Staring out across the Faroe Islands, I could’ve been looking at a “map of time itself,” said Catherine Watson in the Los Angeles Times. “More than a thousand years” of history lay in one staggering view. Located in the North Atlantic, somewhere between Iceland and Scotland, this archipelago was settled by Norsemen and Gaels sometime before A.D. 1000. Not much has changed since then on the islands (except for the capricious weather, which does so constantly). Though now part of Denmark, the Faroes have functioned as an autonomous province since 1948. They “feel like their own country,” a world lost in time.
The 17 inhabited islands are like “neighborhoods of a single dispersed city,” connected by a network of bridges, ferryboats, and undersea tunnels. The towns, both big and small, still resemble the settlements the Vikings constructed, with houses clustered tightly at the foot of grassy mountains like “trim on hems of long green skirts.” On Streymoy, the largest island of the Faroes, lies Kvivik, one of the oldest settlements. The former Viking village is “perched exactly where its ancient founders wanted it, deep in a narrow fjord where the sea was calm.” As I looked out over the pocket-size town, “green slopes fell steeply away to the sea,” drawing my gaze to the “soft shapes of other islands drifting in the pale blue distance.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
5 hilariously spirited cartoons about the spirit of ChristmasCartoons Artists take on excuses, pardons, and more
-
Inside the house of AssadThe Explainer Bashar al-Assad and his father, Hafez, ruled Syria for more than half a century but how did one family achieve and maintain power?
-
Sudoku medium: December 22, 2024The Week's daily medium sudoku puzzle
