Cold, remote and poor in women: A portrait of life in the Faroe Islands
Written by Oscar Holland, CNN
In her stunning images of the Faroe Islands, a remote archipelago between Iceland and her native Norway, photographer Andrea Gjestvang depicts islanders and livelihoods as harsh and unforgiving as the windswept landscape.
Fishing trawlers sail through cold seas. Clouds roll over rugged mountains and cliff-top villages. Clothing and boots are stained with the blood of slaughtered livestock and sea creatures. Used tools often hang on the walls of traditional wooden houses.
The innate connection between the Faroe Islands and their surroundings is woven through Gjestvang’s new book about the islands, Atlantic Cowboy. Portraits appear alongside dramatic landscape shots that reiterate the harsh conditions of the Faroe Islands and the remoteness of settlements dwarfed by neighboring mountains.
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“I’m not a landscape photographer, but just like when I portray people, I’m looking for moods when photographing a landscape,” Gjestvang said during a video interview. “I try to look at the landscape as a kind of portrait as well, or as something that somehow expresses feelings.”
Gjestvang’s photos also reveal another challenging aspect of life in the Faroe Islands, which may have been inhabited by Irish monks for the first time in the 6th century: their subjects are almost exclusively male.
Faroe Islander Hjalmar is pictured slaughtering sheep on a farm in the village of Kaldbaksbotnur. Photo credit: Andrea Gjestvang/GOST Books
Although much of the Faroese economy revolves around physically demanding jobs traditionally held by men, the islands’ fishing industry alone employs 15% of the workforce. Gjestvang visited her several times a year for a period of six years, turning her lens on the life and communities of the islands’ unmarried males. They are shown plucking the feathers of seabirds, caring for goats or hauling the carcass of a slaughtered pilot whale ashore. (Whale meat was once an important part of the Faroese diet, though the country’s controversial whale and dolphin hunt is now sparking global outrage.)
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Young women, on the other hand, often choose to study or work in Copenhagen (Faroe Islands are part of the Kingdom of Denmark) or elsewhere in Europe.
Many never return, Gjestvang learned. According to World Bank data, in 2021 only 48.2% of the self-governing country’s population was female, making it one of the places with the greatest gender imbalance in Europe. That corresponds to over 107 men for every 100 women, or a deficit of around 2,000 women.
Gjestvang has also captured the rugged geography of the Faroe Islands. Photo credit: Andrea Gjestvang/GOST Books
That number may not seem huge, but with the 17 inhabited islands only home to around 53,000 people — and the gender gap more pronounced among younger adults — it has significant societal implications. Faroese Prime Minister Aksel V. Johannesen said that “skewed gender demographics” were among the “biggest challenges” facing his government when it took office in 2015.
For Gjestvang, this dynamic provided an “interesting opportunity to do a project about men,” she said. “As a photographer, I get a lot of commissions to do stories about women’s health and women’s issues – which is very important – but I was curious to take my camera in a different direction.”
Evolving Masculinity
The economic prospects for Faroese women now look rosier than they did in the 1990s, when thousands of people left the country amid an economic meltdown caused in part by dwindling fish stocks. Fueled by a growing tourism and service sector, GDP per capita has tripled since 2000 and is now on par with the United States. The country’s government has invested in gender equality and employment initiatives in recent years, hoping to make the islands more attractive to women. “They tried to make it a little easier to be a single mother,” Gjestvang added, citing the expanded offering at the capital’s university and the increasing acceptance of remote work due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
A joinery in the capital Tórshavn. Photo credit: Andrea Gjestvang/GOST Books
The photographer said the lack of women was not evident in the Faroese capital, Tórshavn, although it became “quite visible” when traveling to smaller villages. The social life of these coastal communities often revolves around ports, and she spent time frequenting the informal hangouts where men “hang out, drink beers and talk.”
But Gjestvang’s sensitive portraits also offer a candid snapshot of men in their own homes. Some sit or lie alone on sofas, while others are depicted with pets or female relatives. In accompanying interviews, including in her book, her themes opened up to the realities of life in a male-dominated society. “I pray to God that I find a wife,” an unmarried man told her. “But maybe he doesn’t hear me.”
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However, the photographer believes that most of the men she documented were not lonely – thanks in part to the close ties of Faroese families. As a 40-year-old told her, “Strong family ties become a substitute. I already have a family myself, although I don’t have a wife or children. When you have a large, close-knit family, you have the freedom to be yourself and find peace with it.”
“A man I interviewed told me that the Faroe Islands are the perfect playground for men,” added the photographer, explaining the title of her book. (“Atlantic Cowboy” is a term borrowed from a 1997 book of the same name and later used by Firouz Gaini, a professor of anthropology at the University of the Faroe Islands who studies the nation’s gender dynamics and wrote a foreword to Gjestvang.)
“It’s a place where you can fish and be outside and the freedom is kind of endless,” Gjestvang said.
Faroe Islander Fróði rests on the carcass of a pilot whale after a ‘grindadráp’, or whale hunt, a controversial tradition that often sparks worldwide outrage. Photo credit: Andrea Gjestvang/GOST Books
Decades of one-sided demographics have meanwhile contributed to a national identity that continues to celebrate the virtues of strength and steadfastness, the photographer added.
“Being strong and taking care of yourself and your family was an important value,” she said. “The idea of the strong man is very present and it shows… That kind of masculinity has garnered a lot of respect and has been coveted.
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“I think that of course affected society, although I would like to say that Faroese women are also very strong – they are tough too.”
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