Kirkjubour, Streymoy, Faroe Islands

Where the Faroese Christianity Washed Ashore


Roykstovan Library
Library of the oldest house in the Faeroes, Roykstovan.
Kirkjubour Batch
Lot of more modern houses at the entrance to Kirkjubour.
Manes in the Wind
Horses on a pasture that the short summer has made leafy.
Manes in the Wind II
Horses on a pasture that the short summer has made leafy.
rest in the sun
Visitor rests in the sun after a long walk.
Chief Sculpture
Sculpture legacy from the origins of the pioneer village of Kirkjubour.
Hestfjordur
The fjord that hosted the first settlement in the Faroe Islands, Kirkjobour.
Church of St. Olav
The church that succeeded the cathedral of Saint Magnus, the old cathedral that remains incomplete.
house with portico
A wooden portico precedes the entrance to Roykstovan's historic complex.
Roykstovan Building
Historic buildings with peat roofs from Roykstovan the oldest property in the Faroe Islands.
Kirkjubour & Hestfjordur
Kirkjubour overview with the Hestfjordur fjord in the background.
Photo in Roykstovan
Visitors photograph themselves inside Roykstovan's smoking hall.
Front of St. Olav
The church of Saint Olav named in honor of the Viking king who accepted and promoted the conversion of his subjects to Christianity.
A mere year into the first millennium, a Viking missionary named Sigmundur Brestisson brought the Christian faith to the Faroe Islands. Kirkjubour became the shelter and episcopal seat of the new religion.

No point on the sprawling eighteen Faroe Islands is more than five kilometers from the sea.

For, when it was founded, the Vikings settled for the location of Kirkjubour, almost at the bottom of Streymoy, the largest of the islands.

Kirkjubour is only 11km from Torshavn. Fulfilling them involves ascending the great eastern slope that houses the Faroese capital. Advance across a vast grassy plateau and then along the half-slope of one of the many deep fjords that furrow the nation's map and landscape.

Adventurous, the road follows the winding water line of the Sanda River. At a certain point, it bends to the south, it becomes slender and tangent to the threshold of another great fjord, the Hestfjordur. Little by little, it descends to the foothills of Streymoy, the opposite of the capital where we had started our journey.

It was the third time we had approached Kirkjubour. The first two we saw them made impossible by unfavorable weather, powerful winds and low, dark cloudiness that unloaded endless rain.

On this last occasion, we enter the village on a morning of almost clear skies and radiant sun, a boreal blessing, even though it was the beginning of July, in the middle of summer in these northern latitudes.

Via Gamlivegur leaves us in front of a dark and smooth sea and close to the historic heart of the village, half-walled with the church of Olav, with the almost millenary farmhouse of Kirkjuboargardur (Quinta do Rei), long considered the largest and most Ancient Faroe Islands. It leaves us in the vicinity of the ruins of the cathedral of Saint Magnus.

Today, Kirkjubour is reduced to historical testimony, an inhabited and living legacy of its era of medieval splendour.

It is estimated that the Faroe Islands had as pioneer inhabitants Celtic hermits, arriving, with livestock, from islands off the coast of present-day Scotland, the Shetland, the Orcadas or the Hebrides, the exact origin is unknown.

It is known that, in this period of time, the Faroe were known as at Scigiri ou skeggjar, which would translate as the islands of the Barbudos, according to the long hairs of the cenobites who shared them.

Other visitors frequented the islands of the Faroe archipelago from time to time. This would have been the case of Saint Brendan, a monk from present-day Ireland.

A more or less consensual conclusion today is that, at one point, the archipelago was occupied by colonies of Vikings seeking refuge.

The Faerayinga saga (from the Faroe Islands) tells that the first to land arrived from Norwegian lands at the end of the ninth century, beginning of the tenth, in a stampede from their villages that the tyrannical and centralizing government of King Harold I – also known as Harold of the Beautiful Hair – had made too risky.

