Welcome to the city that never wakes

GREETINGS once again from the Irish Examiner’s North Atlantic Bureau, a slightly less glamorous posting than, say, Washington, Beijing or Kinnegad.

One bar in Torshavn has a Faroese football jersey the size of a house decorating its gable end, and elsewhere in the town there are a few match posters stuck up in shop windows, but it would still be something of an over-statement to say that the Faroe Islands have been gripped by World Cup fever.

But then in this remote outpost of Europe, a self-governing part of Denmark that feels as distant from Copenhagen as do the Aran Islands, it’s difficult to imagine anybody getting too excited about anything. Even allowing for a certain loss in translation, one of the local English-language tourist brochures manages to locate the essence of the Faroes in a mixture of brutal honesty and wild hyperbole.

“Even though the islands might not look like much,” it says, “they contain everything and offer endless possibilities.”

Well, I’m not entirely sure about the latter - after two days here I’ve pretty much given up hope of finding Torshavn’s Chinatown.

But back to the tourist brochure for a snapshot of Faroese life bursting forth after a typically heavy North Atlantic squall: “All of a sudden everything goes quiet. The ocean is calm as far as the eye can see and the sun is burning away the last fog.

The sheep shake off the raindrops from their wool and continue where they left off.”

Incorrigible, those sheep.

As to what the mad-for-it locals get up to when the fog lifts? Again our helpful guide provides a clue: “Then there are all the little things such as shopping for groceries that may very well take three hours because of all the people that you want to talk to on the way.”

New York may be the city that never sleeps but Torshavn, apparently, is the city that never comes back with the messages.

Of course, it’s all too easy for the short-stay tourist to deal in glib superficialities.

And as a tribe which has endured far too much lazy, travel-writing caricature of the leprechaun, Guinness and donkey kind, we Irish should be more sensitive than most about falling into the cliché trap when off on foreign manoeuvres.

But, really, there can be no getting away from it - the Faroe Islands will never be in any danger of being mistaken for Ibiza. (Although there have already been travel company reports that, when the draw for Group 4 was originally made, some geographically challenged members of the Green Army were intent on packing shades, shorts and sandals, having managed in their initial excitement to confuse the Faroes with a fanciful hybrid of Faro and the Azores.

Of course, there’s much more to the Faroe Islands than halibut, puffin and fog, but even the locals will admit that the essential appeal of the place is all to do with its stunning natural beauty and tranquil way of life.

Torshavn, which boasts of being the smallest capital in the world, is a pretty little harbour town of brightly coloured houses, winding, hilly streets and an abundance of greenery.

Contributing handsomely to the latter here are a few striking examples of the Faroese equivalent of the west of Ireland thatched roof - except that in these parts it’s green grass which provides the cover, adding a pleasingly surreal quality to our surroundings.

Even the modern Irish team hotel overlooking the town has a grass thatch finish on top.

Some of these verdant roofs are flat, but others are sloping.

Which begs the question - how do they mow them? Carefully, would seem to be the best guess.

But it’s the grass at bumpy ground-level in the 7,000 capacity Torsvollur Stadium which will be of concern to the Irish team tonight as it seeks to restore a semblance of sanity to Group 4.

The stakes for Brian Kerr’s team are obvious but for the Faroese there is the not inconsiderable matter of local pride and the desire to further increase their profile as an international team.

Bearing in mind that the Irish were already competing in their first World Cup finals in 1990 when the Faroe Islands were playing only their first international match, it’s clear they have come a long way in a short space of time.

This evening, close to one-seventh of the entire population of the Faroes will cram into their cosy little ground to cheer on the boys in white. The atmosphere will be about as feverish as it ever gets in this haunting, windblown spot - and with up to 700 visiting fans expected to offer resistance, Brian Kerr won’t be alone here in hoping that his boys don’t catch cold.