Mykines

Mykines (in Danish Myggenæs ) is the most Western island of the archipelago of the Féroé and is known to be the paradise of the birds.

Surface: 10,3 km ²
Inhabitants: 11 (permanent inhabitants in 2004)
Sheep: 1 ' 200
zip code: FO-388

There is one village on the island éponyme ( Mykines-Village , in Féringien: Mykines bygd ). Until the end of 2004, the island was its own commune, whereas from now on it is attached to that of Sørvágur.

Until first half of the 20th century still, Mykines was one of the largest communes of the archipelago. Because of its isolated situation it was depopulated always a little, so that currently only a dozen inhabitants resides at it permanently. On the other hand, in summer, a certain number of Féringiens come to live what is the village of their ancestors.

Geography and Tourism

Mykines is in the west of the island of Vágar. With this latitude, it is the most Western island of Europe. A pedestrian bridge (called Bridge of the Atlantic ) led the visitor towards the small island of Mykineshólmur.

Just as on the island of Suðuroy, one finds there the highest - between 20 and 50 meters - conglomerates of Basalte of all the archipelago. The cliffs of Mykines are among richest of many birds in the world.

History and Culture

A Legend féringienne tells that formerly Mykines seemed a floating island, and, that while looking at there more closely, one would have seen it leaving the floods a such gigantic whale. A courageous fisherman had then had to try to attract the aforementioned whale in his nets which it then threw to the manure. A large heap of manure was formed; thus the island had the name of " Nose of fumier". The real etymology of the name is of course dubious. A simple explanation would be the origin féringienne Mikið born (great spit of land). Another theory preaches an origin Celtique: muick-innate (the island-pig).

Botanical research shows that in 625 already one cultivated the oats on Mykines. It is supposed that Mykines belonged to the first colonies of Irish monks who discovered the Faroe Islands and settled there. It is also supposed that this mythical paradise of the birds is the same one as that which the Irish monk St Brendan (489-580) would have discovered according to what is reported in the writing Navigatio Sancti Brendani .

The legend says that the basalt columns of North would be the vestiges of a forest petrified formerly present on the island. The Norwegian king Olaf Haraldsson would have been informed of this forest and would have required on this subject enormous taxes of the inhabitants. The latter refused and claimed that there was no forest; consequently that one was transformed into stone. Although this king de Norvège never went to the Faroe Islands, it is honoured at the time of the national festival féringienne, the Ólavsøka.

Towards the end of the XVIe century at sea occurred the greatest catastrophe of the Histoire of the Faroe Islands, when approximately 50 boats of Mykines were found in very great difficulty after having been surprised by a terrible storm. They ran. About 200-300 men left their life there. These men represented all labor forces of the island. The exact year is not known but it is known only that the event intervened one 25. April.

In 1667 a Dutch boat was failed on the coast of Mykines. It could not be given to water and the goods on board were sold at the village. In 1750 a boat coming from Londonderry knew the same fate. The men escaped a catastrophe just and could run away themselves towards Saksun on the island of Streymoy.

In 1778 the inhabitants obtained a particular privilege on behalf of the State monopoly of the archipelago Like the inhabitants of the island of Suðuroy, they were treated more favorably because of the long way than they were to traverse to buy certain products. In 1819 a boat which derived without any person on board failed on Mykines. It was a at the very least welcome gift. Indeed, the island stripped of trees could not offer to the inhabitants the least structural timber. The Church of the village was destroyed in 1863 by a storm, rebuilt in 1877, again destroyed then rebuilt until in 1879. It is drawn up still today. In 1896, the school opened.

May 11th 1894 died the female Albatros with black eyebrows of Johannes Frederik Joensen (the father of the painter Sámal Joensen Mikines) which had lived here for exactly 34 years alone with the gannet , after she had been mislaid in the Faroe Islands. That had been up to that point the only albatross of the archipelago. This female always flew with the gannet and also followed their annual voyage. For the inhabitants, this animal was venerated as being the King of gannet ( Súlukongur ) (moreover the gannet itself is regarded as the King of the birds of the archipelago ) and consequently this term became simultaneously the word meaning albatross in féringien and for this reason appears in the dictionaries.

January 26th, 1895, occurred another shipwreck of a boat of Mykines where the whole of the crew perishes is six men. The Headlight of Mykineshólmur, charged to make at sea the traffic surer, was inaugurated in 1909.

