Gjógv, Faroe Islands - 'I'd Like To Buy The World A Coke', Or Something Like It

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A lot near the harbour at Miðvágur, Vágar, Faroe Islands. Plucked chicken feathers are just visible in the foreground.

I know it's not just me.

Every time I log on, log in, humanity the world over—but especially the Western world, towards which my media outlets are admittedly biased—seems owly. 'He-who-shall-not-be-named', or the 45th U.S. president is blasting someone, anyone, for their ineptitude, then firing schoolyard threats at Asia's latest princeling tyrant—a sad simulacrum for 'Modern' man; protesters bearing startling resemblance to bald-faced Hitler Youth from vintage posters (complete with Leave It To Beaver side-parts in dirty-blond locks) clash violently with enraged counter-protesters of all stripes, united solely by their fear of returning to a not-so-distant past; Twitter, YouTube, and alternate comment-section trolling fit to fill reams of hypothetical paper; the divisiveness of Brexit, splitting families, friends from friends, across supper tables: the list goes on and on. Bloggers, magazines, newspapers recommending 'digital detoxes' (while you read this—online), to prevent depression, anxiety, aggression, fear-mongering: 'We are not rational enough to be exposed to the press', according to the Guardian (why, then, do you continue publishing, I wonder?)... But if you suggest the kindergarten platitude, 'can't we all get along'—tout the virtues of the golden rule—accusations of naivety, willful ignorance, and conscious or subconscious treachery follow.  

It's like we've collectively lost our innate, or better yet primate, ability to empathize—that near sensory experience triggered by mirror neurons that fire when we watch another person grab an apple—throw a ball—which some scientists have argued is the basis of culture. For how else do we, if not partly, explain language acquisition, the anthropomorphism of fictional, robotic characters (here's looking at you, C3PO), learning to play a sport or musical instrument, or dance in its entirety. The things that individually, collectively, lift us up. The things that inspire.

One of my most poignant memories travelling occurred on a rainy December morning in Paris. My husband and I were crammed in the back of shared taxi, our and our fellow travellers' luggage towering over us, on our laps. As street lights shimmered off outside puddles, and I miserably contemplated my choice of having five more minutes sleep over my morning caffeine, the song 'Somebody I Used to Know' came on the radio. Quietly at first with drugged sleepiness, then joyfully and loudly as the chorus hit—index fingers pointing rhythmically in the air—a Spanish couple in front of us sang along. Perhaps it was the surreality of the 4:00 a.m. wake up, perhaps just the kickstart I needed to remind me of my incredible privilege to be there, but the absurdity of our interconnectedness as a species hit me. Because we were listening to Spanish-speakers sing in stilted English to a pop song written by a Belgian-Australian—in France.

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The Viðareiði wedding party, Viðareiði, Viðoy, Faroe Islands.

The motley crew's road trip to Gjógv gave a similar insight. The evening prior we stopped in a Tórshavn grocery to buy picnic supplies: dried mini-sausages, mild (not strong) cheese aided by some etymological sleuthing (my middle name's Poirot), crackers, and a brand of Swedish chocolate with caramel chunks (get the Daim, trust me). Inspired to take what we called 'Buttercup' routes due to the little yellow-flowered icons on our map, we hit the road. Our chosen destination was the furthest point we could reach via car, Viðareiði; after several slightly terrifying one-way tunnel passages later, we arrived. Our first sight was a statuesque young Viking mother pushing a nineteenth century pram in traditional garb, corset and all: we squealed with delight. Soon after we discovered she'd returned from a wedding as we watched the photographer pose a young couple in mid-afternoon sun on a rocky promontory jutting out from the church. Then, we headed back via Klasvík, winding in and out of breathtaking sunlit views, which always seemed around the next bend. Late-afternoon ramble and lunch done, we slowly eased into idyllic Gjógv at 8:30 p.m.

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View of the stream running through Gjógv, Eysturoy, Faroe Islands.

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View at the end of our hike, Gjógv, Eysturoy, Faroe Islands.

