Two Years of Learning Faroese

Faroese is something of a niche to students of language. Few people come by here. Some come to put an honest effort to learn Faroese, others come by to find a phrasebook or a dictionary, and maybe some come by just to read and connect with another appreciator of Faroese...

The Faroe Islands have received some attention in the press, often as a destination for travellers in awe of the beautiful and remote landscape with its turf-roofed houses. Others are connoisseurs of new-nordic cuisine, which is gaining ground in the capital. Many find a common interest in the burgeoning music scene, not to mention the G-festival; others still, the small but strong art scene that flourishes on a wee island out in the sea. Fewer still, come to appreciate Faroese literature, which is kind of what this blog has become about.

The Faroe Islands have never had mass appeal, and to be honest, that's not really a bad thing. It's probably what attract a lot of us to it. Not necessarily to say, ''we know something you don't know'', but to find something that isn't so easy, something that requires a little skill and ingenuity, and somewhere that requires patience and adventure.

Thankfully, we have great blogs and podcasts such as the Faroe Islands Podcast to promote it just enough to bring the Faroes to a truly appreciating audience. Without these podcasts and blogs, I may have driven myself a bit mad, as I patiently awaited my first arrival to the Faroe Islands. I listened to the sounds, the music, the news and, well, everything that was available. Most days, I still hear Workman's voice and cadence of speech, along with his collection of sounds, as I continue to explore Faroese life and landscape. My collection of Faroese maps have kept me in check too, even leading me astray most nights at home, despite their intended purpose of keeping me found. The maps have never ceased being a great source of inspiration for me; someone a little too obsessed with the landscape.

Since the beginning, Learning Faroese has become more than just an appreciation of the Faroese language. It has evolved into an appreciation of the Faroese landscape and weather, and especially of Faroese literature. As I spend my nights reading "The Faroe Islands: Interpretations in History", I'm fairly certain the breadth of this appreciation will only increase to include Faroese history, culture, politics and religion, as they helped define the Faroes and the distinct Faroese literature. And as I sit here, pondering the contents of my bookshelf, there appears to be much more to explore. The burgeoning collection of literature, booklets, maps and guides is enough to draw from. . . for now. And I look forward to the next few years, and hopefully a few visits to the islands, to help this appreciation grow.

Thank you Faroe!

Faroese Literature and my deep freeze

I'm sitting on the shores of Lake Ontario in a deep freeze, and the Faroe Islands could not be further away. Wind chills this year have been below -40 Celsius, and not a single day has passed that was above freezing. I flip through my collection of translated Faroese literature and notice that the latest work I own was written in the early 80's. The Faroe I know from the literature I read can feel somewhat aged. I don't mind so much, in fact, I enjoy reading early 20th century literature. I get a sense of the islands, a little bit of history, a feeling of how time has passed, and the origins and development of the burgeoning literary scene. But there is so much more, and so much that English-language readers, fascinated by the Faroe Islands, miss out on as Faroese literature progresses.

As I sit here, I think about the bookstores in Torshavn. The stores were filled with book lovers, and the shelves were alive with authors writing everything from the sociology of a Faroese hamlet, the development of their road network, poetry, crime thrillers, biography, children's books and translations of everything, from Voltaire's Candide, Shakespeare, Harry Potter, and even modern crime novels.

The Faroese literary scene is very active, but it's difficult to get even a glimpse of that feeling sitting in a deep freeze on this side of the Atlantic. Farlit has been promoting Faroese literature at book festivals throughout Europe. Heðin Brú's "Feðgar á Ferð" (The Old Man and His Sons) was recently translated into German, and was even found by a friend in a German airport bookstore. But the promotion of Faroese literature into the English language is not a result of the government funded and policy directed by Farlit, but a result of a new generation of poets, writers, and artists working today, merely for their interest and love for the literature of the islands. We're lucky to have them.

From myth to fact, and back to myth

A long time has passed since I first dreamt up Faroe in my mind. Since then, I have slowly filled in the dreams and imaginings with facts no less exciting, often themselves mythical and legendary in Faroese culture. As I filled in my understanding, I learned of islands that float, of priests who chained the islands to the sea floor, and of hidden people, called nykin, who live in the hills. 

I had to be careful when writing and thinking of Faroe. As I worked through my studies in school, I was all too easily led into the world of Faroe and found it difficult to leave, often at the expense of my studies. 

This blog was never forgotten. I never stopped thinking about Heðin Bru's short stories or the Faroese language. I never stopped thinking that every day that passed by without studying the language set me back. School is finished, and now I can return to the Faroe in my mind. 

