Xenophobia and the North Atlantic

I just had a run in today with a man who goes by the name of Hans Birgir Hansen. My readers in Tórshavn may know this man, who often writes in Yggje Tíðindi and sometimes hits the nail on the head with his opinions, but not often. My 'conversation' with him started off in Nero, the local ice cream shop. I bought a cup of coffee and sat down to read my pages and write a little bit. He was going on about cheap labor by foreigners ruining the market for everyone else. I got the impression, I am not the kind of guy he likes; I wasn't born on the Faroe Islands. The suspision was confirmed on his return to the library, where he took out the paper and insisted I look at the opinion piece he wrote. He then proceeded back into Nero to confront the lady behind the counter, a lovely young woman who doesn't have the correct skin color, understood as to mean at least one of her parental lines crosses through Africa, but I could be mistaken and the line crossed another region outside of Europe. After being told he is not welcomed to enter the back room, he left, only to return again. This time, he stood in the library and it seemed he was waiting. Well. I walked back to my computer in the reading lounge and he started to stare at me. Then he took his mobile and started to talk, very loudly, about the same ol' thing, plus about how I was sitting here. There will always be people like him who will stand in my way, but I think the tide of time is against him.

But, for now, Hans Hansen has his opinion piece and his influence in the union and I need to deal with the difficulty of finding work with people like him in high places.

To Integrate in the North Atlantic

The North Atlantic is not a hospitable place for anyone to settle down and start a society. Any community in the region must exploit the resources of their surroundings in order to survive. In the case of the Faroe Islands, the historical resource exploited, which still accounts for over 90% of exports, is fish. The same is true for Iceland and Greenland. I can also name sheep and wool, but not much else. While domestic production has shifted to now include services, the society as a whole is still heavily dependent on nature to supply the raw materials needed to drive its economy and sustain the community. So far, the North Atlantic community has lived in the margins, carving out just enough to survive and continue. These slim pickings has a number of consequences, ranging from extremely high prices to high unemployment, both of which makes putting down any roots in the region that much harder.

To have no room

What is it like to feel like society is pressuring you from all sides? You wont know unless you are there for something more important than the pressure. If you have no reason to stick around, then you likely will leave and find a place where you can live a life and make ends meet. I can't.

Father Knows Best - When Government 'Helps'

Welfare isn't something I view as shameful. If you have been on the public dime, I wont look down on you and say you are a dead beat living off of my hard work, because I have been there. If you are a social worker who deals with the unemployed on welfare though, I will think of you as a waste of public money who should go out and get a productive job.

That is not what most people expect from a tax paying citizen, but I said it and I mean it. I say it because when I was on welfare, the case worker did nothing to help me and threatened to take away my welfare if I tried to find a job on my own. Well, not directly threaten, but made clear she was not happy when I left for a job interview when she had nothing planned for me job wise. It was around that time I changed my view on government. I went my own way, as I said before, and turned things around as soon as I started ignoring the social worker, kommune and governments 'demands', which really were empty threats.

A night out on the town

Tórshavn is special.
Not special as in it is a small fishing village special.
Or historically special.
What is special about Tórshavn are the weekends.
Cities have a night life. Chicago has a few bars and clubs. New York has Madison Square Garden. Copenhagen has Tivoli. Ibiza, São Paulo, etc. So the fact Tórshavn has one is not what makes it special.
What makes Tóshavns night life special is how the streets are packed every Friday and Saturday night around 2 AM. The clubs and bars are so close together, the edges of each club's crowd blends together and it becomes a single carnival.
Yes, you see this in Miami and certain cities in California too. But how can one expect that in the middle of the North Atlantic in a highly religious society?
The weekend speaks volumes about the kind of society the Faroe Islands is. They love to party here. They love to drink. They love having fun. This city has a quality of night life that cities either are jealous of or want to prohibit.
It is all very strange to me.