The Faroe Islands: Choosing Remote Destinations
Designing travel to remote destinations begins with a recognition that sometimes we long for pristine environs, where remoteness ensures that 'difference' has been preserved. Certainly the Faroe Islands can provide this type of unique travel experience where the soul is exhilarated and something primal inside us is activated.
The Faroe landscape is reminiscent of scenes from 'Lord of the Rings' with distant jagged peaks, narrow fjords, and ridged hillsides ever trickling and streaming water onto the roads, lakes and waterways below. The air is exhilarating, fresh, wild-edged, drawn in from the Atlantic and whipped around rocky crevices and thrown back out to sea in mists and fogs.
To arrive by ship is inspirational; the vessel enters the fjord from the ocean and heads between high mountains to ‘park’ so close to the land you feel as if you can touch it. I visited Klaksvík in 2013 on a Royal Caribbean trans-Atlantic crossing to find a charming town snuggled in between the lake and the hills. Located on Borðoy, this is the second largest town of the Faroe Islands and offers tourists a lively music scene, a local theatre group and a unique church, which is the first large church in Scandinavia to be built the ancient Nordic style.
Travel the 6 km-long underwater tunnel (150m beneath sea level) between Klaksvík and Leirvík, opened to the public since April 2006; or take a ride on the local mail ferry that sails several times a day between Klaksvík and Syðradalur on Kalsoy, one of the most notable islands in the northern island group; there are also local boats to Fugloy, Svinoy. From Klaksvík you can also go by bus to the island of Kunoy, the highest of the islands where the views are spectacular.
Klaksvik is now considered one of the Faroe Islands’ main ports.
Photo by Jessica Syme, 2013.