As had been the case for a long time, these newcomers organized themselves into clans. And, as was also customary, the clans came into conflict. The inhabitants of the Northern Isles almost annihilated those of the south. They forced us to extreme survival measures. Kirkjubour came, unexpectedly, from these measures.

We leave the car. We crossed paths with a group of hikers returning from an expedition along the surrounding coast, which, given their tired air, would have been a long one.

Rest in Kirkjubour, Streymoy, Faroe Islands

Visitors rest in the sun after a long walk.

Right next door, the beauty and grandeur of Roykstovan dazzles us at a glance, one of the oldest still inhabited wooden buildings on the face of the Earth (XNUMXth century, probably the oldest) in dark wood, with red moldings and turf roofs leafy.

Any wooden structure is prodigious in the Faroe, where trees are rare, in the ancestral times of colonization, non-existent. The one from the Kirkjuboargardur farm will have been brought from the Norway in tow of boats, possibly from drakkars.

We circled the large house, paying attention to architectural details that any southern European outsider would classify as eccentric.

Kirkjubour, Streymoy, Faroe Islands

Brightly colored clan coat of arms on Roykstovan farm.

Columns with the heads of dragons sticking out their tongues, shields with ax lions raised, other winged creatures we have a hard time defining.

A wooden carving of what looks like a helmeted tribal chief. And a strange symbol disk molded around another feline.

More and more dazzled, we move into the interior, an entire house-museum of yellowish wood and reddened by time, with rooms accessible through tiny doors if we take into account the Viking imagery and the height and height of the Nordic people, warmed by furs under large horned helmets.

The immediate room, we saw it endowed with long tables for repast and tobacco, with benches to match, equipped with a centuries-old stove, full of ropes, agricultural instruments and decorative pieces, under the supervision of an overhanging cow's skull.

On an upper floor, closed, but visible through a wide orifice, as a provocation, we also find a library office presided over by historical photographs of the family, descendants of the first inhabitants of the farm, which has already housed eighteen of its generations.

This linearity takes us back to the strife of the northern isles clan vs the southern isles clan.

Also according to the Faerayinga saga, Sigmundur Brestisson, one of the leaders of the south, sailed on the run to Norway. In the motherland, he received the royal order to conquer the entire archipelago in the name of Olav I, the king responsible for the Christianization of the Norwegian people.

Sigmundur Brestisson not only succeeded but extended this Christianization to the still pagan inhabitants of the Faroese archipelago under Norwegian rule, until 1380, when Norway joined Denmark.

In this process, Sigmundur Brestisson established that the episcopal residence of the Diocese of the Faroe Islands would be located in Kirkjubour.

As the colony's religious hub, the village quickly expanded to a limit of 50 homes. It increased from year to year when, in the middle of the XNUMXth century, a flood generated by the worst of the storms suffered by the archipelago, dragged most of these houses to the sea.

The base of the Cathedral of Saint Magnus has remained there until today, projected as the largest Christian temple in the Faroes and which, even incomplete, remains the largest medieval building in the nation.

Cathedral of Saint Magnus, Kirkjubour, Streymoy, Faroe Islands.

The old cathedral of Saint Magnus, in ruins and said, for a long time, to have never been finished.

For some time, it was believed that the cathedral built by a Bishop Erlendur had never been completed. Recent archaeological data contradicted this theory. After the Reformation in 1537, the Diocese of the Faroe Islands was abolished and the cathedral of Saint Magnus left to be abandoned. In 1832, a rune stone left by Viking settlers was found there.

From 1997 onwards, the authorities decided to carry out phased restorations. These works avoided the collapse of the structure. We were granted the privilege of seeing it from the inside, of admiring the firmament framed in the stone of the great nave and, at its bottom, the “golden locker” which holds the relic of the Patron Saint of Iceland, Thorlak, along with relics of other Norse holiness.

The same authorities are hoping, with reluctance, that UNESCO will classify the cathedral as World Heritage.

