Mykines
| Mykines | |
|---|---|
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| Waters | Atlantic Ocean |
| Archipelago | Faroe Islands |
| Geographical location | 62 ° 6 '34 " N , 7 ° 36' 27" W |
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| surface | 10.3 km² |
| Highest elevation | Knúkur 560 m |
| Residents | 9 (2018) <1 inh / km² |
| main place | Mykines |
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Mykines [ ˈmiːʰtʃɪˌneːs ] ( Danish name Myggenæs , literally perhaps dung nose in the sense of " guano headland" or Faroese Mikið nes "large headland") is the westernmost island of the Faroe Islands and is known as the "bird paradise". At the same time it has the status of an "outer island" (see Útoyggjar ').
- Sheep: 1200
- Postal code: FO-388
- Municipality : Sørvágs kommuna (since January 1, 2005)
| year | Residents |
|---|---|
| 1769 | 61 |
| 1870 | 114 |
| 1890 | 154 |
| 1925 | 179 |
| 1940 | 170 |
| 2004 | 11 |
| 2018 | 9 |
There is only one place on Mykines, the village of the same name (also called Mykines village, Faroese called Mykines bygd to distinguish it). By the end of 2004, the island formed its own municipality, which has since been dissolved and merged with Sørvágur.
Mykines was one of the largest municipalities in the Faroe Islands until the first half of the 20th century. Due to its isolated location, the island has been increasingly abandoned, so that only nine people live there all year round. The population figure in the official statistics is slightly higher, as it also includes those who have registered their main residence there but do not live there all year round.
geography
Mykines is west of the island of Vágar . At this latitude it is the westernmost place in Europe. A pedestrian bridge (the so-called "Atlantic Bridge") leads to the small island of Mykineshólmur in the west .
Like Suðuroy , it is made entirely from the oldest layers of basalt in the Faroe Islands. The Mykines bird cliffs are considered to be the richest in the Faroe Islands.
The eastern part of the island consists of two large valleys: Borgardalur and Kálvadalur. To the north there is also the so-called Korkadalur, where you can see basalt columns called steinskógir (stone fortresses). The valley floors are located in a steep mountain landscape, where the highest peak is the 560 meter high Knúkur. From this corner, which separates the east from the west of the island, the land slowly drops to the west, where the town of Mykines is located.
tourism
There are no cars on the island, but there are some tractors and quads . The island is regularly approached by boat from Sørvágur . There is also a helicopter service from Atlantic Airways to Vágar Airport . Due to the very changeable weather, Mykines is often cut off from the outside world when neither the boat nor the helicopter can land due to the surf at the poorly fortified pier or the fog.
The Kristianshús is the only guest house on site. It is the former studio of Sámal Joensen-Mikines , the first Faroese painter. There is also the only café in Kristianshús.
History and culture
A Faroese legend says that Mykines was once a floating island that, on closer inspection, turned out to be a giant whale. A brave fisherman is said to have tried to drive this whale out of its fishing grounds by throwing manure at it. This then resulted in a dung heap, and so the island with the name ("dung nose"). The real etymology of the name is not certain. A simple explanation would be Mikið nes (large headland) in Faroese. Another theory suggests a Celtic origin: muick-innes (pig island).
Botanical studies have shown that oats were already being cultivated on Mykines around the year 625 . It is assumed that Mykines was one of the first settlements of the Irish monks who discovered and settled the Faroe Islands. It is also assumed that the mythical bird paradise, which the Irish monk St. Brendan (489-580) discovered according to the story Navigatio Sancti Brendani, is identical to Mykines.
According to legend, the basalt columns in the north are a petrified forest that is said to have stood here earlier. The Norwegian King Olaf the Saint is said to have learned about the forest and to have demanded higher taxes from the residents. They refused, claiming that there was no forest, and so it turned to stone. Nevertheless, and although Olav has never been to the Faroe Islands, he is honored on the Faroese national holiday, Ólavsøka .
Towards the end of the 16th century, the largest maritime disaster in Faroese history occurred when around 50 boats from Mykines got into distress and sank in a sudden storm. Around 200 to 300 men lost their lives in the process. They were all able-bodied men on the island. The exact year is not known, only the date, April 25th.
In 1667 a Dutch ship ran aground on the coast of Mykines. It could no longer be made afloat, and so the goods on board were resold on site. In 1750 a ship from Londonderry ran aground on Mykines. The men narrowly escaped a catastrophe and were then able to save themselves at Saksun on Streymoy .
In 1778, the residents of Tórshavn received a special privilege from the monopoly trade : because of the long journey, they were treated just as preferentially when shopping as the customers from Suðuroy before . In 1819 a ghost ship ran aground on Mykines. It was a welcome gift to lumber on the treeless island.
Mykines Church was destroyed by a storm in 1863, rebuilt, and again demolished in 1877 and rebuilt by 1879. This building is still standing today. In 1896 the local school was built.
