Whoever knew the Faroe Islands existed before coming here? Even fewer people have ever been there. With grass on every roof, sheep walking in the streets, a nation completely dependent on the sea and with a proud Viking history this must be the most “Nordic” place in the world.
We wanted to go to the Faroe Islands to explore a pretty unknown land, to learn about the culture and history but also to show our gratitude to the Faroese National Committee that has been working hard to benefit this college for the last 12 years.
The first thing you learn if you want to go to the Faroes is that there is just one ferry a week, so the length of the stay was not really anything to negotiate about. Three and a half days we had on the Faroe Islands, and what an amazing time that was! Sunday morning at 9:00 o’clock we took the ferry from Bergen towards the capital called Tórshavn. The ferry contained everything you could dream about; one club, two bars, restaurants, tax-free shop, swimming pool, saunas, fitness center, casinos and lots of other things. Unfortunately the sea was quite rough that day, and since most of the group was not very experienced in sailing we spent most of the 22 hours of the crossing sleeping (or trying to do so). Of course, we also had time to admire, from the deck, the view of all the Norwegian oil-rigs in the open sea.
We arrived at Tórshavn on Monday morning at 7:00, and entered the harbor as the sun started to rise. We had heard a lot about bad Faroese weather, but this was a beautiful morning with an almost clear sky.
We lived in a private house just 10 minutes walk from the center of the capital (and yet our house was located in the suburbs). Our hosts left on holiday on the same morning of our arrival, so we had a big house for ourselves.
After we had unpacked a bit and got some breakfast, the leader of the Faroese National Committee, Claus Reistrup, took us around Tórshavn to show us the old town and the vibrant capital of the North. After an hour or so we left to one of the most historical places on the islands, the old Catholic capital (consistent of three houses!) on the southern part of the island. We got guided around by Claus and told stories about the old days in the area. We had planned to go on a hike on Wednesday, but everybody promised us that the weather would not be nearly as good as it was that morning, so we decided to do it on Monday instead. This walk took around three hours and was quite a different experience. No trees grow on the Faroes, but there are lots of islands and sheep.
We spent the afternoon taking a further look at Tórshavn on our own and in the evening we finished preparing for the presentation we had to make on Tuesday. Late at night we were done and could get the rest we needed (despite the 22 hours we had on the boat, we needed it, after such a busy day).
On Tuesday morning we had a very tight schedule, as we had appointments and presentations at three schools, in three hours, in three different parts of the country. Luckily the place is small and we had a very nice assistant taking us around: Lillian Olsen (RCNUWC 03-05) who is the only Faroese alumnus living on the islands. The presentations went really well and many people seemed to be interested in applying for the one annual UWC scholarship. We went to two of the three high schools, and one technical school in the second biggest village. After a tour at the last school, we went a bit around in the village. We drove through extremely scary, narrow and one-lane tunnels built for traffic in both ways, and ended up, literally, at the end of the country where we saw a small village, the ocean and a lot of nature.
On Wednesday we went to the Faroese National History Museum and got our private guide for two hours to learn about colonial powers, fishermen, religious evolution and pirate plunders. We saw the outdoor museum of the Faroe Islands, with old houses, boats and ducks, and were invited to a great lunch buffet with many kinds of nice food. When we had eaten the best food since we came to Europe (or to Norway, at least), we went to the National Museum of Art and got surprised by the depth and quality of it. The last cultural event that day was a visit to the Nordic House – a cultural centre founded by the Nordic Council. We got a tour to the stage where Bill Clinton had paid a visit a couple of days before. After a nice dinner at Claus’ place, we went to a meeting with the Faroese Red Cross in the old town of Tórshavn where we discussed a possible cooperation between the college and the FRC.
The last day on the Faroe Islands was dedicated to the study of the parliamentarian system on the Faroes. We went to the Faroese parliament (the Løgtingið) where we shook hands with the prime-minister, were greeted by different members of parliament and other politicians and watched a small session in a parliamentarian discussion. We got an introduction to how the parliament worked and how the political relation with Denmark was organized. This was all presented to us by the Executive of the Parliament, Mrs. Danielsen. At 11:45 we had an appointment at the city hall of Tórshavn. We were greeted by the mayor, got a small gift, a presentation about how the capital would develop in the future, and had a great lunch. We had to catch the ferry for Bergen at 17:00, but before that we managed to cram an interview at the biggest daily newspaper “Sosialurin”.
We said thanks to Claus for all his great assistance and went on board the ferry for Bergen. Luckily the weather was nice, and many hours were spent on the open deck with a view of the islands and the sun getting yet smaller in the horizon.
We came back with a good and profound idea of the small society of 48 000 people living on 18 small and very isolated islands in the middle of the rough North Atlantic. It was an amazing experience in a wonderful country that breaks all norms of geographical needs for a society to develop. We were all very happy for having seen so much, and we are certain about one thing: we’ll be back – sooner or later!
Aske Nørby Bonde
At first it was quite surprising to see that only guys joined this PBL, until we actually recognised that the name of the PBL – Chess Wizard – was in itself quite exclusive. We started the first day with an arduous warm-up session where, tied to the time limit of 40 minutes per match, the participants played with three other players in two hours. While some games took quite a short time, some tended to last a little longer due to complex movements and 50-step-forward plans. After getting familiar with chess, we moved on to the real tournament. The organisers attempted to create the tournament table using very sophisticated mathematics, but they failed, so the pairings were very simple. Yelling when victorious and crying when defeated, many of us became much more passionate about chess after playing around 20 games. The results were as follows: the championship title was won by Mr. Antti Jun Chao Tai, followed by Dag, Mee, Malthe, Anibal, Vedran and Ahmed.
In addition to ordinary chess, we also played SHOCK (two simultaneous games played by teams of two), Thai chess (almost totally different from the western version), fast-chess (move without thinking) and chess puzzles (‘white win in three moves!’). Chinese chess was considered, but nobody really knew how to play it.