Church of St. Olav, Kirkjubour, Streymoy, Faroe Islands

The church that succeeded the cathedral of Saint Magnus, the old cathedral that remains incomplete.

Meanwhile, right next door, almost on the sea and surrounded by the walled cemetery of Kirkjubour, the predecessor church of Saint Olav, completed before 1200 and thus the oldest church in the Faroes, until the so-called Reformation of 1537, stands immaculate. , the seat of the Catholic Bishop of the archipelago.

The descendants of the oldest people of Kirkjubour esteem their past as something almost sacred. Some of the seventy residents of the village now, many, owners of the nickname Patursson take this heritage to incredible extremes.

Tróndur Patursson, painter, glassmaker, sculptor and adventurer is one of the most renowned Faroese artists. When not occupied with his production and exhibitions, spaces, Tróndur, even devotes himself to expeditions to reconstitute the primordial history of the Faroe Islands.

In 1976, in partnership with Tim Severin, he carried out a transatlantic crossing in a replica of a leather-hulled boat named “Brendan” in honor of the Irish monk who is believed to have performed the same trip centuries before the vikings or Christopher Columbus.

In order to create a better image of these times of wild sailings, we walked along the rock jetty that extends from the southeast wing of the church of Saint Olav, into Hestfjordur.

From there, we admire the current village in a decent panoramic format, scattered at the foot of a rocky cliff that the short Estio had already had time to weed and sprinkle with yellow flowers. Carried by horses with shiny manes in the wind.

Kirkjubour, Streymoy, Faroe Islands

Horses on a pasture that the short summer has made leafy.

Returning to the grassy surroundings of the church of Saint Olav, we stroll among the tombs and tombstones of the old village, keeping an eye on the records of their past lives.

Since our days, to those who saw the birth of almost millenary Kirkjubour.

Mykines, Faroe Islands

In the Faeroes FarWest

Mykines establishes the western threshold of the Faroe archipelago. It housed 179 people but the harshness of the retreat got the better of it. Today, only nine souls survive there. When we visit it, we find the island given over to its thousand sheep and the restless colonies of puffins.
Kalsoy, Faroe Islands

A Lighthouse at the End of the Faroese World

Kalsoy is one of the most isolated islands in the Faroe archipelago. Also known as “the flute” due to its long shape and the many tunnels that serve it, a mere 75 inhabitants inhabit it. Much less than the outsiders who visit it every year, attracted by the boreal wonder of its Kallur lighthouse.
Tórshavn, Faroe Islands

Thor's Faroese Port

It has been the main settlement in the Faroe Islands since at least 850 AD, the year in which Viking settlers established a parliament there. Tórshavn remains one of the smallest capitals in Europe and the divine shelter of about a third of the Faroese population.
Vágar, Faroe Islands

The Lake that hovers over the North Atlantic

By geological whim, Sorvagsvatn is much more than the largest lake in the Faroe Islands. Cliffs with between thirty to one hundred and forty meters limit the southern end of its bed. From certain perspectives, it gives the idea of ​​being suspended over the ocean.
Oslo, Norway

A Overcapitalized Capital

One of Norway's problems has been deciding how to invest the billions of euros from its record-breaking sovereign wealth fund. But even immoderate resources don't save Oslo from its social inconsistencies.
Nesbyen to Flam, Norway

Flam Railway: Sublime Norway from the First to the Last Station

By road and aboard the Flam Railway, on one of the steepest railway routes in the world, we reach Flam and the entrance to the Sognefjord, the largest, deepest and most revered of the Scandinavian fjords. From the starting point to the last station, this monumental Norway that we have unveiled is confirmed.
Magma Geopark, Norway

A Somehow Lunar Norway

If we went back to the geological ends of time, we would find southwestern Norway filled with huge mountains and a burning magma that successive glaciers would shape. Scientists have found that the mineral that predominates there is more common on the Moon than on Earth. Several of the scenarios we explore in the region's vast Magma Geopark seem to be taken from our great natural satellite.
Flam a Balestrand, Norway