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Salted fish hung outside a home in Gjógv, Eysturoy, Faroe Islands.

Children played under watchful eyes of parents in a golden-lit stream. We parked, hiked another promontory, marvelled at birds soaring near towering cliffs' edges. Then, on our way back down, several locals well into the resident happy-hour at outdoor tables offered us food and drink: 'Where are you from? Canada! Have you tried any dried fish? No, you must eat it with boiled potatoes, here take a little blubber! You like it, whoa, I'm impressed! Not all foreigners do!' In the long arctic light we laughed at jokes, admired village dynamics ('Such a silly man 'bout those potatoes!'), and with sadness declined further beer due to impending reservations in Tórshavn. As I snapped a pic of a man sawing wooden planks on the return to the car, I thought people are the same, the world over—'There is nothing new under the sun', or so they say.  

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A man cuts wood in Gjógv, Eysturoy, Faroe Islands.

'I'd like to buy the world a trip' seems to be my latest mantra, honing my efforts on documenting not just on what makes us different but what makes us the same: shaving, the choice between mild or strong cheese, late afternoon chores, dried fish, weddings. Joint appreciation of sunlit evenings with laughter and libations on a patio. The necessity of having a slightly unkempt place to store trailers, tires, maybe pluck a chicken. Or the careful storage of a boat for winter. 

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Boat and shed in Miðvágur, Vágar, Faroe Islands.

Sørvágsvatn Lake, Faroe Islands - A Travel Guide to Childlike Play

There's a wonderful moment in 2012's Hitchcock where Helen Mirren—playing wife Alma Reville—peers at Anthony Hopkins's titular character over a newspaper and pithily announces, 'You shouldn't wait 'til halfway through, kill her off after thirty minutes', referring, of course, to the death of Janet Leigh as false heroine Marion Crane in Psycho. Which is exactly how we felt about our trip to Sørvágsvatn lake on Vágar, in the Faroe Islands. But more on that in a minute.

View looking north on the shore of Sørvágsvatn lake, Vágar, Faroe Islands.

*     *     *

Once—when we were teenagers—my now husband got the idea at my parents' acreage to race down fields of wheat stubble that cascade from my childhood home like drapery to find the end of a rainbow that had appeared behind their barn. He knew he'd never find it, but at sixteen wanted to indulge that childhood fantasy we all have—particularly those of my generation who were brought up with Lucky the Leprechaun prancing across their screens during Saturday morning cartoons, or the Skittles slogan 'taste the rainbow'. He ran 'til he reached the point where one inevitably feels sick from effort, then returned to the house panting and happy as a dog from the chase. My mother later told me that this was the moment she knew he was the right boy for her daughter. Because he was far too old to knowingly act like a child but did, while his peers preoccupied themselves with cars and chasing tail, not rainbows.

Well into adulthood, my husband and I were introduced to two guys at a bar by a mutual friend. The introduction was memorable in so far as we'd met before—online. Introductions went  something like this: 'Matty, Jer, this is Adam who you know as Alumirac, and Lesley is Rontu. Matty is Moomatty, Jer is...' Publicly-outted as we were, we laughed awkwardly, peeling back beer labels from sweaty bottles. Later, slightly buzzed and a little less gun-shy, the married couple, mutual friend (David), and Mat returned to our dingy apartment and played WoW—the MMORPG where we'd met—into the wee hours of the night, giggling like school children over a tub of frozen margarita and yet more beers: a years-long friendship was born. And things have been that easy ever since. Because when we get together, we hardly talk shop, or finances, or the doldrums of adulthood, and instead have a consistent history of being mis-identified rowdy teenagers at campgrounds who then quickly become the warden's pets.

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The view from our Miðvágur apartment, Vágar, Faroe Islands.

