Where Everything Begins

To these cliffs

To these rocks in the great ocean

The world is anchored,

Here is the place 

Where everything begins

And where everything returns in the end.

Gunnar Hoydal

Nothing but the North Sea

I'm looking at a map of Scotland and... here we are. It's fairly easy to spot the Caledonian MacBrayne ferry lines linking the islands to the each other and the mainland with all these dotted lines criss-crossing each other. When I first visited Scotland nearly a decade ago I fell in love with this form of transportation. My sister took us to the Isle of Arran on the large CalMac ferry and to Cumbrae on a much smaller but no less impressive boat. Both were so exciting that I set out to become better acquainted with travel at sea.

Studying this very same map I hold in my hands now, I could see so many possibilities… too many. We can even go from one place to the other and another, like this: Ardrossan to Brodick on Arran, to Kintyre to Islay to Colonsay and back to mainland, and so on, till you're at the top in the Highlands. From Ardrossan to Arran was about an hour by sea. Now, some of these are much further away, like the ferry lines to the Outer Hebrides. Searching the CalMac website, they could take up to 3 hours. Three hours at sea. that's no short time. A three hour ferry ride would be incredible.

Looking back at my map, I shift my thoughts to Scotland's eastern coast and begin following a dotted line from Aberdeen. This line must be at least five times the length of any of the routes in the western isles. And as it turned out, the ferry from Aberdeen ends up in Lerwick, the largest town in the Shetlands, and was an overnight trip of about 12 hours. Overnight on a ferry. In the middle of the sea. My mind was turned on. Now, 12 hours on a boat is not like on any other form of transportation. If the boat was anything like Arran's Caledonian Isles, your not cramped like you are on a bus, train or plane.

Travelling by ferry may be the only form of transportation where you can walk outside as it's moving along, right to the railings and look down below. You can go to the front of the boat and to the back, left and right. You can also have a cabin or berth. On a boat, you're more inclined to keep an eye out for land ahead, and when spotted, you're glued to the deck in all manner of wind and rain and weather, awaiting the landing. You're excited but also saddened that the journey couldn't go on. Travelling by ferry is really the one of the few ways to give a proper farewell to the places you visited too, as you can stand on deck and watch the islands, towns and villages you spent days or weeks or even months becoming acquainted with gradually recede into the distance. And so you resolve to make a life out of travelling between islands. And with this, I'm reminded of how Jane and I came to our trip, how I came to know about the Faroe Islands, and how they sparked my imagination like no other place on earth could.

A lot of time was spent studying the island groups and ferry networks of Shetland and Orkney. I imagined sleeping in these places and being surrounded by miles of dark sea. Shetland is about 100 kilometers northeast of mainland Scotland and I could think, if I were on these islands, I would really be there and no where else. There is the treeless landscape too, where the true shape of the landscape reveals itself, with rolling hills, jagged coastal cliffs and sharp sea stacks. But on the map my mind drifted along this one dotted line...

There is something about being led by a dotted line into what seems like the edge of the world, into sea and darkness. Did the line lead to a remote island like St. Kilda? I couldn't imagine the destination being very large in size or hospitable. It couldn't be... and it couldn't be too far north and yet, it was off the map... what could i make of this dotted line with the strange looking name of Tórshavn?-- it doesn't look or sound Scottish. I couldn't imagine thinking of anything above the Shetlands. To me, they seemed like the edge of the world... What and where is this Tórshavn? . . .

Depending on the map available, the line leads you northwest of Sheltand from Lerwick. I wasn't wrong in thinking that the Shetlands are the northernmost inhabited islands of Scotland. So then, what was Tórshavn?

Land ho! Shetland ahead!

It's important to understand why we seek out learning a new language, where that inspiration comes from, and how learning the language and culture becomes a passion. We should never forget where this enthusiasm comes from. We should always return to it in the end.

The poem above was found in the book 'The Faroe Islands' by Liv Kjørsvik Schei and Gunnie Moberg and can be purchased online from Solberg. Gunnar Hoydal is a Faroese writer and architect living in Tórshavn today.