Scan Magazine | Hotel the Month | Faroe Islands
Hotel of the Month, Faroe Islands
A Faroe-tale stay in one of the world’s smallest capitals More than 300 kilometres from the nearest land, between Iceland and Norway, the 18 rocky Faroe Islands defiantly jut out of the North Sea. Despite their desolate North Atlantic location, they have supported a hardy, creative and welcoming population for the past millennium. With its 20,000 inhabitants, Tórshavn is home to almost half the Faroese population and a millennium of rich, distinctive history. At the heart of the tiny capital, Hotel Hafnia ensures that you have ideal conditions from which to explore both Tórshavn and the rest of the beautiful, dramatic Faroe Islands. By Louise Older Steffensen | Photos: Hotel Hafnia
In 2007, a National Geographic survey of more than 500 sustainable tourism experts placed the Faroe Islands first out of 111 island destinations for being “authentic, unspoilt and likely to remain so”. Keen to share their gorgeous home with the world, normal Faroese citizens have worked hard to quite literally put the nation on the map and, in 2016, they 98 | Issue 116 | September 2018
began an amazing campaign: strapping cameras unto far-wandering sheep, they created Sheep View in an effort to entice Google Street View to record the splendour of their country (it worked). The government too has made sustainable tourism a priority, improving services, connections and facilities, but only in
ways which do not damage normal life on the islands. The Faroe Islands remains an authentic and unspoilt country, but it is highly modern too – and a much more comfortable, cheap and reachable destination than it was 20 years ago. Today, you can get there easily by air or by sea – the cruise ship Norröna is a popular way to experience both the Faroe Islands and their more tourist-laden northern neighbour, Iceland.
A place fit for the Gods Pætur Trónd Thomsen, general manager of Hotel Hafnia, recently returned to Tórshavn after years in Denmark and the UK. “It’s a great little city,” he says. “It’s got everything you expect of a capital – great shops and restaurants, but at the same