On May 11, 1894, the female black- browed albatross was hunted by Johannes Frederik Joensen ( Sámal Mikines' father ), who had lived here alone among the gannets for exactly 34 years after it got lost in the Faroe Islands. It was the only albatross on the Faroe Islands so far. The female always flew with the northern gannet and followed their annual migration. The animal was revered by the inhabitants as the "king of the northern gannet" ( Súlukongur ) (the northern gannet itself is called the king of the Faroese birds), which has since become the general Faroese word for the albatross and is used in dictionaries. It was only after his death that it turned out to be this Antarctic bird.
On January 26, 1895, another serious accident occurred at sea in which all six men of a Mycenaean boat remained at sea. The lighthouse on Mykineshólmur , which was supposed to make navigation safer, was inaugurated in 1909.
On October 1, 1911, Mykines Municipality was founded as a separate district. It should last until January 1, 2005, when it was merged with that of Sørvágur due to a lack of population . In 1927, the municipality bought its own swimming pool , an open-air pool by the stream that flows through the village. It was the first ever in the country. In 1928, thanks to the lighthouse, the place got a telephone.
On March 7, 1934, another sea disaster occurred in the Faroe Islands. The two sloops Nólsoy from Tórshavn and Neptun from Vestmanna probably sank off Iceland after a collision. All 43 crew members on both ships died, eight of them from Mykines. A monument in the village reminds of them as well as the marble plaques in the church. Some paintings by the famous local painter Sámal Mikines tell of the sadness of that time .
When the Faroe Islands were occupied by Great Britain in World War II , the country's lighthouses were exposed to air attacks by the German Wehrmacht. On August 8, 1941, such an attack also caused various damage in the village. There were no deaths to complain about. The following year, a sea mine drifted into the port of Mykines and exploded. Property damage occurred to the boathouses. In 1943 the harbor was secured with a concrete pier as a breakwater. It was followed by the second breakwater in 1950. In both cases, the concrete required for this was mixed by hand. In 1961 the three-year construction of the port's boat ramp began. In 1968 the local power plant was inaugurated.
In the same year Queen Margrethe visited the island with her husband Prince Henrik of Denmark .
On September 26, 1970, the Faroe Islands' worst aviation disaster up to 1996 occurred when an Icelandic plane coming from Bergen crashed on Mykines due to bad weather while approaching Vágar airport . Eight of the 34 passengers perished. Rescuing the seriously injured was extremely difficult due to the weather. The survivors were then rescued by helicopter. A memorial plaque in the church, donated by the Icelandic airline, commemorates this accident.
Mykines has been served by scheduled helicopters from the Strandfaraskip Landsins ferry company since 1981 . The national airline Atlantic Airways now operates this service. Danish Prime Minister Anker Jørgensen was one of the first passengers when he visited the island in this way on August 20th. In 1990 the roads in Mykines were paved. On June 20, Queen Margrethe and Prince Henrik visited the island for the second time. On August 9, 1999, the Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen and his Greenlandic colleague Jonathan Motzfeldt paid a visit. In 2001, Iceland’s President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson stayed here.
In 1940 the place still had 170 inhabitants and at that time was one of the more populous communities in the Faroe Islands.
Mykines was the home of the Faroese painter Sámal Joensen Mikines (1906–1979). His workshop Kristianshús has been a guest house with up to 40 beds since 1992. In 1938, the German naturalist and ethnologist Erich Wustmann spent a summer on Mykines and published a film ( Tollkühne Färinger ) and two books ( Tollkühne Färinger, 1939, and Paradies der Vögel, 1949) about life on the then 180 The island with its inhabitants and the Faroese bird life are described.
In December 2005, Sørvágur Municipality approved a plan to build a new guest house and art museum on Mykines. The art museum is supposed to put special emphasis on the life and work of Sámal Joensen-Mikines, about whom the visitors ask again and again.
Bird life
Mykines is known among ornithologists for its abundance of sea birds. The locals maintain the tradition of bird trapping . In the past, this has repeatedly resulted in fatal accidents on the steep cliffs.
Shag colonies are found on the coastal cliffs , while the eroded layers of tufa are perfect nesting sites for guillemots and razorbills . In the grassy slopes above the bird cliffs thousands have of puffins their burrows. In addition, the following bird species are found on the island: skuas ( great sku ), eider duck and the fulmar .
The northern gannet , the king of the Faroese birds , is only found on the Mykineshólmur in the west. It is said that if a gannet is seen on another island in the Faroe Islands, it is dying. The gannets arrive at the Holm on January 25th and stay here until November 11th, when the young birds have fledged. In the first half of winter they disappeared.
The puffin usually arrives on April 27th each year.
Movies
- Leif Hjortshøj (Prod.): På Færøerne . tilrettelæggelse Søren Ryge Petersen. - Søborg: Danmarks Radio , DR-Video, 1991. (3 VHS tapes. Part 3 is exclusively about Mykines and the bird trapping there)
literature
Literature about Mykines (external)
- Erich Wustmann: Birds paradise. Neumann-Verlag, 1949.
Web links
- Private Mykines Portal (German)
- Faroeislands.dk: Mykines (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Nudansk Ordbog (1974)
- ^ Christian Petersen: Tales from the far-flung Faroes. In: bbc.co.uk. British Broadcasting Corporation , June 2, 2018, accessed June 2, 2018 .
