Knitting It All Together (Day 3)

We had an early start today because today is the knitting workshop that Dawn is attending in Fuglafjordur. The plan it to get there around 8:30. It's at least a 45 minute drive. We made it, but the drive was harrowing. The entire way there it was raining and there was thick fog limiting visibility. Add to that Faroese drivers on their morning commute that are immune to the islands temperamental weather - and you have a recipe for whizzing around curvy roads that drop into the ocean with little to no guardrails with extremely limited visibility at 80 kph. If this were a video game, I would assume the render distance was set to low. Everything was rain and gray. My hands were literally sore from gripping the steering wheel for that long that hard. The amount of concentration that early in the morning to make sure we arrive in one piece was literally, and figuratively, exhausting. 

Once their, I was a plus one. The Faroese National Knitting conference lasts for three days. We are only attending for the first day. Dawn gets us registered and I don a wristband. Her workshop lasts from 9:00 to 12:00 and I'm on my own for the morning. At 10:00 there is a walking tour of the town that I join. I immediately am self conscious because everyone is speaking Faroese, but when I announce that I speak English that makes everyone feel compelled to include me and speak English. The tour-guide is an town elder who has family dating back generations in Fuglafjordur. He walks us around the town tells us the stories about how the village has acquired its many sculptures and art installations. In a couple of the cases he is the patron that attracted the artist to the town. 

 The entire time we are walking around in light rain, but the Faroese don't seem to register light rain. That is the background noise to their existence. After a bit over an hour, I am sodden but educated on this village. As the tour breaks up the tour guide shakes my hand and wants an evaluation on his English. He tells me that he has studied many languages, but never English. The entire time he was riffing and I honestly couldn't tell. We should all be so lucky to be so fluent in a language we don't speak. After we grade his English he dives directly into my opinion on President Trump... 

I spent the next hour walking around this village. I don't think the photos do this village justice in terms of how terraced it is and how steep the roads are. I observe many people climbing streets like mountain goats. I spend more than a little of my walk contemplating what it must be like to live here. 

The knitting conference includes lunch. After Dawn's workshop concludes she returns to the village's cultural center and we tuck into some lunch. The buffet is an intriguing mix of egg salad, a quiche?, some kind of sesame lo mien salad, tomato crostini, and curry seafood soup. I can honestly say I enjoyed this snapshot of a Faroese conference lunch offering. 

Since the afternoon panels were delivered in Faroese we left after lunch. We took the opportunity to visit the northern part of the Eysturoy island. Our first stop was Gjogv. This village was a bit of a conundrum. It is obviously inhabited. However, we never saw a single soul who lived there. The only people we saw were fellow tourist there to gawk at it. And it's easy to see why. The town is named after a gorge that forms a natural harbor. There is a steam that cuts through the town. This looks more like a movie set than a place people live. 

Did I mention the road that leads to this town? A single lane road with multiple switch backs that had me questioning my mortality. If people commute to and from the town on the regular they are made of sterner stuff than I am. From Gjogv we decided to head west to Eioi which kept us on mountainous single lane roads. The view was breathtaking, but as the driver, I felt the full weight of not getting us killed during the transit. Again, I doff my cap at Faroese divers who travel these roads on the daily. 

On our way to Eioi we get to see two famous sea stacks, the giant and the witch.

After Eioi we drove back to Torshavn for coffee and dinner. We decided to go to Katrina Christiansen for a seven course Scandinavian dinner. The food was good, but tough to compare to last night's increditable experience. My take aways are: mayo is good and used to delicious ends in Scandinavian cuisine. The table of 10 next to us was very loud, but some German's making a Falty Tower's reference to not mentioning the war, help mitigate the annoyance. 

Also, alcohol is expensive in the Faroes Islands. Just now, the law are relaxing, but until fairly recently it was difficult to buy and is still expensive. This means that dinners with wine pairing are still expensive, but as a consequence of this, servers are very generous with their pours. A quarter of a glass appears to be a taste of the wine. A pour is half the glass. They aren't shy about refilling a glass if you shown enthusiasm for the wine. I also adore any culture that assumes you'd like to end a meal with a coffee and then a nightcap. How very civilized.