

Bergithe Johannessen watercolours and oil paintings are fine representatives of Faroese art from the mid-twentieth century. Her paintings portray landscapes, villages and the sea with empathy and a precise sense of colour and form.

Art: Frida Zachariassen - 2011 FAROES

Frida Zachariassen – a distinctive painter from Klaksvík

Frida Zachariassen was one of the most distinctive artists in the Faroe Islands during the 1950s. She developed her own personal style, characterised by geometric figures in compositions portraying landscapes, towns, villages and people. Sometimes the colours in Frida Zachariassen’s paintings are clear and strong, but they also often feature blurred and thin colour tones; in some of the paintings, earth tones dominate. In the 1930s and 1940s, her painting style focused on content and emotions leaning towards the romantic, with replication of the grandeur of nature, the sublime and the eternal. Around 1950, Frida Zachariassen began painting more abstractly. Landscapes and people were dissolved and reconstructed with squares, stripes and triangles. The main works are constructions made of lines and figures in colours such as saturated green and cool blue and grey, sometimes accompanied by black lines. Despite this abstraction and organisation, Frida Zachariassen’s paintings were never non-figurative. Her paintings always depict something recognisable.

In Frida Zachariassen’s landscape paintings, the relationship between the land and people is clear and meaningful. People populate her landscapes and they are often embedded in the landscape. The people in her paintings are active; they work as fishermen, prepare their boats to set sail, unload, walk on fell paths, go to the market, butcher pilot whales, harvest straw and herd sheep.

Frida Zachariassen was from Klaksvík and lived there for the majority of her life. She was born in 1912 and died in 1992. Her mother was Magdalena Jacobsen, who was from Klaksvík’s Uppsalar neighbourhood, and her father was Jógvan Rasmussen, who was called by the place he came from, Jógvan í Grótinum, located by Skálafjørður on Eysturoy. Frida Zachariassen grew up in a busy home with nine siblings and a father who was the leading figure in Klaksvík at the start of the twentieth century.

In 1927, Frida Zachariassen completed her middle school examination with good marks and in 1937 she graduated from the Merchants’ School in Copenhagen. She also wanted an education in art. She wrote about this in the book Strev í málrøkt (Efforts in tending language):
“As a youth, I was most interested in working with paintings and getting an education in Copenhagen. But it quickly became clear that one could not live from making “art”.  Despite the fact that Faroese could easily gain admission to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts at that time, there were so few that four years there seemed to be of no use and far too expensive. Therefore, I chose a business school education and then began working at an office.”

In other words, it was impossible for her to go into a field that could not provide an income. Instead, she found a means of survival and made art in her free time.

During the war, she worked at the offices of the merchant and shipping company, J. F. Kjølbro in her home town. In May of 1944, she married Guttormur Zachariassen, but their marriage was short-lived. He died in a wreck in February 1945. After the war, she returned to Copenhagen, where she worked at an office until 1949. Of the drawings held at Norðoya Listafelag (the Northern Islands Art Association), many are from this period. They indicate that she went to the Danish Museum of Art to draw. When she returned to Klaksvík, she oversaw the region’s health insurance for more than twenty years.

Frida Zachariassen’s production of paintings was greatest in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1970s, her eyesight diminished, so she began writing instead of painting.

Many of her paintings are from Klaksvík and the surrounding region; these include landscapes, portraits and images of working life. The colours often contrast: red and green, blue and green, red and blue, giving her paintings a sense of both coldness and warmth. It was also during the 1950s that she developed her special cubist style. Meanwhile, she began to travel extensively to develop her art.

The rhythmic patterns and light colours that mark the paintings “Kona” (“Woman”) and “Urtagarður” (“The Garden”) show the splendour of Frida Zachariassen’s unique style. She created art featuring cubist forms that concentrate her expression while giving it form and depth.

