LONELY FAROES

Hokitika Guardian, 21 May 1940, Page 3

LONELY FAROES

REMOTE DANISH ISLAND BRITISH TROOPS LANDED LONDON' May 2. Imagine black cliffs, fiercely high. ■ spotted with a myriad of white seabirds, says “G.E.G.” in the Evening News. Below the Atlantic swells.' in, roaring and slapping at the rock. Above, you mayi catch’ a,, glimpse through the mist—there’s a l ’. ways mist —of vivid green grass. That is how the Faroes look—the Danish islands 250 miles ’north’of John o’ Groats, which have come under British protection and where a British force has now been landed. I have never been on islands so intensely and militantly isolated, islands so contemptuous and determined to make one feel small, the writer adds. The fjords —the sea-chasms between island and island —are dark, narrow, and huge as Broadway, and the heave of the Atlantic seldom leaves them still. Cliffs and Slopes There are some 20 of these islands, though not all are inhabited,, and it is by‘| no means easy landing on some of them if the sea is anything but quiet. You must jump from a' motor-boat when the sea lilts it near enough to a narrow lodge under the cliffs. If you miss your footing—well, it is bad luck. Everything is cliff or slope in the Faroes. The sheep feed on steep grass slopes. The farm houses are built., o.u steep grass slopes. Even their roofs are steep roofs of turf covered with dandelion and ragged robin, though nowadays galvanised iron is replacing the old sood-roofs of the last 1,000 years. The nearest thing to a piece of level ground in the Faroes is the football field at Thorshaven, where they have played “internationals” with the .Orkneys and the Shetlards. Elend of Old and New Thorshavon is the capital, it is. a little town of steep narrow streets and gardens, built on the northern island of Streymoy, above a roadstead protected from north, east and west. It seems —as does every? thing in the Faroes —an odd blend of modernity and the Middle Ages. The language the Facrish men speak is not Danish, but a form of old Norse,: like Icelandic. The clothes they wcaivou Sundays, anyway—arc the knee! breeches and buckled shoes of another century. Like their ancestors they fish: and rear sheep, and catch sea birds with astonishing skill and daring round the cliffs, using nets at the cpdj of a long pole. Like their ancestors they still sing and dance to their ballads, as people’ did in England 500 ybars. ago. But in the bookshop in Thorsbaven they sell Edgar Wallace and Galsworthy; the remotest homes have wireless

and the remotest islands are linked . by telephone. Cheerful and Intelligent War is nothing new to the Faerish people. They are constantly at war—, against wind, storm and wave, much more ruthless and relentless enemies than the Germans. There is no capitulation, never an armistice, never a ’ peace treaty, and the war has been on ’ lor 1,000 yfears. ’ But the Faerish men ar,e a cheerlul, ‘ intelligent lot, who live well, if they ' live hard. They are'hospitable, as many English fishermen have learned when ■■ their trawlers have gone to pieces on the pitiScss cliffs. * Once only have the Faerish suffered 1 invasion in recent years. It came from 1 a pushing, vigorous race which is spreading its dominion far and wide into the North—the common or gar--5 den starling. But the Faerish like ’ his chatter and cheerful impudence ' so much that they make a pot of 1 him. Every, household has a starling- ’ box stuck up on a cat-proof pole ? in the back garden.