Sunda

After a full night's sailing we arrived in the northern Faroes at 7am, anchoring off the village of Funningur on Eysturoy (Eastern Island).

Funningur is a tiny village of 43 residents and 900 sheep, spectacularly nestled at the mouth of a river between two mountains.

Our first plan was to walk to the top Slættaratindur, the tallest mountain in the Faroes. Unfortunately the cloud was so low the local guides decided it wasn't going to happen today, so we went for a shorter hike along the old track between the villages... which wasn't really a marked track, more just a general direction down the side of a hill!

The local community had made a huge effort to welcome us to the village (they only get 3 boats a year), and took us on guided walks around town, stopping at the grass roofed wooden church, and a traditional drying house where we sampled Skerpikjøt, mutton which has been wind-dried and fermented for 5 to 9 months (it had an extremely strong flavour, and isn't for the faint hearted)

The community cooked us lunch at the local school (now closed as there are only 2 children in the village) of fish soup and pancakes (both delicious).

In the afternoon we had an outdoor demonstration of a Faroese Chain Dance, a traditional dance accompanied by singing of local ballads. We were then invited inside the dance hall to take part ourselves. The local men, women and children enthusiastically joined in and sang the ballads with pride and gusto. It was a fun and moving experience.

Final event for the day was singing in the wooden church. Accompanied by a violin and piano accordion, we gave it our best singing in Faroese. Again, the locals poured into the church and led the singing, obviously proud of their heritage and keen to share their language.

The Faroese language has always been a spoken language, but was not written for over 300 years and was banned from church writings (because "God couldn't understand Faroese") and school (because it wasn't considered an academic language).
In 1937, Faroese replaced Danish as the official school language, in 1938, as the church language, and in 1948, as the national language of the Faroe Islands. However, Faroese did not become the common language of media and advertising until the 1980s.

Dinner was back on the ship as we sailed towards Tórshavn, the capital, arriving at 8.30pm... ready to hit the ground running in the morning.Read more