Sepac 2011 - 2011 FAROES

Landscape photography is universally appreciated by all, in part because all humans have a connection to the physical world our ancestors have walked for millennia. Of course, this connection to the environment in which we live is felt stronger by some, especially by outdoor photographers and by people who live more dependently off the land. The Faroese people, for example, have this deeper connection to the natural world; it is inescapable and unforgettable wherever one goes among the Faroe Islands. There are no big cities to get mentally lost in and forget about what lies beyond – only picturesque villages in idyllic settings nestled along the ocean and backed by mountains. As a professional landscape and adventure photographer myself, I spend much of my life in the outdoors, exploring the land via my feet or via my camera, and thus I feel deeply connected to nature as it provides part of life's meaning to me. I would lose touch with reality if I stayed away from the landscape too long.  

 

The Faroe Islands are among the most visually and spiritually alluring islands I've visited on my travels to many wilderness places in the world, and part of what makes them special is the feeling of closeness to the land that they generate, being small windswept islands in the middle of the vast and cold North Atlantic Ocean. I first saw the Faroe Islands from the deck of the large Smyril Line ferry while traveling between Iceland and Norway, on route to photograph the Aurora Borealis of the arctic night sky. What initially impressed me were the striated layers upon layers of the pyramidal shaped mountains rising out of the middle of the ocean. I had never seen such visually unique and appealing mountains such as these, and immediately felt the land calling to me, beckoning me to come explore and stand on its narrow mountain ridges with the white-capped ocean channels surrounding me on all sides. I stayed for a mere week in the Faroe Islands, on my return to Iceland after surviving week-long solo snowshoe and ski trips in -22°C weather in some wilderness of northern Norway. The wind, though blowing fiercely, was warm, moderated by the ocean waters surrounding, and I felt true freedom as I wandered the Faroese hills. But I also felt secure, unlike in Norway, looking down from the mountainsides at the idyllic little fishing villages nestled cozily into each cove along the shoreline. Ubiquitous tunnels brought me through mountains and dipped me under the sea, only to have me re-emerge in a totally new and enchanting valley, on another island altogether. 

 

The photos you see here and on a Faroese postage stamp illustrate my passion in life to explore and photograph our world's wilderness areas. Photography also helps me to slow down in my wanderings and notice the details and wonder at the beauty that nature exhibits every day, all over the world, whether anyone is there to witness it or not. A main goal in my photography is to make the viewer of the photograph feel like they are really in the scene, and not just looking at a photograph, and I feel the encompassing panoramic format helps to achieve this feel. I believe that if a viewer feels they are part of the scene, they will connect with it, and the wilderness landscape it depicts, better. Connection with the landscape then leads a person to value it, which leads to true appreciate and even better connection to the natural world. 

 

The Faroe Islands I am sure allure many travelers and residents, as they still do to me. I can only imagine the idyllic fields of wildflowers and green grassy mountainsides of summertime sweeping down into the ocean. In summer 2011 I'm leading a photography workshop and tour circumnavigating Iceland, another enchanting and friendly yet wild island, which I've fallen in love with. But I can feel the Faroe Islands calling out to me again across the Atlantic Ocean; and if I can hear their call all the way over here in North America, don't you think I might feel their call to me even more strongly and loudly, while I sit atop a mountain of the East Fjords of Iceland, looking out across the Atlantic to the east, knowing what lies beyond that watery horizon? 

 

Franking labels 2011 - 2011 FAROES

The motifs on this year's franking labels is an old rhyme, "Kú mín í garði" (My cow in the alley) and they are designed by the Faroese artist, Janus Guttesen.

The oldest nursery rhymes we know are probably poems or songs for children which were recited or sung to very simple tunes. In the Faroese dictionary we can see that these were “old rhymes passed on by oral tradition, which were sung repeatedly for children.”
 

My cow in the alleyMy cow in the alley,
My mare in the valley,
My steed on the cliff,
My hen on the ladder.
“Bah, bah, bah,”
Says my ewe in the shed,
“I need some grass to chew on.”