Where the Mountains Give In to the Fjords

The final station of the Flam Railway marks the end of the dizzying railway descent from the highlands of Hallingskarvet to the plains of Flam. In this town too small for its fame, we leave the train and sail down the Aurland fjord towards the prodigious Balestrand.
Stavanger, Norway

The Motor City of Norway

The abundance of offshore oil and natural gas and the headquarters of the companies in charge of exploiting them have promoted Stavanger from the Norwegian energy capital preserve. Even so, this city didn't conform. With a prolific historical legacy, at the gates of a majestic fjord, cosmopolitan Stavanger has long propelled the Land of the Midnight Sun.
Bergen, Norway

The Great Hanseatic Port of Norway

Already populated in the early 1830th century, Bergen became the capital, monopolized northern Norwegian commerce and, until XNUMX, remained one of the largest cities in Scandinavia. Today, Oslo leads the nation. Bergen continues to stand out for its architectural, urban and historical exuberance.
Balestrand, Norway

Balestrand: A Life Among the Fjords

Villages on the slopes of the gorges of Norway are common. Balestrand is at the entrance to three. Its settings stand out in such a way that they have attracted famous painters and continue to seduce intrigued travelers.
Thingvellir National Park, Iceland

The Origins of the Remote Viking Democracy

The foundations of popular government that come to mind are the Hellenic ones. But what is believed to have been the world's first parliament was inaugurated in the middle of the XNUMXth century, in Iceland's icy interior.
Rhinoceros, PN Kaziranga, Assam, India
Safari
PN Kaziranga, India

The Indian Monoceros Stronghold

Situated in the state of Assam, south of the great Brahmaputra river, PN Kaziranga occupies a vast area of ​​alluvial swamp. Two-thirds of the rhinocerus unicornis around the world, there are around 100 tigers, 1200 elephants and many other animals. Pressured by human proximity and the inevitable poaching, this precious park has not been able to protect itself from the hyperbolic floods of the monsoons and from some controversies.
Braga or Braka or Brakra in Nepal
Annapurna (circuit)
Annapurna Circuit: 6th – Braga, Nepal

The Ancient Nepal of Braga

Four days of walking later, we slept at 3.519 meters from Braga (Braka). Upon arrival, only the name is familiar to us. Faced with the mystical charm of the town, arranged around one of the oldest and most revered Buddhist monasteries on the Annapurna circuit, we continued our journey there. acclimatization with ascent to Ice Lake (4620m).
Itamaraty Palace Staircase, Brasilia, Utopia, Brazil
Architecture & Design
Brasilia, Brazil

Brasília: from Utopia to the Capital and Political Arena of Brazil

Since the days of the Marquis of Pombal, there has been talk of transferring the capital to the interior. Today, the chimera city continues to look surreal but dictates the rules of Brazilian development.
Full Dog Mushing
Adventure
Seward, Alaska

The Alaskan Dog Mushing Summer

It's almost 30 degrees and the glaciers are melting. In Alaska, entrepreneurs have little time to get rich. Until the end of August, dog mushing cannot stop.
self-flagellation, passion of christ, philippines
Ceremonies and Festivities
Marinduque, Philippines

The Philippine Passion of Christ

No nation around is Catholic but many Filipinos are not intimidated. In Holy Week, they surrender to the belief inherited from the Spanish colonists. Self-flagellation becomes a bloody test of faith
fortress wall of Novgorod and the Orthodox Cathedral of Hagia Sophia, Russia.
Cities
Novgorod, Russia

Mother Russia's Viking Grandmother

For most of the past century, the USSR authorities have omitted part of the origins of the Russian people. But history leaves no room for doubt. Long before the rise and supremacy of the tsars and the soviets, the first Scandinavian settlers founded their mighty nation in Novgorod.
Obese resident of Tupola Tapaau, a small island in Western Samoa.
Meal
Tonga, Western Samoa, Polynesia