Úti í Grøv og Mai-mynd

Àarinnar hvítu blettir
tekkjast gilsins botni í --
og við ósan alduslettir
sællir berjast barnastríð.

Og víð vágsins smáu brotum
duffar æðuríkisverð --
ríðandi á alduskotum
summarmjørkafleyrið fer.

Undan fjallatokusløri
hómast blettir, skúmi líkir --
kavalægd hjá grønum svørði
dikst við dalsins mórudíkir.

Christian Matras's first poem, Mai-mynd, was inspired by a park just outside the town of Klaksvik. If you have ever visited Úti í Grøv, you're sure to understand why the peaceful spot so easily inspires. The small campside just outside the park happened to be the first place we stayed on our visit, in August of 2012, and it quickly become our favourite place in the Faroe Islands, as we found ourselves spending our entire trip exploring and enjoying the area, neglecting even a full days stay in the captital!

On each visit to the Faroe Islands, we managed to spend quite a bit of our time camping at Úti í Grøv. Here, spruce and pine plantations straddle the banks of two cascading rivers, and wild heather bursts into purple flowers in the summer. Beyond the park's fence, following the two rivers upstream, the grass yields to the rock outcrop, and is surrounded on both sides by a steep headland. A large cleft cuts through the middle of the white cliffs towering beyond. I have always dreamed of standing on those cliffs, looking west upon the valley, with the park and plantation below, and possibly onwards towards Eysturoy and Streymoy. Standing there, I could shift my view from the endless sea in the south to the east, and look down upon the cozy settlement of Árnafjørður, nestled in the deep fjord, with Fugloy, Svinoy, and perhaps Viðoy, sailing in the sea fog beyond. But I would be sure to wait for a clear day to climb those cliffs, so I could look north along the spine of Borðoy's greatest mountains. Someday, I hope I will climb across those mountains, too.

The area has even inspired my own writing. In the fog, the area beyond what can be seen from the park below turns into a dream, with infinite brooks meandering through rock mazes. The world up there feels small yet immense. If the eyes are cast to the ground, the world of elves and hidden people abounds. Lifting the gaze, birds circle the towering ledges above, reminding us that ancient giants carved these great steps and seats. In one story, I take a walk up into this rock fall, in an attempt to view the towering Mykjanoyrarfjall.

Climbing to the Kviging pass one cloudy day, we were helped up the steep talus slope by the wind only to find a warm, sun-filled valley seated in the calm dry air below. It looked like paradise: the grass, this day, was greener on the other side. Unfortunately, we were not prepared to climb down.

Reading in Faroese

It was only a few weeks after purchasing our tickets to Iceland sometime in June that we decided to add flights to Faroe. We couldn't resist, and thought, how could we be so close and not go? And, if life treats us well, we are hoping to visit the islands again next summer.

With school and life, it's been difficult to find the time to pick up the language, but the return to my favourite island nation this past summer rekindled that interest. I purchased a few books and an audio book during our visit to help me get in the spirit. I'm moving away from learning conversational Faroese and am focusing on reading literature. There is something about attempting to translate a short story. You learn so much about syntax, word usage and you get to see first hand how the language abounds with idiomatic expressions. It does take time, but I do it in the evenings now and I actually find it relaxing after a long day. I like learning conversational Faroese, but when I'm already studying for school, I need something a little more, well, like a puzzle and less like a lesson.

For those who enjoy this method of learning the language, Sprotin publishes the Faroese version of the "Old Man and His Sons", by Heðin Brú. Both paper, cd and electronic versions are available and the English version is readily available from Amazon or Book Depository. It is the only Faroese book that has all English, Faroese and audio versions available that I am aware of, but it is a little daunting due to its length, despite being a short novel. Other English translations of literature written in the Faroese language are not easily available, but you may be able to locate the rare "Faroese Short Stories" from the Library of Scandinavian Literature, published by Twayne Pub. and The American-Scandinavian Foundation. Even if you are not learning the language this way, it's a great book to bring you back to a favourite place that also gives you a peek into the development of earlier Faroese literature.

The Faroese short stories are filled with the landscape that I enjoy so much. Heðin Brú delivers some of the best and are among my personal favourites. From reading the handful of his stories available to me, I couldn't resist purchasing the newly published collection of his stories, despite being illiterate in Faroese. The collection of short stories stands as a monument to my time in Faroe this past summer, spending time on Sandoy, the island of his birth, and the long discussions of language, politics and literature with our bus driver who also happened to be a descendent from the poet Janus Djuurhus!

