- CHAPTER II -

THE FAEROES AND ICELAND

A FRESHENING NORTHERLY WIND and the onset of rain that evening seemed to betoken a dirty night. Not liking the prospect of beating north to Nolso fjord and Thorshavn, which was our destination, we ran off west into Skuo fjord where, at its head, there was the sheltered anchorage of Sands Vaag. The fjord did not provide the lee that we had expected. Fierce gusts swept down from the cliffs of Sando Island to the north, tearing the water white as they hit. The whole mainsail when full of wind is hard to tame so we rolled in several reefs in order to have things under control before reaching the anchorage. By 6 p.m., when we anchored off the village, the wind had risen to gale force, the rain streaming down. The anchorage is sheltered from all but a south-east wind when it would become untenable. We set an anchor watch.

The wind had eased by morning though still at north, and since it was a thick, mizzling day we lay at earth, as Jorrocks would say. There are some 600 people in Sands Vaag, a village remarkable in that not only several of the houses but also the fairly large church have roofs of turf. At this time of year the grass on the roofs was long enough for hay-making; the roofs rippled in the wind and one wondered whether they were ever scythed. The people live by sheep-farming and inshore fishing from open boats of traditional Norse lines.

It is strange that although the rise and fall of the tide at the Faeroes is but a few feet, the tidal stream runs with great force in the fjords and off the headlands. While carefully timing our departure to catch the north-going stream I stupidly overlooked the fact that the northgoing stream would also be flooding into Skuo fjord. The engine had to work hard until we reached the sea where we hoisted sail and had the tide under us all the way to Nolso fjord. Failure to keep charts and Pilot books bang up to date, as well as the neglecting of Notices to Mariners, is another fault of the amateur sailor, a fault that caused us some embarrassment off Thorshavn. Look where we might we could see no sign of the entrance marked by a beacon on the end of the breakwater. There seemed to be no end to the breakwater and consequently no entrance. To enquire is neither a disaster nor a disgrace so we hailed a youth cavorting about in a speed-boat. The breakwater was being extended, the beacon had been removed, and the new entrance temporarily marked by an inconspicuous buoy. All of which would no doubt have been noted on an up-to-date chart.

We picked up the same buoy that we had used on previous visits close to Westward Ho, a fine big ketch built at Hull in 1880. They were giving her a major refit and in consequence she looked a bit dishevelled. After rowing ashore and walking to the Customs Office I found when I got there that they had already been on board to seal our liquor store. Like Iceland, the Faeroes are nominally 'dry'. I had the impression that they had not been much taken by my hairy crew. Max who had started out hairy now looked like the Wild Man of Borneo himself, his eyes just discernible through a matted undergrowth of hair. He and Peter forthwith went ashore to stretch their legs on the hill behind the town where they bivouacked for the night. Though Max enjoyed life at sea his real love was for mountains, to climb them or to camp among them. Peter, half inclined to give up here, decided to wait and see how he fared on the next leg to Iceland.

Having taken on water at the fish-wharf we sailed on 30th June for Reykjavik going north-about round the top of the Faeroes. Next day as soon as we met a bit of wind and sea Peter succumbed, nor was Max quite himself, showing less than his usual interest in the pasta and duff that we had for supper-a little heavy on the carbohydrates, perhaps, but as the Chinese say, a well-filled stomach is the great thing, all else is luxury. One expects plenty of wind south-east of Iceland, the track followed by most of the depressions that cross the Atlantic. The harder blows seldom lasted long, which was just as well because we were short-handed. Owing to his inability to eat anything Peter was not up to doing much beyond his two-hour trick at the helm.

