I can invite you to step back in time and experience what life was a couple hundred years ago, but leave the steam punk and expectations of wooden sail ships. The Faroe Islands has kept itself the same over the centuries, even with the introduction of the newest technology and the knowledge that can be gleaned is in demand all over the world.
The industrial revolution saw a change in how people live in cities. Not only how you work changed, but what you worked with. You worked with machined tools and machinery. Children became a popular source of labor. Unions were forming and the first true factories were built. Few farmers were needed and fewer were employed in old trades as trades men became more effective. Little of that happened up here.
While true the market has shifted towards a service economy and the newest products can be bought here, many professions remain unchanged. Around the North Atlantic, there is a strong fishing culture that adopted the newest tools and developed far better ships, but the basics are unchanged. Skippers still know the sea bed intimately, sailors still read the currents and long lines are still kilometer long ropes with hooks adjoined with yarn. The knots are the same. The cuts are the same. The skills are the same. Paradoxically, that also makes the Faroe Islands a prime education destination for sailors around the world.
Lacking from the market are the large factories manufacturing shoes, underwear or iPods. There are no timber mills or refineries. You cannot find employment building cars or welding fuselage for airplans. Fishing accounts for 95% of exports. What manufacturing industry is found up here is for the most part solely for the Faroese market. Everything that isn't fishing accounts for less than half of the GDP. So for the profession to have advanced by refining the same skills and adopting new technology with out changing the basics is to provide a picture, an experience, of what life was like. It is the closest you can come to modernizing the past without wearing steam punk clothing.
Fishing is not the only profession that has remained unchanged. How sheep are raised here can be taken out of a story book. Herders walk out to a mountainous region with a herding dog, whistle and yelp out commands. They herd the sheep in to new lots or to be sheered and butchered. There are no massive factory farms for live stock.
Yet, there are factory farms for fish, which does indicate the first and only major change to the mainstay of Faroese industry. Perhaps in the future, the Faroe Islands will see its own industry revolution that changes how fishermen work.
But for now, you are welcomed to step back in time and experience what life was like a few hundred years ago.
- Servus
The industrial revolution saw a change in how people live in cities. Not only how you work changed, but what you worked with. You worked with machined tools and machinery. Children became a popular source of labor. Unions were forming and the first true factories were built. Few farmers were needed and fewer were employed in old trades as trades men became more effective. Little of that happened up here.
While true the market has shifted towards a service economy and the newest products can be bought here, many professions remain unchanged. Around the North Atlantic, there is a strong fishing culture that adopted the newest tools and developed far better ships, but the basics are unchanged. Skippers still know the sea bed intimately, sailors still read the currents and long lines are still kilometer long ropes with hooks adjoined with yarn. The knots are the same. The cuts are the same. The skills are the same. Paradoxically, that also makes the Faroe Islands a prime education destination for sailors around the world.
Lacking from the market are the large factories manufacturing shoes, underwear or iPods. There are no timber mills or refineries. You cannot find employment building cars or welding fuselage for airplans. Fishing accounts for 95% of exports. What manufacturing industry is found up here is for the most part solely for the Faroese market. Everything that isn't fishing accounts for less than half of the GDP. So for the profession to have advanced by refining the same skills and adopting new technology with out changing the basics is to provide a picture, an experience, of what life was like. It is the closest you can come to modernizing the past without wearing steam punk clothing.
Fishing is not the only profession that has remained unchanged. How sheep are raised here can be taken out of a story book. Herders walk out to a mountainous region with a herding dog, whistle and yelp out commands. They herd the sheep in to new lots or to be sheered and butchered. There are no massive factory farms for live stock.
Yet, there are factory farms for fish, which does indicate the first and only major change to the mainstay of Faroese industry. Perhaps in the future, the Faroe Islands will see its own industry revolution that changes how fishermen work.
But for now, you are welcomed to step back in time and experience what life was like a few hundred years ago.
- Servus
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