The Beautiful Game in the Faroe Islands
One of the many things I’ve learned from photographing sport is that the closer you focus on any given subject, the more interesting the periphery can become. From a football perspective this means not only those who take part, but those who are unflinching in their passionate support of whoever’s fortune they happen to follow. So when I read that, with a population of only 48,000 people, the Faroe Islands have the highest percentage of football participation in Europe, together with a particular fascination with English clubs, my curiosity was piqued. Just what is it that makes this remote archipelago, jutting spectacularly out of the Atlantic between Scotland and Iceland (map), so crazy, not just about football, but also about the English Premier League? A two hour fifteen minute direct flight from Gatwick Airport promised to bring some answers. From the moment I landed at Vágar Airport it seemed a spectacular, yet unlikely, location for football of any sort. The Faroes are made up of 18 basalt islands which are the remains of volcanic eruptions 60 million years ago. Over millennia, cracks in the rocks and erosion have created sheer black cliffs that rise 800m straight out of the sea. Glaciers have carved deep fjords between the islands, and sculpted the valleys out of the mountains. The result is a dramatic but harsh landscape open to raging north Atlantic winter storms. A scattering of villages and small towns occupy any sheltered space. Yet, crucially, there is very little flat land for football pitches. 
Better still, with over 260 days of rain a year, and winds up to hurricane force, the football season follows the summer months and is played from April to September, with occasional brave forays into October. According to Heri Nolsøe, staunch Liverpool supporter, and director of the most successful club in the islands, Havnar Bóltfelag, (Harbour Football Club, or simply “HB”), “The weather in winter is very special and the wind is very heavy”. This can result in some interesting football tactics, especially for free kicks and corners where extreme trajectory changes make life particularly difficult for goalkeepers. The weather can fluctuate several times in a single game. Whilst photographing a match between two of the top teams I experienced sleet being followed by sunshine which was warm enough to result in a heat haze on the pitch, then soft rain, mist, and finished off by wind-driven hail. Variety is the spice of life, and the old adage that there’s no such thing as the wrong weather, only the wrong clothing, is spot on.
Football in the Faroes kicked off in 1892 when the oldest club, Tvøroyrar Bóltfelag (TB), based on the southerly island of Suðuroy, was set up by one of the English traders who frequented the islands. This set in place a pattern of English influence which I encountered again and again on my visit. TB are still playing in the top league of Faroese football today.In the early days football remained fairly disorganised, and it was not until the British Army staged the friendly “Operation Valentine” occupation in 1940 that the game really took off. The British troops established a base on the island of Vágar in the south-west to ensure the Germans couldn’t get their hands on the strategically important outpost. The Royal Engineers built the islands’ lone airfield which is now Vágar Airport. Aside from the occasional air raid and mines in the fjords, the war passed fairly quietly. According to Marni Mortensen, owner of faroesoccer.com, “Nothing much happened during the war, so they played a lot of football. Lots of friendly matches were arranged, and football became more organised”. As the popularity of the game grew, the need for pitches increased. Due to the harsh climate, growing and maintaining a grass pitch is incredibly difficult. While there is plenty of light during the summer, and plenty of rainfall, it doesn’t get warm enough for vigorous grass growth. Grass pitches soon wear out with regular use and cannot grow fast enough to repair. 
"In the 60s and 70s we had sand pitches and the surface was very rough, and it was very difficult to predict the movement of the ball," says Heri Nolsøe. I can’t even imagine what ninety minutes of beach football would do the legs of a trained athlete such as myself. Fortunately, I was not in any serious danger of being invited to find out, as the sand pitches have since been replaced by artificial grass, the latest “3G” pitches with recycled rubber infill being commonplace. Most towns, and even the smallest villages, have artificial grass pitches which are used by everyone including schools for all types of sports as well as football. With a tinge of nostalgia for the punishing days of old sand pitches, Nolsøe concedes, “It is much easier for players these days". Today’s pitches are about as far from sandpits as you can imagine, with some clubs even going to the lengths of reclaiming land from the sea, and building pitches out into the fjords as they have done under the flight path in the airport town of Sørvágur and the spectacularly precarious pitch at Eiði. (This landscape itself caused problems of a different sort during my visit. The Faroes are a photographer’s delight. Blessed with some amazing light from the clean air, long days and hours of twilight it was often very difficult to stay focused on football and frequently I’d be drawn up a mountain or down to a black sand beach to just marvel at the scenery and do my best to capture it with one of my numerous cameras. The rather crazy weather only served to help, as the last thing a photographer wants is a plain blue sky. Moody clouds rolling over jagged peaks yield far better pictures.) You can see a gallery of black & white non-football images here.As the pitches improved and the number of teams grew, the influence of English football increased. “The Faroese are islanders, so they have an affinity with the UK. They like the Premier League much better than the German, Spanish or Italian leagues,” says Páll Guðlaugsson, manager of top league team KÍ Klaksvík. 
