So, I’m from the Faeroe Islands, a small country in the Atlantic. If you’ve never heard of it, don’t be hard on yourself, our neighbors occasionally forget we exist. We’re an internally autonomous part of the Danish Kingdom. We have our own language, a slightly altered set of laws, and were not in the EU.
I’d been thinking about starting an “Ask the Faeroe Islander” thread for a while, but the amazed reaction to the size of IoM in the other thread brought on my competitive instinct :D. The Faeroe Islands have a population of around 50.000, and twice as many sheep.
BTW, I’m currently in Norway studying, and I do consider myself both Faeroe and Norwegian, if you remember me from the some of the recent Norway-related threads.
Is there any kind of independentist movement there (bigger than a poker game, I mean; some of our rarer “independentist tendencies” are smaller than that)? What things are decided by Faroe and which are common with the rest of Denmark? Are there things which are currently common that you think should be localized, or vice versa?
First, wow Septima I had no idea. It’s a privilege to have even virtual communication from someone from the Faroes.
Hard question first: the only conception most non-Faroese have of your country is the annual mass slaughter of pilot whales. I first learned about it when I was something like ten, from a Time-Life book with grisly pictures of a bay full of blood. I have to be honest, I have a very strong negative emotional reaction to this event.
How important is it to the economy? Do you think it’s necessary? Do you eat whale meat yourself?
Next, you are (relatively) near to Scotland. Do you have any affinity for the Scots at all, or are you a Scandinavian through and through? If so, which country do you feel most affinity for? Which country’s products are most prevalent in your supermarkets?
The one time I heard a broadcast of Faeroese, I was stunned at how much it sounded like English while still being completely incomprehensible. Do Faeroes have the same impression of the sound of the English language?
You know how most countries have political axis, where you can place parties along a line from left to right, and most parties clustering somewhere in the middle? Well, ours is a cross: political parties need to be placed along a second, vertical line, denoting if they are for “independence” or “cooperation”. One of the biggest parties, which was in power for a scarily long time, is simply “The Independence Party”.
For most of my life, there was a fairly even, almost 50/50 split in the Faroese population, with half wanting to go our own way, and half wanting to stay under Denmark. I think lately it’s been leaning more towards 40/60, with the majority wanting to stay. That whole Iceland Incident put the fear of God right back into us, I’ll tell you that much.
I guess the answer to your question is “Yes”.
A good rule of thumb is that everything internal is decided locally, everything external is decided from Denmark. So we have a joint foreign policy and we are protected by the Danish military (we don’t have one). We have our own government, and decide our own laws. Any applicable Danish laws have to be approved by our government before they can be put into effect (so a lot of danish legal texts are marked “this law does apply on the Faeroe Islands”).
There has been a slow and steady trend towards shifting things from common to local administration. So both the school system and healthcare have become local in my lifetime although both continue to work closely with their Danish counterparts. I think we are still a Danish police district, however.
There is a certain degree of overlap. If someone needs to go to jail for more than two weeks or so, they do it in a Danish prison, since there is nothing local equipped for that. If you need certain surgeries, you are sent to Denmark (in a helicopter if it’s an emergency).
They famously beat Austria 1-0 in Euro qualifying. They’ve also won matches against San Marion, Malta and Luxembourg. I won’t mention the time Scotland only scraped a draw after being 2-0 down
I expected this, so I’ll try to answer as best I can. I understand that this is a hot-button issue for many, and will attempt to be respectful.
First, please stop talking about an “annual mass-slaughter”. An average “grindadráp” results in the killing maybe 50 to 80 animals, yearly take being less than 1000 animals. The pilot whales are not in danger of extinction, and the animals we kill make no dent in the population. There is no “whaling season”, and nothing “annual” about it. What happens is that a flock of animals comes swimming in between the islands, someone spots them, everyone with a suitable boat gets on the water, the whales are driven to shore and killed. This can happen at almost any time. It is not a daily occurrence. I would urge you to find neutral terms if you ever meet anyone from the Faeroe Islands in person.