Vintage cars - 2011 FAROES

Vintage cars

Each vintage car featured on our stamps has its own unique story. The black lorry was the first vehicle to arrive in the Faroe Islands in 1922. The red bus that operated between Vestmanna, Kvívík and Kollafjørður was converted from a tanker and the home-made ‘De Luxe Model’ on the third stamp was the first car on the island to have a cassette player and loudspeakers.

 

The first car on the Faroe Islands

The first car arrived on the island on 6 May 1922 when Johannes Olsen and Júst Sivertsen from Tórshavn bought a Ford TT truck from Wenzel Petersen and Vilhelm Nielsen, who had a forge in Quillingsgård in Tórshavn.

 

The car was ferried to the Faroe Islands on the DFDS vessel S/S Island. As the ship was unable to dock, the car was hoisted onto a yacht, which unloaded the cargo at Kongebro marina in Tórshavn.

 

The car caused a sensation when it arrived in Tórshavn because the islanders had never seen a car before. The Faroe Islands had horse-drawn carriages at the time, although not many. Arthur Brend, however, was the first to own a ‘motorised’ vehicle on the island. In the autumn of 1921 he purchased a motorbike, which received a great deal of press in the local newspapers at the time.

 

Back in 1922, nobody on the quayside knew how to drive a car. It was therefore pushed up to the forge in Quillingsgård. A few days later the newspapers were able to report that the car had made several journeys between Tórshavn and the sanatorium in Hoydalar.

 

Morris Commercial Cars Ltd.England Model 1929

This commercial vehicle arrived in Kvívík on 14 June 1934. Originally from Hillerød’s Police District and owned by Nordsjællands Benzin Co., it had been without licence plates for several years. When the vehicle arrived on the island it had no body, i.e. the cab and hood were normal but there was no load or cab on the vehicle.

 

The plan was to take the cab from the Chevrolet bus in service at the time and fit it onto the vehicle’s chassis. The vehicle had functioned as a tanker in Zealand and as a lorry for a time.

 

However, these plans came to nothing, as Fritleif Johannesen from Tórshavn had heard about the vehicle and had travelled to Kvívík to take a closer look at it. His idea was to build a cab on top of the vehicle, i.e. an extension to the existing cab. He planned to build a so-called ‘omnibus’. His plans went ahead and on 12 June 1935 the vehicle was registered and approved as a mail and passenger bus between Vestmanna, Kvívík and Kollafjørður.

 

‘De Luxe Model’ built on the Faroe Islands

In the mid-1950s a home-made Faroese car drove through the streets of Tórshavn. It belonged to the Norwegian Almar Nordhaug, who built the car together with his colleagues at the barrel factory in Tórshavn.

 

It was not unusual to convert cars in the Faroe Islands in the mid-20th century, but the car they built at the factory was unique and far ahead of its time.

 

This was the first car on The Faroe Islands to have a cassette player and no fewer than four loudspeakers. The car generated quite a lot of attention when it attended horse shows because the music disturbed the horses and made the riders furious.

 

When Nordhaug moved back to Norway he took the car, which was on Faroese number plates, with him and continued to drive it in Norway for several years. Unfortunately, the car is no longer in existence. The last reliable report we had said that it was being used as part of a decorative display in a furniture store in Oslo.

Animals of the Viking Age - 2012 FAROES

The Great Auk

The Great Auk was a bird of the genus Alca, which also includes the Little Auk, Common Murre, Razor Bill and Atlantic Puffin. All of these species live or lived in the North Atlantic. The Great Auk was the largest of these birds and could grow up to 70 cm in height. Some of the other Alca birds had bright or whitish abdomens and dark-black backs, with a characteristic white spot on each side of the head, between the eyes and eye socket. They were flightless birds, with wings that were as small as the South Atlantic penguin. It was fast in the water when hunting fish but very clumsy on land.

