Faroe Islands in the Cold War

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As in the world wars, the Faroe Islands held an important strategic position in the North Atlantic between Great Britain, Norway and Iceland.
The radar station on the Sornfelli (749 m) serves not only as an early warning system for NATO , but also for air traffic control in civil aviation .

The Faroe Islands played in the Cold War a strategic role in the North Atlantic as a radar station and Dodge port of NATO.

Starting position

After the British occupation of the Faroe Islands in the Second World War 1940-45 with their own provisional government (the motherland Denmark was occupied by Germany), they were given internal autonomy in 1948 , with their own state government and the old Løgting as parliament. Thus the Faroe Islands were no longer a Danish office, but regulated their internal affairs themselves, while u. a. Foreign and security policy continued to be made in Copenhagen.

NATO membership

When Denmark joined NATO as a founding member in 1949 , the Faroese Løgting had already decided to remain neutral. This decision was renewed again after accession. Of course, this could not be more than a declaration of will and was unilaterally clarified by the Danish side on December 3, 1952 , when the Faroe Islands' membership of NATO was announced in the daily newspaper Dimmalætting by the Reich Ombudsman .

Already in July 1951 the founding of the Tórshavner Naval District was announced (today Færøernes Kommando ).

In 1955, Løgmaður Kristian Djurhuus granted NATO the right to use Skálafjørður as a natural escape port - including for nuclear submarines. 1956-59 there were secret negotiations between the Faroese government on the one hand and NATO and the Danish government on the other. In 1958 the national government allowed NATO to build the radar station on Sornfelli near Mjørkadalur . It was part of the advance warning system that extended from Canada via Greenland , Iceland and the Faroe Islands to Scotland .

In return, NATO promised to build Highway 10 (Oyggjarvegurin), which would connect the capital Tórshavn with the north of Streymoy by land . In the same year it was decided to build the LORAN-C station in Eiði . The construction work was confirmed retrospectively on April 25, 1959 by Løgting.

The crews of the NATO facilities were (and are) basically members of the Danish armed forces .

Economy, social affairs, culture

The Cold War also had a social impact. After the uprising of Klaksvík in 1955 calling for USA from Denmark to improve the social situation in the Faroe Islands. The disputes were therefore seen not only as a local dispute over national independence, but also as a class struggle. Because of its Faroe Islands policy, Denmark then had to pay fewer membership fees to NATO, because the more money Denmark invested in the Faroe Islands, the more the desire for national sovereignty was weakened, which was in the interests of the USA.

While the Faroe Islands were still experiencing an economic crisis in the 1950s with a lot of unemployment, poverty and emigration, they experienced an economic miracle in the 1960s. Last but not least, the Faroe Islands also got part of the Marshall Plan to renew the fishing industry. Parallel to the creation of the welfare state in Denmark from 1960, efforts were made to build up the Faroe Islands as well. Denmark's grant to the Faroe Islands quadrupled in 1960–69. In 1965/66, subsidies from Denmark made up 45% of the Faroese budget.

Peace movement

In 1976 there was a large demonstration against the NATO station in Mjørkadalur . The reason was an interview in a Danish newspaper, where a certain "Major Jensen" said that the main task of the base was to hold down a possible " 5th column of Moscow" in the Faroe Islands, and that the station was therefore an established target. The majority of the demonstrators came from the spectrum that successfully prevented the Faroe Islands from joining the European Community in 1974. The Fylkingin móti NATO peace movement emerged , the goal of which was the abolition of all NATO institutions in the Faroe Islands and the Faroe Islands' exit from NATO.

In the early 1980s, the peace movement called itself Fólk fyri friði and organized peace marches and peace conferences. Another goal of the peace movement was to tear down enemy images in the people. Mostly on Whit Monday there was a peace demonstration from Mjørkadalur down Oyggjarvegur to Tórshavn, where a rally was held in front of the Løgtingshaus.

In 1984 the Løgting decided - not least under the influence of this peace movement - to declare the Faroe Islands a nuclear-weapon-free zone . At the same time there were various Løgting decisions against the military stations in the Faroe Islands, which was of great importance in the political history of the Faroe Islands, as these decisions were directed against the security sovereignty of Copenhagen over the islands.

When the US warship Mc Cloy 1038 entered Tórshavn in 1987 , there was a large demonstration against it because it was suspected that it had nuclear weapons on board. The Løgmaður also officially protested with reference to the nuclear-weapon-free zone. But there was also a counter-demonstration under the motto "NATO secures peace".

During this second phase of the Cold War, the ideological clashes in the Faroe Islands were unusually fierce, and there were many trials of Faroes against each other for defamation. While all Nordic countries boycotted the apartheid regime in South Africa as early as the early 1980s, it was not until 1988 in the Faroe Islands when the Løgting was finally able to decide on the boycott.

It was not until 1999 that the first documentation on the history of the Faroe Islands in the Cold War, the Black Book ( Svartabók ), came out after previously secret documents had been disclosed.

literature

See also