XXL Pacific

For centuries, the natives of the Polynesian islands subsisted on land and sea. Until the intrusion of colonial powers and the subsequent introduction of fatty pieces of meat, fast food and sugary drinks have spawned a plague of diabetes and obesity. Today, while much of Tonga's national GDP, Western Samoa and neighbors is wasted on these “western poisons”, fishermen barely manage to sell their fish.
Correspondence verification
Culture
Rovaniemi, Finland

From the Finnish Lapland to the Arctic. A Visit to the Land of Santa

Fed up with waiting for the bearded old man to descend down the chimney, we reverse the story. We took advantage of a trip to Finnish Lapland and passed through its furtive home.
Bungee jumping, Queenstown, New Zealand
Sport
Queenstown, New Zealand

Queenstown, the Queen of Extreme Sports

In the century. XVIII, the Kiwi government proclaimed a mining village on the South Island "fit for a queen".Today's extreme scenery and activities reinforce the majestic status of ever-challenging Queenstown.
Iguana in Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico
Traveling
Yucatan, Mexico

The Sidereal Murphy's Law That Doomed the Dinosaurs

Scientists studying the crater caused by a meteorite impact 66 million years ago have come to a sweeping conclusion: it happened exactly over a section of the 13% of the Earth's surface susceptible to such devastation. It is a threshold zone on the Mexican Yucatan peninsula that a whim of the evolution of species allowed us to visit.
Women with long hair from Huang Luo, Guangxi, China
Ethnic
Longsheng, China

Huang Luo: the Chinese Village of the Longest Hairs

In a multi-ethnic region covered with terraced rice paddies, the women of Huang Luo have surrendered to the same hairy obsession. They let the longest hair in the world grow, years on end, to an average length of 170 to 200 cm. Oddly enough, to keep them beautiful and shiny, they only use water and rice.
Portfolio, Got2Globe, Best Images, Photography, Images, Cleopatra, Dioscorides, Delos, Greece
Got2Globe Photo Portfolio
Got2Globe Portfolio

The Earthly and the Celestial

Robben Island Island, Apartheid, South Africa, Portico
History
Robben Island, South Africa

The Island off the Apartheid

Bartolomeu Dias was the first European to glimpse Robben Island, when crossing the Cape of Storms. Over the centuries, the colonists turned it into an asylum and prison. Nelson Mandela left in 1982 after eighteen years in prison. Twelve years later, he became South Africa's first black president.
Playa Nogales, La Palma, Canary Islands
Islands
La Palma, Canary Islands

The "Isla Bonita" of the Canary Islands

In 1986 Madonna Louise Ciccone launched a hit that popularized the attraction exerted by a island imaginary. Ambergris Caye, in Belize, reaped benefits. On this side of the Atlantic, the palmeros that's how they see their real and stunning Canaria.
Maksim, Sami people, Inari, Finland-2
Winter White
Inari, Finland

The Guardians of Boreal Europe

Long discriminated against by Scandinavian, Finnish and Russian settlers, the Sami people regain their autonomy and pride themselves on their nationality.
Almada Negreiros, Roça Saudade, Sao Tome
Literature
Saudade, São Tomé, São Tomé and Principe

Almada Negreiros: From Saudade to Eternity

Almada Negreiros was born in April 1893, on a farm in the interior of São Tomé. Upon discovering his origins, we believe that the luxuriant exuberance in which he began to grow oxygenated his fruitful creativity.
Hikers on the Ice Lake Trail, Annapurna Circuit, Nepal
Nature
Annapurna Circuit: 7th - Braga - Ice Lake, Nepal

