Mystery and mystic are apt words for a place that uses its remoteness to retain itself, a green treeless archipelago of rocky, waterfall-laced isles far removed from the 21st century that penetrates the rest of Scandinavia. Tórshavn, the Faroese capital on Streymoy (“island of currents”) and Europe’s smallest capital, is home to 40 percent of the country’s 48,000 people. The other 60 percent are scattered throughout the islands in dozens of tiny medieval grass-roofed settlements, some so old and weather-beaten as to forever resist change, their daily winds resonant with isolation.