On 6th July, in thick drizzling weather, we were somewhere south of the Vestmannaejar, a group of islands and rocks twenty miles south of the Iceland coast, noted for volcanic activity. Heimaey, the fishing port of the Vestmannaejar, had recently been overwhelmed by a volcanic eruption. Also in this group is Surtsey, the volcanic island which suddenly appeared on 14th November 1963. 'Appeared' is hardly the word for its tumultuous birth, a birth attended by violent explosions hurling clouds of smoke, steam, ash, and pumice thousands of feet into the air. Only when the wind blew away some of this cloud could it be seen that a new island had emerged from the sea. Notices to Mariners of 3rd January 1964 had this warning note:

A submarine volcanic eruption has formed an island about half a mile in diameter and 250 ft. high in position 63° 18´ N. 20° 36´ W. Eruption is continuing and mariners are warned to keep clear of the area.

That mariners had to wait so long for this news to be published may have been owing to the Christmas holidays, or more likely it was in the hope that the island might disappear almost as suddenly as it had appeared; for unless and until lava begins to flow the existence of such islands may be only ephemeral. By April 1964 the island had grown to nearly a mile in length and 500 ft. in height. The Icelanders called it Surtsey and the volcano, which was still active, was called Surtur after the Fire Giant of Norse mythology, who comes from the south when the world ends to burn up everything. On passage to Iceland in Mischief in June 1964 two of us had landed on Surtsey, complete with cine-camera, and climbed to the rim of the volcano. The crater into which we had peered belched merely smoke and fumes instead of the cauldron of molten, fiery lava that we had hopefully expected to see. The whole place smelt like a coke oven, and one sensed, too, that the thing was still alive and growing. Our visit had been well or ill timed according to the point of view. Lava had only begun flowing on 4th April when rivers overflowed the crater to pour down into the sea. At the end of April the flow ceased and did not begin again until 9th July, a fortnight after our visit.

On 15th July 1965, still in Mischief, we again visited the area, guided from thirty miles away by a vast column of smoke. This came from a new island that had just erupted about a mile away from Surtsey which by then lay dormant. We hove-to to watch.

The vast white column of smoke ascended continuously, while every few minutes a fresh explosion flung a jet-black cloud of smoke, ash, and lumps of pumice, hundreds of feet into the air. Away to leeward, below the white smoke, curtains of ash drifted down to the sea. For an hour we lay and watched this remarkable sight until at length the activity subsided.

Having thus a proprietary interest in Surtsey I much wished to see it again in 1971. In the thick prevailing weather, however, I doubted our finding it even had there been a column of smoke to guide us; but by luck we spotted a lone rock which from its shape I recognised as one of the Vestmannaejar lying close to Surtsey, and soon after a big island, which was undoubtedly Surtsey, came into view. It had grown considerably in six years and the small island that had been so violent in 1965 had linked up with its parent. Except for some slight smoke or steam from four widely separated fumaroles there was no hint of activity. Scientists of various 'ologies are keeping a close watch on Surtsey to see how nature starts work on virgin territory. In 1964 we had noticed only some beer bottles.

Two days later, helped by light westerly winds, we sailed up the fifty-mile-wide bight of Faxafloi and between the piers into Reykjavik harbour. While we were handing the sails and wondering where to find a berth we were hailed from the shore and directed to one of the many steamer wharves, at that moment vacant. Usually a yacht is ignored and left to find its own accommodation from whence in short time it will be told to move. This seemed almost too civil and we found it was merely for the benefit of the Customs who wanted to seal our stores and go home, for it was getting late. A looker-on who spoke English then kindly drove me to the Harbourmaster's office where the duty-man, who seemed to be slightly tiddly, advised us to berth alongside Odinn, the outermost of four fishery protection vessels, the whole Icelandic navy in fact. There, he assured me, we would lie undisturbed throughout our stay (Odinn has recently figured conspicuously in the so-called cod war.) In fact, there were two smaller vessels outside Odinn so we secured to the outermost. The first disturbance came before breakfast to let Odinn out, and the second after breakfast to let yet another similar vessel in. Meantime the topsides of Avahur to which we were fast were being scaled with pneumatic hammers. So we looked round for a better and quieter hole and finally went alongside a tanker, Haforninn, moored at a nearby wharf and apparently out of commission. We were told that ten years previously, before the herring deserted Iceland waters or had been...