In common with most islanders, Guðlaugsson supports a Premier League club, in his case it is Manchester United. Having spent 9 years as head coach for the Faroese national mens’ and womens’ teams, and talked football with Sir Alex Ferguson in his office at Old Trafford, as one does, he is highly qualified to comment on the Faroese football scene. "The Faroes are football mad," says Guðlaugsson. “The participation rate here is very high. Players start young, from age 5, and both girls and boys play football right through school.” When I ask how this obsession grew, Guðlaugsson cites television, or rather the lack of it, as the main reason. "There is a huge tradition of games being broadcast on the radio since 1962, and everyone listens with their family. No Faroese games are televised live, so live radio is the way games are reported.”With TV only arriving in the Faroes in the early 1980s, the well-established radio broadcasting of games appears central to the islands’ football culture. Heri Nolsøe echoes this view. "The interest has been created by having no television in the Faroes. People listened to the radio together as families. When TV did arrive, we saw matches in the European championships a week or more later”. I was beginning to see that here on these tiny islands they do their football on a much grander scale. With such a strong sense of community and enforced self-reliance, it is easy to see how the close-knit islanders could develop a passion for the game in the absence of many other activities which we take for granted. Add in some healthy rivalry between the different islands in the archipelago and you have all the ingredients in place for the Beautiful Game culture that can be seen everywhere here today. With roughly the same population as the quaint seaside town of Paignton in Devon, the islands boast an impressive football league structure which is overseen by the Faroe Islands Football Association. There are three main men’s leagues and two women’s, plus veterans and under 18s leagues. In addition there are youth leagues for all ages for both boys and girls. 
The top division, or “Effodeildin”, is made up of ten teams. HB is the most successful club in the division with twenty-one league titles since they formed in 1904. They are very much the Manchester United of the Faroe Islands. Not only do they have the most supporters but are also the club that most others love to hate. Playing in red and black, they are based in a shared stadium in the capital, Tórshavn, alongside arch-rivals B36. Each has their own stand, their own changing rooms and their own club rooms, with a no-man’s-land gap of about 30 meters between them. Ground sharing is not uncommon here, but it puts some special requirements on the fixture planning. When the HB and B36 play each other, whoever is designated as the “home” team keep the gate receipts. 
As with many of the clubs, HB sports a number of teams in the leagues, including a ladies XI. It’s a bit like Manchester United having a B-team playing in the Championship, and a C-team playing in League 1. According to league rules, no club can have more than one team in a single division, so if a higher team gets relegated into a league with another of their teams already in it, the poor lower team also gets relegated. 
The team that wins the top league goes into the Champions League qualifiers, and the next three clubs go into the Europa league. With the Faroe Islands placed 48th out of 53 nations in the UEFA rankings just below Wales and Northern Ireland, beating Barcelona is a romantic dream. However, it affords the possibility of gold-plated away ties with the big boys and brings in the crowds. (HB lost 3-1 on aggregate to Malmo in the 2nd qualifying round in 2011). The match atmosphere is very much like that which you’d expect at an English League Two or Conference game, with authentic rivalry but very friendly with it. The supporters are as passionate as any that you’ll find in the world, with a good repertoire of songs & chants to call on. I was able to recognise some of the Premier League best, such as the well-loved “you’re s**t, and you know you are” and "the referee's a w****r" even though they were in the local Faroese language. They even have their own version of the English barmy army band at KÍ Klaksvík, though their timing was a bit haphazard while I was there. 
The players and management staff are also far more approachable, in keeping with the overwhelming friendliness shown by all of those I met on the islands. Everybody knows everybody else, and I found myself getting the sort of access you’d die for in most of the English league clubs, after just having a quick chat with people I’d meet in the street or in shops. I was also caught out by the pitch invasion that happens at half time and full time. Going on the pitch at an English ground is severely punished, and a photographer like myself would easily lose their media credentials for the rest of the season or permanently if they as much as ventured onto the green stuff. In the Faroes though, the artificial turf is much more robust and the crowd, especially the children, are actively encouraged onto the pitch at half time to play 5-a-side or simply run around. After the final whistle they come onto the pitch again to get autographs from the players, explain the laws of the game to the referee, and play more 5-a-side. It is endearing and encouraging to watch, even though I had to rescue my remote camera a few times before it was trampled. 
Rather than the overpriced fast food concessions that you’ll see at Premier League grounds, tea, coffee and snacks are more likely to be sold from a pram pushed around the pitch by two lady supporters who, I was sad to see, had to wear that other ludicrous English export – the hi-viz vest.The crowd is very family orientated. It’s obvious that watching the local team is one of the main activities available in the small towns which, while often very picturesque, lack many other forms of entertainment. When watching the European Championships in the Roykstoven, one of the few bars in the fishing town of Klaksvík I came across a couple of workers from the fish processing factory for whom football was their main escape from the mundane day-to-day grind. A short while later goalkeeper Gunnar a Stieg dropped in to talk about his job as a manager at the fish plant, and of his experience of playing away against Manchester City. Unfortunately my notes from that evening are a little sketchy, but I can confidently report that the local Faroese beer, Føroya Bjór, is extremely good and rather stronger than expected. 