The Great Auk lived in large colonies along the coast on both sides of the North Atlantic, so far south that remains of the bird are found in Stone Age and Viking Age kitchen middens.

The bird’s fate was sealed because it was easy to hunt and butcher. Already in the 15th century, the Great Auk was more or less extinct in Northern Europe but large colonies remained in Greenland, Iceland, Newfoundland, Baffin Island and Labrador. When cod fishing began in Newfoundland and whale hunting began in the North Atlantic, the Great Auk’s fate was sealed. The fishing and hunting boats only had supplies for the trip out, so the Great Auk was taken alive or butchered onboard the boats for the return journey.

The most famous colony was on the Penguin Islands (called Funk Island today), which lies north east of Newfoundland. The last Great Auks were killed in 1801-1802. At that point people were aware of how rare the bird had become and European museums were willing to pay a fortune to get hold of the skin of the Great Auk before it became extinct. The last Great Auks were taken in 1844 on the small island Eldey south of Reykjanes, Iceland but there were unconfirmed observations of the Great Auk in Vardø in Norway in 1848 and several times in Greenland in the 1850s. But the bird is now extinct.

The Great Auk was a summer visitor to the Faroe Islands but there was never any evidence that it bred there. The last bird was taken at Stóra Dímun on 1 July 1808.

There exist a few stuffed examples of the Great Auk, for example Iceland purchased a pair that can be seen today in the Natural History Museum of Iceland. The Zoological Museum in Copenhagen has used the Great Auk as a logo for many years. Ole Worm's Museum Wormianum in Copenhagen was sent a living Great Auk. It was drawn showing a ring around its neck, which meant that it had been tethered.

The Great Auk is an example of a bird that was hunted to extinction purely because of a lack of knowledge about its population distribution. The fishermen of the day cannot be reproached for this, since they did not have the benefit of modern communication technology. But the museums could have perhaps tried to save the Great Auk rather than have helped to deliver the final blow.

 

Dímunseyðini

Latin: Ovis aries

 

Dímun Sheep

In the summer of 1844, the then Danish Crown Prince, who would later go on to become King Frederik VII, visited the Faroe Islands. Among the royal entourage was a young zoologist by the name of Japetus Steenstrup, who had been sent by the Royal Natural History Museum of Denmark to collect specimens for the museum. In the Zoological Museum’s collection records of 23 August 1844, it states:

“HRH the Crown Prince with Professor Steenstrup gave the following items to the museum:

1.    18-foot skeleton of Delphinus globiceps (pilot whale).

2.    The feral variety of the Faroese sheep. No hair at the base of the horns or around the ears. The skull was loose.

3.    Second specimen. Well preserved. The skull was loose.

4.    The same juvenile. Male lamb. Well preserved. The skull was loose.

In 1983, the three specimens were returned to the Faroe Islands as part of the opening of Nordic House in the Faroe Islands and today they can be seen in the National Museum of the Faroe Islands.

The sheep are small and black and look a little like the more primitive feral Soay sheep that live on the island of St Kilda in the Outer Hebrides. They are called the goat-horned sheep, because both sexes have horns, though the ewe’s horns are smaller and more delicate than the ram’s horns. The Dímun sheep are more developed compared to the Soay sheep, which have the wild sheep’s light belly. Woollen garments recovered from Bronze Age burial sites have the same kind of wool and structure that is found on the Dímun sheep, so even at this early stage, wool from these sheep was being used.

The three sheep from Stóra Dímun were among the last of the original sheep in the Faroe Islands, and were perhaps brought by the Vikings. In an excavation in Eiði in the north end of Eysturoy, half a skull of the same kind of sheep was found. The Vikings brought their own sheep to Iceland and Greenland and almost certainly when they came to the Faroe Islands. Around 1600, almost all of the sheep on the Faroe Islands were wiped out by disease. New sheep were introduced from Shetland and Iceland. But the small black sheep on Lítlu Dímun managed to survive, although by 1860 they were finally wiped out by hunting.

