BREAKING BREAD
On their farm in the Faroe Islands, where the sheep roam the hillsides and the chickens put themselves to bed, Óli and Anna Rubeksen dish up a feast of local ingredients ranging from rhubarb to lamb hearts
The fog rolls over the fjord, obscuring the island across the water. The air fills with a light moisture that clings to grass, clothes, skin, hair. The sheep dart around, their wool gathering barely visible droplets as they dodge Brim, the border collie chasing them around the misty hillside with the tentative authority of a supply teacher. Brim’s a little out of practice, Óli tells me — another of their dogs usually does the job these days — but she eventually manages to corral a few sheep, leading them down the slope.
Óli Rubeksen has been shepherding here in the Faroe Islands since 1995, when he and his wife Anna took over running her family farm — the ninth generation to do so. And while they both have other jobs — Anna as a nurse and Óli as a social worker — the farm is central to their lives. The meat from the sheep they rear is an almost daily part of their diet, along with eggs from their hens and the produce they grow in a small fruit-and-veg patch. And it’s all served at the regular supper club the couple run from their home to supplement their income. What they don’t produce themselves is sourced from elsewhere in the Faroes whenever possible. “You have to be sustainable, green and use local food,” says Óli.
Hugged by the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic, this little archipelago — home to around 54,000 people — is a self-governing part of Denmark, but it lies closer to Shetland than to Copenhagen, and has a language, identity and landscape quite distinct from that of the Danes. Connected by a series of tunnels and ferries, the islands are scattered with fjords, waterfalls and craggy mountains carved out by long-extinct volcanoes. Along the salt-and-kelp-scented shoreline, northern fulmars tuck themselves into cliff faces, oystercatchers swoop over the sea, and unseen snipes announce themselves with a distinctive call that sounds like bottles being filled with water. And from the highest peaks to the water’s edge are sheep, the farming of which is intertwined with Faroese culture. Ovines outnumber people, woollen clothing is ubiquitous, and owning a flock is a common side hustle.
Dressed in a coarse woolly jumper and jeans tucked into knitted socks tucked into boots, Óli is every inch the Faroese farmer. He shows me around his property in the village of Velbastaður, a 15-minute drive from the capital, Tórshavn. Here, in a small, enclosed field just downhill from the Rubeksens’ home, live a handful of the family’s flock of 150 sheep and 140 lambs. The rest, Óli tells me, are “living freely in the mountains. They know where they belong — th