October 1st 1911 the commune of Mykines became its clean " district". However on January 1st 2005, because of its low number of inhabitants, Mykines was attached to the commune of Sørvágur. In 1927, Mykines obtained its own swimming pool, a kind of basin to the free air being next to the brook which runs through the village. Thanks to the presence of the headlight, the island was the first of the archipelago to obtain the telephone, it in the year 1928.

March 7th 1934 occurred one énième maritime catastrophe. Both Launch S Nólsoy of Tórshavn and Neptun of Vestmanna probably ran with the accesses of the island because of a collision. The 43 men training the crew of the boats died, including eight originating in Mykines. A monument set up in the village points out this incidental tragedy, just as commemorative marble plates in the church. Sadness impregnating this time is admirably restored in the fabrics of the famous local painter Sámal Joensen Mikines.

Whereas the archipelago was occupied during the Second world war by the the United Kingdom, the headlights of the country were the subject of air raids on behalf of the German army. August 8th 1941, one of them caused several damage in the village without fortunately the death of a man not being to regret. The same year a mine at sea arrived in the port of Mykines and exploded. The hangars with boats suffered some damage. In 1943, the port was reinforced by a concrete mole being used as mole. In 1950, a second mole was built. In both cases the concrete necessary to this company was mixed with the hand. In 1961, was initiated the construction - which will last three decades - of an approach ramp to the port for boats. In 1968, one inaugurated the small powerplant.

The same year, the queen Margrethe II of Denmark visited the island in company of her husband the Prince Henrik of Denmark.

September 26th 1970 occurred the greatest air crash ever produced in the Faroe Islands before 1996, when a Icelandic plane coming from Bergen which made an approach on the airport of Vágar crushed because of the very bad weather. Eights of the 34 passengers perished. The rescue of the seriously wounded people proved extremely difficult. The survivors were saved by helicopter. A commemorative plaque was installed in the church in der Kirche, which was offered by the company of Icelandic aviation.

Since 1981, Mykines was regularly accessible by line from helicopter of the company of ferry Strandfaraskip Landsins. Later, it is the company " nationale" of aviation Atlantic Airways which took again this service. Danish the Prime Minister Anker Jørgensen was one of the first passengers, when it used these means of transport to join the island. In 1990, the ways of the village were tarred. June 20th, the queen Marguerite II and Prince Henrik visited the island for the second time. August 9th 1999, it was with the turn of the Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen and of his Greenlandic counterpart Jonathan Motzfeldt. In 2001 finally, the Icelandic president Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson discovered the island.

In 1940, 170 inhabitants still lived at the village and formed one of the most populated communes archipelago.

Mykines was the fatherland of the painter féringien Sámal Joensen Mikines (1906 - 1979). Its workshop Kristianshús is since 1992 an inn with the pretty blue walls with 40 beds. In 1938, the ethnologist Erich Wustmann spent its summer on Mykines while making a film there ( Tollkühne Färinger ) and by then publishing two books ( Tollkühne Färinger , 1939, and Paradies der Vögel , 1949), in which it describes the life of the 180 inhabitants of the time like that of the many birds which reside on the small island.

In December 2005, the commune of Sørvágur approved a consistent project in the construction of a new inn as of a museum of Article This museum will clarify in particular the life and the work of Sámal Joensen Mikines, on which the majority of the visitors often raise questions.

Birds

Mykines is because of its great wealth of birds of sea known by the ornithologists of the whole world. The buildings preserved the tradition of hunting at the birds. In the past, this activity could cause the death of certain people because of abrupt cliffs.

On the rocks shelling itself along the coast, one can see colonies of Cormoran S, the eroded layers of tuff representative of perfect places for it reproduction of the guilllemots of Troïl and the small penguins. The grass hillocks capping the rocks accommodate thousands of Macareux whose dejections constitute a formidable manure.

The gannet, the King of the birds féringiens , comes only in Mykines, to be exact on the small island of Mykineshólmur. It is told that when gannet goes on another island of the archipelago, it becomes dying. The gannet arrive in theory on January 25th on the small island and remain there until November 11th, i.e. when oisillons them become able to fly. In first half of the winter, they disappeared.

Films

Leif Hjortshøj (Prod.): På Færøerne . tilrettelæggelse Søren Ryge Petersen. - Søborg: Danmarks Radio operator, Dr.-Video, 1991. (3 VHS; 3rd concerns primarily. Mykines and hunting for the birds)

Literature

See also: Literature on Mykines

Erich Wustmann: Paradies der Vögel , Neumann-Verlag, 1949

Bonds

Gate deprived on Mykines (in English, German, Danish and féringien)

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