Fast-forward years later, to our 2017 trip to the Faroe Islands. Mat is now married to Kat, David's younger cousin. With Katherine Hepburn's cheek-bones, freckles, and love for the outdoors arising naturally from a childhood spent in rural B.C., she's the perfect pairing for our friend with boyish good-looks and booming laugh that you can hear two rooms over; and they, in turn, are our perfect travel companions. They both have a childlike love for animals, and good portion of our day is spent discussing respective pets back home, how we miss them, what they're likely doing, and the prospect of puffin watching on Mykines despite bad weather. Mat points out an inflatable puffin to his wife in a gift shop (just add water!), knowing full well he'll have to buy it for her. He chuckles that its what you'd get a kid while affectionately handing it to her.

The boy who raced through stubble is sick (fever), so after a morning of bird watching by boat, we settle into our rented second story flat: Mat and Kat go buy the birthday boy supper (what luck, sick when travelling on your birthday), and I amble around empty harbour streets in long arctic light. Mat insists on cooking for the group (because he's JUST THAT NICE); the rest of us relive daydreams from a just-finished trip to Scotland watching Braveheart. A couple of Tylenol for birthday boy, and at ten-to-nine p.m. the urge hits: four adults set out way too late for a hike Sørvágsvatn lake, trailhead unknown.

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Highway 11 on Vágar, Faroe Islands, with Sørvágsvatn lake in the background.

We're helped by the presence of a lone car parked off the highway, and what looks like a path diverging from a lambing pen. Quickly, the trail ends, but we know we're on the right track: the sought-after waterfall-into-ocean is a hair's breadth away, on the horizon just out of reach. We hop, skip, jump(!) from rock to dry-patch among mucky bog, farther and farther from the now-muffled sound of sleepy cars on the highway. The lake is like blown glass gently surging from a blower's rod as wind whips off the sea channeled along its surface. Our voices reach an excited pitch as a a truly epic view comes into sight, and we cinch our jackets tighter against the cold. We take risks—climb higher, sit on cliff's edges, pose for photos—as the real world suspends our disbelief that we're mortal, can't respawn.

Kat photographing Bøsdalafossur at sunset, Vágar, Faroe Islands.

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View from Trælanípa (a cliff's edge) toward Sørvágsvatn lake, on Vágar, Faroe Islands.

Germans have a word for the deep, meditative feeling one feels alone in the woods, Waldeinsamkeit, having to do with connectedness to nature. What that fails to encapsulate for me is the way landscape, passing through it, existing in it, does among friends: holds you in commune. How you shrilly call to each other over wind to point to delicate flower, escarpment, incoming weather, the way you shrieked at a hand-caught frog as a child. As a bonafide member of the Peter Pan generation, the sense of childhood play inspired by time spent outdoors seems undersold: that feeling you had when jumping rock-to-rock with your brother playing MarioBros collecting imagined, pixelated mushrooms; or skipping through dunes with your best-friend (ages nine and eleven) in your Arabian fantasy world. Similar but different to when a dance troupe hits synchronicity with a collective flick of the wrist, when a hockey team lines up that killer shot, or when musicians grin at each other over spontaneous but mutually-agreed-upon improvisation. Chasing proverbial rainbows in tandem; hive-mind. 

On the way home, our shared elation begins to lapse: I slip several times in mud and sheep's dung, birthday boy's fever comes back, Mat's fear of heights sets in. The travelling troupe has wearied. In waning twilight, the denouement of our time spent in the Faroe Islands has begun, far too early at one day in. You see, we'd killed our buxom blond prematurely under the purplish setting sun at Sørvágsvatn; the laughed mantra for the rest of the trip was we'd already seen that waterfall billow dramatically to the sea—'impress us!'

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View looking southwest toward Trælanípa on Sørvágsvatn lake, Vágar, Faroe Islands.

NOTES

Getting there: Take Highway 11 heading west from Sandavágur toward Sørvágur; park where the road initially meets the lake's shoreline, just prior to a rather sharp northwest turn (pictured above). You will see trail on the opposite side of the highway, which skirts along the side of a lambing pen and small stone structure; Trælanípa will be visible in the distance. Bøsdalafossur is at its base. You can make a nice, approximately 7km loop by hiking from the highway, to the base of Trælanípa, up Trælanípa (which has another great viewpoint), and then back.