Keeping track of all the fixtures, match results and statistics is Marni Mortensen. In between his main job in the petroleum industry and, of course, running his teenage daughter to play football at HB, Marni works out of a spare room in his home in Tórshavn to keep his website faroesoccer.com up to date, working in conjunction with the Faroe Islands FA to collate every match report, every yellow card and all the player details into a comprehensive database. A passionate Arsenal supporter since childhood, Marni has an encyclopaedic knowledge of every aspect of football in the islands. Marni is the go-to guy over here. If he doesn’t know or can’t find out, nobody can. 
After every game, teams fax their match reports to him within an hour of the final whistle. Fax is used as many of the clubs don’t have email despite broadband internet and wifi being common throughout the islands. Marni’s website is the main hub for all the results, player profiles and game stats, a point which was brought home on the other side of the islands where I met teenagers using their laptops to get the latest scores while sipping lattes at a harbour café.Speaking about the top players, Mortensen says, “In the last five to ten years, the top players are semi-pro and have contracts with the clubs, but they cannot live just on playing football. They all have main jobs.” The only way to make decent money is to go abroad, which is precisely what Christian Holst has done. He now plays for Silkeborg in Denmark earning a reported £1.2m a year. This lure of foreign money is a problem for the top teams in the Faroes who understandably want to keep their best players. Hjalgrím Elttør, 29, a Manchester United supporter, member of the Faroe Islands national team and captain of front-running KÍ Klaksvík, is typical of the home-grown talent. He is currently studying Mathematics and English, when he’s not playing football. Having started at the age of 7, he moved up the leagues and also played abroad in Denmark at Fremad Amager before returning to the Faroes. 
Speaking after a home win against B68, this athletic, attacking midfielder agrees about the influence the English game has in the islands over the last century. “Everybody watches the Premier League and has a favourite club,” he says, adding that, “the Premier League and other football is shown on satellite TV, Danish TV. The Faroese can also get Sky Sports”. The more people I met, the clearer the pattern I’d spotted earlier became. Whether it’s the teenage girl wearing a Liverpool hat on the checkout in the FK Supermarket, the shirts for sale in sports shops, or their charming habit of introducing themselves first with their name, and then with the name of the Premier League team they’ve supported since childhood, the penetration of the English game can be seen everywhere on these islands. 
According to Lars Müller, (Aston Villa supporter), and former player for FC Suðuroy, it’s not just our game that has been exported to the islands, but player attitudes as well. He should know. As one of the seven professional referees that officiate in the top Faroes league Müller has been at the sharp end of this growing change for eight years now. "Our players copy the English Premier League players and swear at the referee. They say ‘if Rooney can do it, so can I,” says Müller. Discipline is becoming harder to enforce. “They say to me ‘in the premier league they'd never give a booking for that’” he continues. “My general view is that Faroese player behaviour has got worse, especially as the games are now televised in the Faroes,” Müller tells me before a game between HB and EB in Tórshavn. Páll Guðlaugsson of KÍ Klaksvík doesn’t see things as being quite so bad. “Players are much better behaved in the Faroes than in the English Premier League”. This view is echoed by Hjalgrím Elttør who says “Faroe Islands players sometimes copy Premier League players but diving and foul play are not nearly as prevalent in the Faroes”. 
Having watched and photographed a number of top league games in the Faroes during my visit, it’s clear that some of the unruly behaviour so prevalent in the Premier League, such as players surrounding en masse, have filtered northwards at all levels. It would be worth some of the stars of the English game reflecting on their global reach and how negative aspects of their behaviour influence those in the most isolated corners of the world. Looking to the future, funding for the game is crucial to keeping participation at such a high level. “We’re owned by companies in the town of Klaksvík, mainly the fishing and fish processing companies.” says Magnus Arge, (Liverpool FC supporter), chairman of the board at KÍ Klaksvík. The performance of these companies directly impacts the money available to many of the clubs, tightly linking their fortunes to the ebbs and swells of the Faroese economy. "We have had trouble with the financial situation in the Faroes as in the rest of the world. It's very difficult to raise money for a club such as HB," says Heri Nolsøe. “With a gate of 700-800 for standard league games, receipts are bolstered by local collections and sponsorship.” Gates are smaller for the more isolated clubs, making acquisition and retention of good players a key issue. 
With the economy having a tough time, and being so reliant on fishing for income, the Faroese are looking hopefully at the offshore oil exploration taking place in their waters for an injection of money. A significant oil find would have a major impact on the islands, and we’ve all seen the impact that money has on football. But having endured the schizophrenic weather and carved their pitches out of volcanic basalt, there’s no way that the hardy Faroe Islanders will let a few money problems get in their way. With a steady stream of keen youngsters coming through the system and a fanatical following of their local teams, there’s a lot that bigger football nations can learn from the Faroes. 
FootnoteI went to the Faroes in June 2012. A write up of the logistics of the trip and further landscape/environmental pictures is here. It is a stunningly beautiful place, fairly cheap to get to from the UK, and worthy of a trip.Match pictures: KÍ Klaksvík v B68 ToftirMatch pictures: Havnar Bóltfelag (HB) v EB/StreymurFaroe Islands scene setting, environmental & general view picturesAll words and pictures copyright Andrew Tobin.