Mounting Sátan

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Yes, we ended up at the Faroe Islands this year! I've been wanting to go here for quite some time, and then the occasion turned up to take the ferry from Bergen in Norway, so here we are.

Today we mounted Satan.
Actually, we went up the mountain Sátan, close to Leynar on Streymoy, the biggest of the Faroe islands. It's almost 666 meters high, and starting from sea level as we did, we had to climb every darn metre. But we conquered Sátan, while fending off his horned, evil, dark minions.

But the day actually began with the bus to Vestmanna, which is actually named after people from the British Isles (people from Scandinavia were called Easterners). There, we bought tickets for a boat trip to the caves and mountains on the west side of the island, and all the birds there. We did get to see puffins, some Northern gannets,
Oystercatchers (of course, since it's the islands' "national bird"), black-legged kittiwakes and others. I was mostly there for the puffins, I must admit, but it was fun to get close to the other ones and get to know their names properly. Never been much of a girlscout, me ...

Then we got a lift with a very nice lady, who had even been to Göteborg for 10 weeks when she studied to become a teacher, to Kvívik, where there was an archaeological excavation in the 1950:s when they cleared out the only long house remnants they have left on the islands. And in Kvívik, there was also the very first sermon held in Faroese by a young (and for his time, very radical) priest. It wasn't until much later that they got their independance and a written grammar and all.
Talking about Faroese, it's a fascinating language. It's old scandinavian, mixed up with some pure Danish, and then they've got a few traits that make it so original. The grammar is said to be close (or the same as) Icelandic, but their pronounciation is totally different, we were told. I don't know Icelandic, I'm afraid, but at least now I've got a Faroese-Danish dictionary!

From Kvívik, we walked the few kilometres to Leynar, where our conquering began.

The weather is brilliant, even hot to be the Faroes, 15 degrees C and NO RAIN!!! And apart from that, the voyage here went well, not many waves on the North Sea nor the North Atlantic. To add to our incredible luck, we caught a bus to Tórshavn just as we got down from Sátan, and even though we had no luck finding proper food when coming to town, we got the pizza we finally ordered for half the prize because the pizzeria was out of three of our ingredients, so we got them for half the price, and I've never seen a pizza that full of shrimps and tuna! So at least I got my much needed protein after the mountain walk.

I'm afraid that's all for today, now we're going to sleeeep.
Until next time, friends!

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