Waking up in the Faroe Islands - Lars Ivar Nitter Havro

Arriving in the Faroes was a great experience – the views were stunning, the taxi driver was surprisingly well-articulated and knowledgeable providing heaps of local knowledge on the 45 minute drive from the airport to the airbnb house placed in the centre of the Faroese capital of Torshavn. After having my first interaction with the sleeping situation initially arranged on my behalf (Accidentally a hard wooden floor in a livingroom), I left the house and the inviting, slightly intoxicated strangers (Now good friends) which it held in the living room to go look for a place to get some decent shut-eye. Exempting the initial impression, and primarily due to this situation, my living experience in the Faroes has turned out to become astonishingly exceptional. 

I had the pleasure of spending my first night in a house outside the town centre which was allocated to me by our trusty commander-in-chief, Anna. She turned all possible stones and much to her chagrin/relief, I insisted on sleeping on the couch. As I have slept on floors more times than I can count, my standards weren’t too high and so a couch was a warmly welcomed comfort after a long day of travel. On the following morning, I woke up to the sound of birdsong, and got up to see where I had ended up within the small community of Torshavn. To my surprise, looking out the window, was the most peculiar landscape. The grass-covered roofs of red painted wooden houses and stone clad cottages which seemed to live in symbiosis with their surroundings, paired with a thick mist rapidly covering the ocean and fading the white sand beach as it moved in towards what was the house’s backyard left me staring in awe. 

  

I then decided to move my abode from the couch out to the secluded second living room in the house from which the above picture was taken, and I have been waking up to a living painting each morning since. I’ve grown up on Norway’s west coast, at the foot of the mountains and between the forest and the sea; having spent the last year in a street facing apartment in Orkney, waking up to a this landscape is perpetually amusing and awe-inspiring, and makes me want to return to explore these islands at a greater depth.