There is lot of care taken to kill them swiftly. I believe the standard is at most three seconds. Of course the hunt itself is stressful for the animals, but so is all hunting. We try our best. I know it looks bloody and dramatic, but the truth is far less horrible than foreign media like to show it. The whales do not scream, for one. Yes, the bays turn red. That’s because they are full of water. Blood stains.
Let me ask you this: A whale lives every day of its life free before it is killed and eaten. Is it really fair to be shocked and horrified at us eating whales, while munching on beef and pork from industrially raised animals, who were mistreated every day they lived on this earth?
As for out economy, that’s really the wrong question. It’s an important part of our culture, but we are a modern economy. We could do without, but that would make us entirely dependent on imported food. We cannot produce enough meat from land animals, nor can we grow enough vegetables. We have to live of the sea. My father and uncles remember a time when imported food could not be relied on, and whaling was the only good source for meat. That could happen again. There could be another war, or another reason why importing food in large scale becomes unfeasible. We do not want to loose those skills. It is the only way we have to be self-reliant in a crisis.
I’m not saying these are perfect arguments, nor am I saying thatall of this ads up to “neccesary”. We may be wrong. But it does irritate me when people who think meat comes from the supermarket call us monsters because “OMG! Cute whales!”. There is more to it than that. (Last comment not directed at jjim, but we get that a lot.)
Yes, I eat whale meat. For me, it’s a annual or semi-annual treat, but I’m from the capitol. In the smaller villages, people do have whale meat as a staple food.
We are a Scandinavian country, but we are aware of a shared history with the entire Atlantic region, and many aspects of Scottish culture feel familiar (we have similar landscapes, for one, similar oral traditions for another). Personally, I’m half-Norwegian, so I’m most at home here. Icelanders are our closest kin, although they try to disown us every chance they get (and our parliament is older, which they really don’t want people to know about.)
We import stuff mostly from Denmark, Britain and Iceland.
Yeah, we get that a lot. You know that messing with Scandinavian faeries is a really bad idea, right?
Can’t help you there, I’ve spoken English since I was a toddler. I don’t know anyone under 70 who doesn’t speak English, and I don’t one of them handy to ask.
That said, modern English has a lot of words from old Norse, which Faroese is a modern variant of, so I’m sure there would be a lot of familiar sounding phrases and words, even if I didn’t know the meaning of them.
Doid you guys ever have your own passports / currency / stamps? Do you have your own passports / currency / stamps now? Are you on the Euro? What are the Olympic categories that I could expect to see a Faeroe Islander do well on?
In case I would ever want to pretend to be a Faeroe Islander, tell me something that only a Faeroe Islander would usually know about. Like something you would only find in a Faeroe Island store. Or some common feature of Faeroe Island life that is not found anywhere else.
Do you speak any languages besides English? Where’s the nearest country and how long does it take you to get there? What’s the climate like? Do you get a lot of snow like the other Scandanavian countries?
This is really cool. Thank you for starting this thread. I love communicating with people from unusual places. Of course my definition of unusual may be a little odd. I ran into someone from Delaware once and gawked at her for a few seconds.
What kind of media do you have? How many TV channels (both over the air and on cable) and radio stations do you have? Which newspapers and magazines do you get on the island, and how long does it take them to get there? Is the media wholly Danish or can you get other countries’ media?
Septima, I think that what jjimm meant by “annual event” is that, the way some media portray it, the whalehunting looks like it’s something that happens once a year; like “once a year, the only herd of pilot whales in the world goes by the Faroe Islands on the same date and the Faroese jump on boats and go into a berserker frenzy of whalekilling”. Sanfermines bullruns, seaside style and everybody has a sword (ok, a lance).
I’ve long had the suspicion that what happens once a year is the visit of one of those reporters.
The political cross you describe is similar to the one in many parts of Spain, it certainly sounds very familiar!
