World War II reaches the Faroes
Tvøroyri, Suðuroy
In 1940, Nazi Germany invaded and occupied Denmark and Norway, prompting the British to set up shop in the Faroes to prevent German invasion and position themselves strategically in the North Atlantic. They built a military airbase on the Isle of Vágar, which is now the international airport of the Faroe Islands. World War II did, unfortunately, end up touching the Faroe Islands and the Faroese people. Many fishing vessels were sunk by German subs and several bombing raids were carried out by German planes on British targets in the islands.
While I was walking above the town of Tvøroyri on Suðuroy (the southernmost of the Faroes), I met a man in the hills tending to his sheep. As we stood chatting, he recounted a memory from his childhood. It was 1943, and he was 11 years old,
playing with a few of his friends on the hillside overlooking Tvøroyri, in the same spot that this photo was taken. They heard an unfamiliar sound and, looking out over the town, watched as a squadron of German bombers flew in low over the water of the inlet. As they watched from above, helpless, the planes passed below them and bombed the town. He remembered seeing gigantic clouds of white and black flying into the air as bombs hit the salt factory and the coal storage facility, and wondered, "Why would anyone want to do this to us?"
This man declined to give me his name or to let me take a portrait of him, but his story is one of the most moving I've heard in my travels.