A description of the final shooting of the last sheep on Lítlu Dímun exists. On 5 February 1911, the Justice of the Peace R. Müller wrote in the Danish newspaper Nationaltidende: “The remaining sheep were so wild that they would rather jump in into the abyss than be caught, especially some of the old rams and ewes, who were impossible to get near. So you had to take your rifle and shoot the last of them. The late J. Mortensen, merchant and founder of the largest trading establishment in the Faroe Islands, was a gifted shooter and he told me that he shot several of these sheep and that he had shot the last of them, an old ram that was so careful that shooting it cost him a great deal of effort.”

Sea Anemones - 2012 FAROES

Sea Anemones - Flowers of the Sea

 

Sea anemone are related to jellyfish and corals, all of which have a relatively simple circular body shape with numerous tentacles surrounding a mouth at one end of the organism. At the opposite end, sea anemones have a suction disc with which they can attach themselves firmly to a hard surface, whereas jellyfish live their lives swimming in open waters. In contrast to corals, sea anemones have no skeleton and act as independent individuals, whereas corals form colonies.

 

Sea anemones’ shapes and colours give them a striking appearance reminiscent of exotic tropical plants, which also inspired their name and overall scientific classification, Anthozoa (Greek: antho=flowers and zoa=animals).

 

Sea anemones are found in all oceans and at all depths, from just below the water surface to depths of more than 10,000 metres. Many species are found on wharfs and rocks at the water surface, where they add colour to the more neutral blue-green or brown surroundings – one of the reasons that most people with a relationship to the sea are fond of them. In unsteady waters or when touched, the sea anemone retracts its tentacles into its tubular body, appearing as a hemisphere with a hole at the top.

 

Despite their flower-like appearance, most sea anemones are predators. They have numerous poisonous cells on their surface – especially on their tentacles, each of which can hold about 2 million of these cells. The poisonous cells paralyse prey, after which it is captured and transported through the sea anemone’s mouth and into its intestinal cavity, where it is digested.   

 

The sea anemone can only attach itself to a hard surface. It is able to slowly glide on its foot at a speed of less than 10 cm per hour. There are certain species that can release their grip on the surface and float with the current if necessary, and others can even swim using their tentacles, which can help to escape from an approaching predator. The sea anemone’s enemies include nudibranchs, fish and starfish. However, sea anemones have a very high capacity for regeneration. Parts of the animal torn off due to bad weather or a predator grow back again.

 

It is not uncommon for sea anemones to be attached to other animals, such as the hermit crab. In this way, sea anemones come in contact with more potential food ­– and the behaviour of the hermit crab can attract potential prey of the sea anemone. In return, the hermit crab is protected by the sea anemone from infection by larvae of various crustacean parasites.

 

Sea anemones reproduce both sexually, with sperm and eggs, and asexually, typically through pedal laceration, in which a small piece of the pedal disc breaks off. This piece then develops into a new sea anemone that is a clone of the mother.

 

Marine biologists consider difficult to determine the species of sea anemones. Conservation of this animal group requires special methods and specialist knowledge is required to ensure correct identification. Although the sea anemone fauna in the Faroese area is not yet completely documented, it can be characterised as Nordic – or in scientific terms, East Atlantic Boreal – with an Arctic touch. Thirty species of sea anemone have been identified in the Faroes, but the total number of species is presumably higher.

 

The size of Faroese sea anemones varies greatly. The diameter of fully grown sea anemones varies from more than 30 centimetres for the largest species, Bolocera tuediae, down to a couple of millimetres with Edvardisia danica. The longest species in the Nordic seas is the very common Frilled Anemone (Metridium senile), which can reach lengths of a half metre. Some species of sea anemone can reach a considerable age; for example, a sea anemone of the species Actinia equina has lived for more than 66 years in an aquarium.