TINDHÓLMUR - Jan-Eric Osterlund

*Tindhólmur looking southwest as the sun is setting behind some clouds. To the left are two sea stacks, Drangarnir*

We move from the two larger islands, Streymoy and Eysturoy, to the last island we are going to visit, Vágar. Vágar is smaller and less dramatic, but surrounded by some beautiful scenery. We start by visiting another fjord, Sørvágsfjørður, and the view over the surrounding islands and sea stacks including the most dramatic island, Tindhólmur. Tindhólmur is tiny and uninhabited, but has dramatic peaks that far away looks like a medieval crenelated fort. Admittedly you have to have some imagination to see the dragons and legends defending this fort, but who hasn’t imagination?

The north side of Tindhólmur is steep to (and that is the side we are seeing most of in my pictures) but it is more sloping down towards the south and west sides. The fantasy film, How to Train Your Dragon, was set on Tindhólmur as the Isle of Berk. And I can easily see a dragon feeling at home on Tindhólmur.

*Tindhólmur rising 262 metres above the sea*

Tindhólmur has five distinct peaks called Ytsti, Arni, Lítli, Breiði, and Boygdi, simply translated as Farthest, Eagle, Small, Broad and Bent. Ytsi is the tallest (although it doesn’t look like that in my image, as it is further away) at 262 metres

The fist time we came to Sørvágsfjørður, the sun had already set, although the clouds were still bathed in the orange colour from the sunset. And the snow covered the islands.

Here we see the inlet to the fjord Sørvágsfjørður. In the background is the rocky end of Vágar to the left, then the two sea stacks, Drangarnir, and then to the right the “dragon island” of Tindhólmur.

*Further into the fjord the perspective changes, and Tindhólmur looks even more dramatic with its sharp sides resembling a giant knife*

This image is captured near the village of Bøur. The large island to the right of Tindhólmur is Mykines. The sunlit peak at the left in the background is part of the main island of Vágar. A few days later Jennifer and I joined the photography group by boat to visit this sunlit peak for some further photography and to see and capture the sea stacks from the boat

Mykines, which can be seen in the photo above, is the westernmost island in the Faroese archipelago. It is home to large puffin colonies during summer (125,000 pairs), but we didn’t visit it now in November. The name, Mykines, may predate the Norse epoch and be Irish in origin. It may be a reference to whales, which are known as mucmhara in Irish. We know that early settlers inhabited Mykines in 625, possibly monks and hermits, long before the Norse emigrated to the Faroe Islands.