For now, I use a story written by Heðin Brú that I found in Lockwood's "Introduction to Modern Faroese". "Krossvatn" has no English translation, but that almost works to an advantage. It takes time, but the slow process allows you to soak in the grammar naturally. I'm still trying to make sense of the first paragraph, but I know the story is about a lake which is more of a pond, but despite its small stature, has something about it that's bigger than life -- or maybe it's deathly still but something is alive. Lockwood's text does a good job of providing some of the idiomatic expressions in the glossary.

Return to Iceland (and a retrospective)

Orginally Published in June

We have just purchased two return tickets to Reykjavik for late August. Unfortunately, Faroe will remain the faraway islands during this trip. We decided to save Faroe for another year when we have more time. Our trip was squeezed down to two weeks in part to take advantage of lower flight tickets in September and also because of work and school. Our time in Iceland will actually be digging in to my first week of school, well aware of where my priorities stand. Since our trip last year through Denmark, Faroe and Iceland, we have contemplated the idea of our unfinished business in these lands. Iceland loomed in my mind greatly. The aborted Laugavegurin trek with the added climb up between the glaciers on Eyjafjellajokull and back down to the coast had seemed too much a missed opportunity.

August-September 2012: a recollection of events leading to the aborted trek

The sleepless nights of travel from the flight to Denmark and the trains and buses across Denmark to the ferry terminal were wearing us down. When we boarded the ferry and entered our cabin, we didn't last long before crashing on the bed. We awoke late that evening, missing the departure from mainland and stepping out to the faint and distant lights of the seaside towns Norway's jagged coast. On the last night of our two day sailing, we awoke hours before dawn to watch the lighthouses on Nolsoy appear far in the distance and to witness the silhouette of Faroe's mountains slowly approaching from the sea.

Disembarking the ferry, we were excited but still worn down. We had no regularity to our sleep. On that early morning, we had no precise plans. We had familiarized ourselves with Faroe enough but were feeling weighed down by packs, damp air, and poor sleep. We were chilled too, having made the decision to dress one layer lower and purchase Faroese sweaters on our arrival. We decided to take the first available bus and set off for Klaksvik and the northern islands with their tall and steep mountains. We slept in our tent through two days of heavy wind and rain before setting out to find sweaters. 

In the following days, we took advantage of the weather and headed to the peaks and saddles of the Faroese mountains. On one day, setting out by helicopter to Fugloy, the weather gradually worsened and the wind picked up, whipping up the rain, leaving us to find refuge after an aborted attempt to pass the mountain road into the islands only other village. That day, we were nearly stranded on the isolated island of Fugloy in a gale, as the post boat and ferry approached the jetty, before deciding against the landing and setting off back to Hvannasund, without us. We were lucky enough to be let in by two Islanders for tea to wait the storm out in hopes for a second attempt at a successful landing in the evening by the postal boat, Ritvan. That evening, the seas and skies calmed, and beyond the cliffs and fog off Svinoy, we watched the ship emerge and gradually approach, as waves crashed over the jetty. Ritvan managed a landing and we jumped onto the rolling ship to head back to the larger islands and our base camp in Klaksvik. 

The day of our time in Faroe, we packed up the tent in morning dew and travelled back to Torshavn for the ferry to Iceland. With an approaching hurricane, we sailed hurriedly across the North Atlantic. The ship rolled in the storm throughout the night, our drinks, books, and papers on the night table sliding onto the floor. As we slept, I held on to Jane and wedged my feet between the mattress and frame of the bed to prevent us from sliding off the bed. That morning, we awoke in silence, the boat was still; we were docked in Seyðisfjorður. With wobbly legs, we disembarked the ship and left the customs terminal gripping each other in the fierce wind. 

The wind soon died off as our taxi climbed the mountains towards the airport. The flights that morning were cancelled, but resumed in the afternoon, and we took off and landed safely in Reykjavik. The sun came out late as we made our way to the Reykjavik camp ground. Our intentions were to camp the following night in Hveragerði and make our way to Landmannalaugar by bus and hike the Laugavegurin, but we both knew that we were too wiped out. Our bags were packed with our base camp tent and while only 3.5 kg we were still overburdened. Our packs were lighter than average, but the sleepless nights, wind and rain were getting the best of us. To make our way out of Reykjavik and on to Hveragerði, we took a Golden Circle tour and requested to be dropped off in the town. The rain was steady the entire day and many on the tour were unprepared, wearing jeans, and sneakers with light cotton sweaters and carrying umbrellas. I admit, we this plan worked to our advantage, we made the best of that rainy day.

