In Taylor's time, Faroese who needed to get from island to island had to rely on long wooden rowboats -- Viking-style, of course -- and it was risky. Bad weather could isolate a village for weeks or months, and sudden storms and squalls could make any journey life-threatening.
(Taylor once spent 16 days pinned down by storms on tiny Stora Dimun, still one of the hardest islands to get to -- a helicopter is recommended -- with two dozen people crammed into the island's only house. They lived on cooked puffins, which tasted, she wrote, like "unrefined cod-liver oil.")
We spent most of our days exploring by car. We got as far east as Klaksvik, the second-largest city, and as far north as Vidareidi, on Vidoy in the Northern Isles, and Eidi, on Eysturoy, the island next door to ours. Eidi was where Taylor lodged with a family during the Great War; the views were even more spectacular than usual.
Friendly Faroese
We didn't meet many Faroese -- kids were in school, people were at work -- but those we did meet were pleasant, though reserved. "The stranger is expected to make all advances," Taylor had advised; when I did, people opened up.
Shopping in Torshavn one afternoon, I chatted with a clerk who talked about how safe and friendly the islands were. If anyone invited me home for a visit, she said, I should go, because they meant it: "We say come any time. If we're busy, we'll say, come back another time."
No one said that, as it turned out, but we didn't mind: We had our farmhouse, though it didn't look the part. It was a 1950s rambler, painted dark blue and tucked into the side of a hill just below the road into Kollafjordur, about 20 minutes north of Torshavn.
There was also a barn, tucked under the house where we expected a basement. One morning, the farmer gave me a tour. It held mangers for his nine sheep, a winter stockpile of miniature hay bales no bigger than living room hassocks, and a red hen fiercely guarding her single chick. Wild birds had taken the others, the farmer said.
This barn tour, I realized later, summed up all the main components of modern Faroese economy -- fishing, wool, tourism, even technology, because I'd found the house online.
The Faroese wool component ranged everywhere, wandering freely wherever there was grass; we even saw sheep in Torshavn. As twilight came on, they looked more and more like boulders. They got harder to see if it was raining, and after dark, they were flat-out road hazards. Darkness falls early at 62 degrees north latitude.
