FAEROE ISLANDS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 June 1940, Page 9

FAEROE ISLANDS

UNDER BRITISH OCCUPATION.

LIFE AND ASPIRATIONS OF PEOPLE.

Not all of Danish lands are held by the Germans, writes John A. May in the “Christian Science Monitor.” The Danish Faeroes, “islands of sheep,” lying 200 miles north-west of Britain's Shetland Islands in the stormy waters where the North Sea meets the Atlantic, have seen neither steel-helmeted soldiers in the streets, nor German aeroplanes overhead, nor German ships in the harbour. Instead, they see British warships occupying the main harbour, and they are under promise to defend the islands and return them when the rest of Denmark is free again. Unlike Iceland, which i$ an independent country sharing Denmark’s king, the Faeroe Isles have been for many years a Danish country, part of the Bishopric of Zealand, Copenhagen's island. The Faeroes have one elected representative to each of the Danish Houses of Parliament. This far-away land is as unlike any other Danish country as could possibly be. Its basalt rocks stand sheer. There is not enough grass or hay for cattle. Only sheep find sustenance here, and they clamber sure-footed over steep island slopes in flocks of several hundreds. UP TO DATE. Out of this wind-swept rocky isolation, the islanders have made a kindly, pleasant homeland. A visitor to the Faeroe Isles often finds his sturdy peasant host better read than himself. Winter nights are long and stormy and reading provides almost the only hobby. The remotest farmstead will usually be found to have a telephone, for the 26.000 Faerish folk are go ahead. The main towns, . Thorshavn and Klaksvig, have electric light. There is a modern hydro-electric plant. Living on rock with little or no earth around might so'und a rather circumscribed method of existence, but the islands have developed numerous enterprises, trades, and industries. Most of them raise sheep and sell woollen goods. Some make carpets. Others go fishing. There is a big whale station with quite a modern equipment. There is a company that exploits basalt deposits. There is a copper mine and a fireclay industry. Recently the Faeroes had taken on new significance as Denmark's only coal mining district. On Suderoe Island there is a large coal deposit, reputed to contain 120,000,000 tons of coal. Islanders have worked it for years and recently Danes began to take it more seriously and to prepare ■ machines for large-scale exploitation. STRATEGICAL IMPORTANCE.

Brought out of their isolation by the present war the Faeroe Isles realise that their strategic position might have caused them to be a target for invaders. But really the isles’ strategic value is not great, in spite of their inviting position as a possible German base. The only possible value lies in the Norshaven harbour, which was modernised and enlarged 10 years ago and now has a 250-foot-long quay and a uniform depth of more than 20 feet, and might be a useful submarine base. The islanders seem reconciled to being under British occupation and protection for the duration of the war. Actually the German invasion of Denmark has achieved, at least temporarily, what a large minority of the population has been trying to do :<or years—establish Faeroe home rule. The islanders are not Danes. They are Norsemen. They have their own Norse language similar to Icelandic. They are less like the Danes in tradition and ways of living than to the Shetlanders and Orkney Islanders—with whom they play irregular triangle international football tournaments on Thorshavn’s only football ground. Their ancestors mostly came from Norway. The first coloniser was a Norwegian pioneer, Grim Kamban. in the ninth century. And that explains m part why the independent Faeroe Islanders, who would prefer not to be occupied by any country, sent a special telegram to London welcoming the British occupation of Thorshavn after the German invasion of Denmark and Norway.