The Wind and Faroese Travel Guides

Strúkur í vindi!

James Proctor and Bradt Travel Guides will be releasing the third edition of their Faroe Islands guidebook sometime in May of 2013.

In Faroe, there is the land, but truly experiencing the land comes at the expense of another feature of Faroese distinction: the weather. And as one traveller soon found out, if you don't like weather, and I mean quickly changing, variable weather of all types, then you may not be able to appreciate Faroese landscape, or its people, or your idea that travelling to Faroe would be a joyous gallop with the sheep through heather covered glens. Luckily for us, Proctor's guide gives us some very useful translations of weather related terms (page 20). So when the gusts of wind are battering you, at least you can call them what they are, instead of the common expletive that spill out of tourists's mouths. And maybe my Faroese is poor, but when I'm trying to yell out to Jane in a gale (skrið) 'damn these hvirlur are strong,' it'll sound Faroese enough to us. Remember your etiquette though, since it's not proper to talk with your mouth full...or just very difficult when Faroe is filling it with wind.

Our trip to Faroe last September culminated with a particularly windy time...windier than usual. It was Jane's idea that camping with a tent would be a good idea and, to her credit, it was. If you enjoy a little bit of unpredictability, like whether you'll wake up in puddle of water or in a tent at all, then by all means, bring a tent. It does help if you have a well-suited tent, and a well placed tent... and a tent that is guyed down properly. An anemometer is also a fun tool to test the wind speeds. The video below shows our first day in the campground just outside of Klaksvík. The highest winds we measured were just below 30 meters per second, which is just over 100 kilometer per hour.

I don't recall there being a Faroese word for tent, but it might be synonymous with the word for "travelling fool". Regardless, if you like a challenge, go camping in the shoulder seasons, which is basically anytime of the year. Faroe and its weather requires a little patience, or a little more than a little. Jane and I were stuck in this tent for well over 24 hours. So when my friends ask sarcastically ''why didn't you get the 'big one'?'' we can think to ourselves what it would be like to ride out a storm in a small shrivelled up plastic bag. All that patience and waiting out storms is for afternoons like these:

Thanks for reading, takk fyri og farvæl!