Annapurna Circuit – The Painful Acclimatization of the Ice Lake

On the way up to the Ghyaru village, we had a first and unexpected show of how ecstatic the Annapurna Circuit can be tasted. Nine kilometers later, in Braga, due to the need to acclimatize, we climbed from 3.470m from Braga to 4.600m from Lake Kicho Tal. We only felt some expected tiredness and the increase in the wonder of the Annapurna Mountains.
Sheki, Autumn in the Caucasus, Azerbaijan, Autumn Homes
Autumn
Sheki, Azerbaijan

autumn in the caucasus

Lost among the snowy mountains that separate Europe from Asia, Sheki is one of Azerbaijan's most iconic towns. Its largely silky history includes periods of great harshness. When we visited it, autumn pastels added color to a peculiar post-Soviet and Muslim life.
Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, Zambia
Natural Parks
Victoria Falls, Zimbabwee

Livingstone's Thundering Gift

The explorer was looking for a route to the Indian Ocean when natives led him to a jump of the Zambezi River. The falls he found were so majestic that he decided to name them in honor of his queen
Matukituki River, New Zealand
UNESCO World Heritage
Wanaka, New Zealand

The Antipodes Great Outdoors

If New Zealand is known for its tranquility and intimacy with Nature, Wanaka exceeds any imagination. Located in an idyllic setting between the homonymous lake and the mystic Mount Aspiring, it became a place of worship. Many kiwis aspire to change their lives there.
In elevator kimono, Osaka, Japan
Characters
Osaka, Japan

In the Company of Mayu

Japanese nightlife is a multi-faceted, multi-billion business. In Osaka, an enigmatic couchsurfing hostess welcomes us, somewhere between the geisha and the luxury escort.
Vietnamese queue
Beaches

Nha Trang-Doc Let, Vietnam

The Salt of the Vietnamese Land

In search of attractive coastlines in old Indochina, we become disillusioned with the roughness of Nha Trang's bathing area. And it is in the feminine and exotic work of the Hon Khoi salt flats that we find a more pleasant Vietnam.

Bride gets in car, traditional wedding, Meiji temple, Tokyo, Japan
Religion
Tokyo, Japan

A Matchmaking Sanctuary

Tokyo's Meiji Temple was erected to honor the deified spirits of one of the most influential couples in Japanese history. Over time, it specialized in celebrating traditional weddings.
Train Kuranda train, Cairns, Queensland, Australia
On Rails
Cairns-Kuranda, Australia

Train to the Middle of the Jungle

Built out of Cairns to save miners isolated in the rainforest from starvation by flooding, the Kuranda Railway eventually became the livelihood of hundreds of alternative Aussies.
Bright bus in Apia, Western Samoa
Society
Samoa  

In Search of the Lost Time

For 121 years, it was the last nation on Earth to change the day. But Samoa realized that his finances were behind him and, in late 2012, he decided to move back west on the LID - International Date Line.
Visitors at Talisay Ruins, Negros Island, Philippines
Daily life
Talisay City, Philippines

Monument to a Luso-Philippine Love

At the end of the 11th century, Mariano Lacson, a Filipino farmer, and Maria Braga, a Portuguese woman from Macau, fell in love and got married. During the pregnancy of what would be her 2th child, Maria succumbed to a fall. Destroyed, Mariano built a mansion in his honor. In the midst of World War II, the mansion was set on fire, but the elegant ruins that endured perpetuate their tragic relationship.
ice tunnel, black gold route, Valdez, Alaska, USA
Wildlife
Valdez, Alaska

On the Black Gold Route

In 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker caused a massive environmental disaster. The vessel stopped plying the seas, but the victim city that gave it its name continues on the path of crude oil from the Arctic Ocean.
Passengers, scenic flights-Southern Alps, New Zealand
Scenic Flights
Aoraki / Mount Cook, New Zealand

The Aeronautical Conquest of the Southern Alps

In 1955, pilot Harry Wigley created a system for taking off and landing on asphalt or snow. Since then, his company has unveiled, from the air, some of the greatest scenery in Oceania.
PT EN ES FR DE IT