The special nature

Photo: Saviour Mifsud

The sea stacks the Giant and the Hag at the northern part of Eysturoy

The Faroe Islands are built up of layers of volcanic basalt and appear tilted with the eastern shores sloping into the sea and the western coasts rising up in soaring cliffs.

Colourful towns and villages lie along the shores of the fjords and sounds, with a green belt of cultivated pastureland beyond them. Above this, the mountains rise with their green, sloping fells divided by dark, stony crags, which give the mountains their layered look. The craggy protrusions are the vestiges of enormous layers of basalt laid down by gigantic volcanoes in the tertiary period some 60 million years ago. Each basalt layer represents one or more volcanic events. In between the basalt layers are bands of red tuff, which is the compressed ash, spewed out by the volcanoes between eruptions. Tuff is softer than basalt and erodes more quickly. The basalt layers gradually erode and eventually crumble down on to the layer below.

Winter’s dark nights

The western and northern coasts are the shoulders of the country and face the mighty power of the sea when a storm breaks out. The sea rushes in, roaring and rumbling, unleashing its full power against the cliffs. Land and sea wage an endless battle that continues throughout the long, dark nights of winter, year after year, century after century.

Long light summer days

Eventually the soft light of summer returns and all is peaceful once again. The long summer days teem with seabirds flocking to the soaring cliffs. Ornithologists have identified around 300 species of bird in the Faroe Islands, of which 40 are regular breeding birds and another 40 are infrequent guests. Now and again a seal pokes its dark and shiny head up out of the water to see what is happening.

Faroe Islands unique flora

Of course, there are days when the fog envelops everything and all you can see is the closest surroundings. It is now that the flowers come into their own, undisturbed by what is around them, they stand and nod to the attentive observer. There is the marsh marigold – the Faroese national flower. Notice the heather flowers, the scotch heather and the bell heather or the moss campion. What about all the saxifrage flowers, ragged robin and the spotted orchid which in its day, together with the vigorous rose root, was regarded as nature’s own viagra? Or the Faroese lady’s mantle that grows nowhere else in the world or the glacier buttercup only found up on the highest mountains?

Stillness and nature’s own sounds

In the mountains you feel a sense of independence and freedom. Time rewinds, nature’s time and a silence reigns punctuated only by nature’s own sounds such as running water over stones or tufts of grass, the sea or birdsong. Take pleasure in just ‘being’ and you will discover that the natural wonders of the Faroe Islands cannot be measured in size or distance, but by their eternal essence.