Our gear had been put to the test on this trip and performed well, but we needed a good nights sleep. In the town of Hveragerði, we decided against camping and booked a room at a guest house. We organized ourselves. We bought food, cleaned our tent and laid it out to dry, repacked and tested our pack weight. We decided to ditch our planned hike and instead travel to Thorsmork to set up camp and do day hikes through the area.

Thorsmork is a spectacular place, a rare birch-wood forest nestled under the north side Eyjafjallajokull and Goðaland. The hiking trails lead in all directions to the glacial tongues of Myrðalsjokull and Eyjafjallajokull, north towards the interior and the steaming Landmannalaugar, through deep canyons, across ridges, onto plateaus, and up the steep cone shaped mountain of Rjupnafell. The weather during the days were sunny and warm, and we relaxed and hiked as we pleased. Although Thorsmork was a last ditch effort to get into the interior, it was well worth it, but we hastily purchased our return tickets for a few days later than we had packed food. As the days passed, the quality of out food was running thin.

The temperatures were dropping in those final days. Nights inside the tent were dropping into the negatives, and we awoke to snow on the nearby mountains. Not an unusual site, especially in mid September, but our bodies were unsatisfied and we were getting fatigued and cold, uncomfortable and in poor spirits. Jane was too cold to step out in the middle of the night to watch her long desired dream of finally seeing the northern lights. I was getting ill. We wouldn't make use of our time here anymore, either by hiking or otherwise enjoying ourselves. We needed to pack up and wait for the return bus to Reykjavik. We decided to leave Thorsmork a day early.

We had overextended ourselves on this trip. We had planned to not plan, attempting to do as we please. I wanted to get away from schedules and truly wander. In that style of travel, you have to expect things will not go perfectly, but it's better than planning the perfect trip only to realize that plans get in the way of true adventure. We enjoyed making decisions as we went, but what kept us back were our packs. We were well set up for base camp, but not for wandering. To be prepared for anything, it's just as important to be fast and light; to be able to pack up and go without a heavy burden wherever you wish. In this mentality, everything you bring goes with you everywhere. You don't leave a pack behind to explore, forced to return that evening to reclaim your possessions.

Iceland and Faroe can get the better of anyone and travellers should learn to enjoy having days off, being cold and windblown. There is nothing unusual with being in low spirits in these areas. But there has to be some underlying appreciation of it; knowing and understanding what went wrong. Our trip in August will be a return to that mentality, but we can be better prepared. Our packs are now half the weight, a base weight of less than 4kg each, including a slightly heavier, well stuffed and well designed two person sleeping bag (see note below); smaller, lighter, and more versatile packs; and the equipment we learned to love on our wet and windy trips: our boots, waterproofs, and Icebreaker...everything. Our modified Mountain Hardwear tent. No stove, no pots, no bowls no cups.

Nothing gets in the way of learning a language and travel quite like a full-time post-secondary education. I figure for every week that I don't brush up on the words and phrases I have learned, I unlearn one day of hard work. By now, I have forgotten a lot. Can I still recite Eg oyggjar veit? My heart is dedicated and my body seems to be pulling me towards those far-off islands, and yet my mind is elsewhere, even if it does often drift. And all you need is your girlfriend to send you the most random text while she's at work and while I'm typing this very page. That restarts everything. I admit it has been a few months, and I can be honest, I haven't read a shred of Faroese since then.

When planing for a few summer escapes over these past few weeks, the Faroe Islands have been a distant thought, being too, expensive, far and difficult for us to get to for now. Our trips away would be by tandem bike to local areas, or kayaking to the Toronto islands...maybe a bus to a nearby city. But never Faroe. Not this year. I have to be honest, the text from Jane was not random. I sent her a text earlier saying we should support The Faroe Islands Podcast on Kickstarter. This podcast has often been a source of relief and contentment from my work as a bike messenger, when I tried to sit and wait patiently for the days of traveling to Faroe. I think it helped me relax when all I would hear was the hustle of the city traffic. But my simple request sparks in her what I imagine to be a lifelong ambition: when she says, "I want Faroe", I think, "so do I". Let's see if we can use some simple accounting and spin to make it happen this summer. I have to be careful though, thoughts of Faroe often begin to override most things in my life. But I promise, if I can go to Faroe, then I will do really well in school.  

Okay, back to school.

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. 

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!