Faroe Islands Aurora

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Read the behind the scenes story – audio transcribed:

So travelling to the Faroe Islands was something that was just so majestic, and I had done a lot of research, as I always do. There’s all sorts of places in my mind if one day, if I go down a rabbit hole when I’m late at night, ADHDing, my way through life because that’s when I kind of get into creative flow and I find things and I learn things, and my mind is so kind of fueled by curiosity and novelty.

And I’d learned about this island called Mykines on the Faroe Islands and you can only get there by boat or helicopter. And it had a population of, I think of, 8 or 11 people. And then you had, I think one place that you could stay overnight, and it had a population of a million puffins or a million seabirds. And so I was thinking, that sounds like somewhere I would like to immerse myself in.

And so, off we went and had the most majestic day on the cliffs with the puffins. And it was in August, just as sort of nightfall was starting to return from those really long, never ending, sort of light summer nights that the High North experience, and I, I’d looked at the data before we left about the Aurora, but we didn’t have any phone signal on the island and I just thought, well, this is, it’s getting dark, I want to go out and have a little look.

And so, off we set, maybe about five to midnight. Now, bearing in mind this island, if you remember, I’ve said had about 8 to 11 people, permanent residents. And we were walking through the tiny village and there was a couple outside a house, and they were with a circular, a kind of saw metal saw with sparks flying everywhere. And it’s like it’s midnight. This is happening at midnight. And you’re like 11 people that live here. This is what you do. It was a really, really curious thing to see. And so we got, just south of the village once we maybe kind of spooked ourselves that maybe we were in the centre of some bizarre, kind of, like, true crime documentary unfolding around us.

And, I could see that there was the Aurora there, just glowing gently and we watched it and had this most amazing display glowing in the sky. And then out of the village, I could see two massive dogs running down the road that you can see in this picture. And my husband and I are both pretty terrified of dogs, when you’re in that scenario where there is no predicting what the animal is going to do. Both of us did paper rounds until we were 18 because we are that cool, and we both got attacked by dogs. Me particularly, I got bitten by a dog on April Fool’s Day and, 2001 because that’s when I last had my tetanus.

And yeah, I had to go get my tetanus but because it was April Fool’s Day, my boss was a real joker. And I rang him up and I said, I’ve been bitten by a dog and he went haha, April Fools and then hung the phone up. And so I then, was outside my grandparents house, but it was only about seven in the morning. I didn’t want to wake them up, but I’ve been, you know, tore my trousers and I’ve got quite a nasty thing going on on my leg, carried on with my paper round and then my boss had like, locked the shop up because the dog owner had gone to the shop and said, like, one of my dogs has just attacked one of your girls I’m really sorry.

So he came and found me, finished off my paper round and so there lies my fear of dogs, particularly when we’re in this place where, you know, you’ve got no way of knowing what these animals are going to do. So they’re hurtling out of the village. We’re in the darkness thinking, what do we do? What do we do? What do we do?

So my six foot seven husband just decides he’s going to stand behind me and let me meet both the dogs who get on their back legs, jump up. Neither of them are really barking or making much noise. They’re just panting away where they’ve been running. And, they I had one on each of my arms and I was almost face to face with them. I’m six foot tall. So these dogs were humongous and I just didn’t know what to do. And I don’t know, Mark. I don’t know what to do. And I’m like, can you stop showing that you’re scared? He’s like, but I don’t know what to do. I’m really scared. I’m really scared. I don’t want to do that. I’m so like, if you’re scared, I’m stood here with these two dogs on my forearms. Like what? And you’re stood behind me, like, oh my goodness.

So, they just sort of, like, jumped down and then they were circling around us for a little bit, and then we could see out of the village this little guy, or this figure, this silhouette was kind of coming towards us. And as it got closer, the person was smoking. And I don’t know if anyone watched that, if you watch The X-Files in the 90s, but that kind of like ominous smoking man, appearing as a silhouette in the distance is like, so you’re going to come and help us. And so he got right up to where we were, and I said hello, and I, you’re showing him a camera and the Aurora.

And he just kind of like, nodded and then walked off, but didn’t really call the dogs off. And they kept jumping up at us and allsorts. So, he walked off and then eventually the dogs followed and so we were like, thank goodness and so we just about kind of like calmed ourselves down and I said look, let’s maybe shoot for like 10 or 15 minutes more and then we’ll head back because I was, I was kind of desperate to go up the cliffs. I mean, these were quite sheer cliffs and very steep, very muddy to get up there, because I loved the idea of being able to silhouettes some puffins against the Aurora. And Mark was just like, we are not doing that after this has just happened.

So unfortunately, that’s a shot that didn’t get to happen and so we carried on shooting and a couple of minutes after that, this sheep jumped out of nowhere and was like, baa, and we jumped out of our skin and I think it did to our reaction. And then that was it. That was game over. So that was the end of my Faroese Aurora shooting.