Located in the Atlantic, midway between Iceland and Scotland, the Faroe Islands are striking for their dramatic landscapes. With steep, vivid green slopes punctuated by a multitude of waterfalls, from a distance they could be mistaken for Dominica or another Caribbean idyll. The giveaway is the weather (described by one local as “cold and cloudy, wet and windy”), the virtual absence of trees, the abundance of sheep (they were, after all, once known as the Sheep Islands), and houses that even Faroe Islands Tourism admits are “Hobbit-like.”

But it is this combination of isolated geography and bracing weather that has preserved the peninsula of eighteen islands from the ravages of mass tourism. Our port call aboard the elegant new Norwegian-flagged and Nordic-spirited Viking Saturn – the only cruise ship to visit that day and one of only six large cruise ships that month – not only allowed us to get a measure of the islands’ isolation, but our approach and sail away gave a longboat-eye perspective of the sheer beauty of the place.

The Faroe Islands are a playground for those who prefer to get off the beaten path, whether puffin-watching, hiking the peaks, or capturing striking scenery like the sea stacks off the northern coast of the island of Eysturoy, colloquially known as the “giant and the hag.” Legend has it two giants were sent from Iceland to try to seize the Faroes, but the sun shone on them and they turned to stone. 

The sun was out again for our visit, the wind died down and temperatures soared to a balmy 13 degrees Celsius as we explored historic Kirkjubøur. The settlement originated with the Vikings; the Kirkjubøur Stone, a runestone now in the National Museum of the Faroe Islands, dates to the 9th century. But Kirkjubøur developed into an early centre of Christianity, perhaps as a challenge to a heathen shrine once thought to have existed in the village of Velbastadur — at five kilometres distant, a mere hatchet throw away. 

It was a Kirkjubøur bishop who was behind the Faroes’ answer to the Magna Carta – fittingly called the Sheep Letter. Dated 1298, the oldest surviving document from the Faroe Islands sets out rules for sheep husbandry – understandable in a place where the wool-bearers still outnumber humans two to one – but also functioned as a sort of basis for the Faroese constitution.