The fog rolls over the fjord, obscuring the island across the water. The air fills with a light moisture that clings to grass, clothes, skin, hair. The sheep dart around, their wool gathering barely visible droplets as they dodge Brim, the border collie chasing them around the misty hillside with the tentative authority of a supply teacher. Brim’s a little out of practice, Óli tells me — another of their dogs usually does the job these days — but she eventually manages to corral a few sheep, leading them down the slope.
Óli Rubeksen has been shepherding here in the Faroe Islands since 1995, when he and his wife Anna took over running her family farm — the ninth generation to do so. And while they both have other jobs — Anna as a nurse and Óli as a social worker — the farm is central to their lives. The meat from the sheep they rear is an almost daily part of their diet, along with eggs from their hens and the produce they grow in a small fruit-and-veg patch. And it’s all served at the regular supper club the couple run from their home to supplement their income. What they don’t produce themselves is sourced from elsewhere in the Faroes whenever possible. “You have to be sustainable, green and use local food,” says Óli.
Hugged by the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic, this little archipelago — home to around 54,000 people — is a self-governing part of Denmark, but it lies closer to Shetland than to Copenhagen, and has a language, identity and landscape quite distinct from that of the Danes.
