“Auks at two o’clock!”

“Incoming sea parrots!”

They came in us from out of the sun. The flypast was one black and white blur. The wind howled and made us wobble on the clifftop above the crashing sea.

“Flying friars at three o’clock!” shouted Gunnur, my Faroese ghillie or hunting attendant, pointing towards the sea stacks.

Another wave whooshed past again in a flurry of 400 wing beats per minute.

Holding on to his friend Gunnur, who in turn clung onto their friend Arni, Alfred lent out from the rocks to try to bag something for the freezer.

After only 20 minutes I was freezing cold, flagging fast and beginning to curse my fleyginhgarstong fishing net, which was just full of air.

Just as one day every woman must make peace with the realisation that she cannot be beautiful forever, so every man must eventually realise he may never make a rugged, proto-Nordic outdoor type. Or a manly sky fisherman.

I waved my aerial fishing rod in surrender.

After the breeding season is over, it is legal to hunt puffins in the Faroe Islands.

It is an ancient lifestyle in the north Atlantic, where puffin is on most menus, along with blubber, whale and mutton.

The Faroes call their home ‘Foroyar’ – sheep island – although there are far more puffins around.

“We never take birds who are carrying food back for their young. We never deplete naturally renewable colonies, ” said Gunnur, conscious that sky fishing, or seabird fowling, is controversial.

A marina in Vestmanna, which is known for its sea cliffs.A marina in Vestmanna, which is known for its sea cliffs.

“Hunting is 300 years old and is now responsible and sustainable,” he went on.

“Hunting presents no threat compared to those of pollution and global warning. Craigleith island in Scotland is threatened by a mallow tree that makes it hard for the birds to access their burrows. Gulls, skuas and rats are the puffin’s main predators. Not man.”

Our elongated lacrosse-stick-like nets slung over our shoulders, we went back into town empty-netted.

“It’s just about preserving our culture. Puffins are like your pheasant and grouse,” said Gunnur, by way of further unnecessary justification.

In 2008, British chef Gordon Ramsay was criticised for sky fishing in the Faroes. He thought puffin meat tastes like gamey liver.

The Faroese islanders take puffins very seriously. They put them on their stamps and in their ovens. They like to eat them smoked, roasted and stewed, or stuffed with sweet cake dough and raisins.

They also stuff them with sawdust and sell them as souvenirs. Taxidermied tammie norries – as the Scots call them – make very reliable door stops. They are sold in their eviscerated state as souvenirs.

Just as one day every woman must make peace with the realisation that she cannot be beautiful forever, so every man must eventually realise that he may never make a rugged, proto-Nordic type

Lundy Island is probably named after puffins – the Norse called them lundi. They are officially termed Fraternula arctica.

“Because they look like monks the way they stand,” explained Arni at dinner.

My scruples were playing up so I had skerpikjot – wind-dried lamb.

Kirkjubour village has existed since the days of Irish missionary monks.Kirkjubour village has existed since the days of Irish missionary monks.

“You know when a Faroese girl likes you,” he winked and arched a brow. “She invites you back to her hjallur. Her drying shed.”

The others ate puffin and raesttkyot – matured fish. Other specialities are garnatalg, Fareoese offal and black pilot whale steak, traditionally served with brined blubber.

The Faroes must be the only country on earth that has stamps commemorating cod heads, sheep lobes, bacon, potatoes, rhubarb and orcas.

The small talk continued. Puffins are only 10 centimetres high.

“Their beaks and feet are their erogenous zones,” said Alfred. “They change colour and increase in size in mating season.”

“A baby puffin is called a puffling,” added Arni, smiling.

Puffins have been around a very long time – ever since the islands were first settled by the Norwegians during the reign of Harold Finehair in the ninth century.

They predate the Celtic hermits who lived on the bleak, windswept islands before the Vikings came and evicted them.

The island’s other wildlife is its taxi drivers, who are perhaps the most fearless and skillful in the world.

A momentary loss of concentration and your car can easily veer off the mountain roads and plunge down a cliff ending up floundering in a trout pen or impaled on a cod-drying rack.

The Faroe Islands are still not very touristy. They are not an obvious or orthodox holiday destination.

Most visitors are still stopover passengers on the long and very bilious journey across the north Atlantic to Iceland. They use the Faroes as somewhere to be seasick.

As far as scenic specks on the map of the world go, the Faroes are out on their own. And they are not as sparsely populated as many might think.

Fifty thousand people now live on them: mostly fishermen, craftsmen, boat builders, shopkeepers , trout and salmon farmers.

Most visitors are stopover passengers on the way to Iceland

The Faroes – in the heart of the Gulf Stream northwest of Scotland and roughly halfway between Iceland and Norway – are a self-governing community under the Danish Crown, but recent oil fields have strengthened their autonomous leanings.

Arriving in the Faroes is an experience that you – and particularly your stomach and lower vertebrae – will never forget.

Bridges and tunnels link some sections of the islands together.Bridges and tunnels link some sections of the islands together.

Vagar airport has one of the smallest runways in the world and planes screech to a halt within 50 metres of touching down and only 40 metres from the sea.

For this reason the planes’ safety belts are more like cummerbunds.

The Faroese are very proud of their squalls. The national anthem is a blustering gust of wind registering in the region of four on the Beaufort scale.

The weather is changeable, alternating from wet to very wet and back to wet again in a matter of hours. A day can start foggy and by midday be foggier still. But when the sun shines, the whole place does.

But nobody goes to the Faroes to lie on the beach. Head colds are more common than tans. They go because it is somewhere different. Dramatically different. And picturesque no matter the weather.

Beside the Faroes, the Greek islands and even the Western Isles of Scotland seem fake; giving only an illusion of isolation and real island life.

Out there you get the real thing. But they are not a budget destination.

It is wise to carry a lot of money when you walk around the capital, Torshavn, not least because a pocketful of loose change will help weigh you down against the strong wind.

Torshavn can be explored at a sedate amble in 30 minutes. The Lagthing – the world’s oldest existing parliament – is its one and only claim to historical fame.

In spring and summer residents mow the grass roofs of some of the older houses.

Just south is the pretty village of Kirkjubour, which has existed since the days of the Irish missionary monks. In the Middle Ages it was the islands’ cultural and spiritual centre.

Elsewhere you have your pick of such typically Faroese tourist traps such as fish processing plants, picturesque fishing villages, ancient cairn trails, enormous glacial peaks geological mutations, the odd Viking settlement and, of course, more stunning volcanic basalt than you can point a phone camera at.

There is also the Fjallavatn mountain lake and Bossdalsfossur waterfall.

Bird-watching is more popular than bird catching. There are more than five million seabirds residing in the 18-island archipelago, which is linked by tunnels and bridges.

The Faroes have been forgotten and are still largely bypassed by the rest of Europe – and that is their charm.

Mass tourism has ignored them. But will this last? If the trade in stuffed puffins continues and interest in tunnels and drying sheds grows, probably not.

Such things could prove the undoing of the Faroe Islands as Europe’s last undiscovered great beauty spot.

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