GEOfood EDU

In Signabøur on Streymoy some special stories can be experienced in the coastal landscape. A lot of shells lie on the ground next to a large flat rock close to the shore. Here you find broken shells from various kinds of whelk and mussel, and you wonder how these broken shells ended up by the flat coastal rock. If you were here a busy day in the summer, you could observe what is going on by the shell rock. Oystercatchers and other birds living from shellfish collect fresh shells close to the shore. They fly up in the air with the shells, and high above they drop the shell so that it hits the shell rock. As the shell falls to the ground and lands with force on the flat rock, the shell shatters, and pieces of broken shells scatter around the flat rock. The story behind the shell rock is a story about how the animal world makes practical use of the available surroundings, – in this case the flat coastal rocky ground.

Lindarfiskur is a family run fish farm that was founded in 2011. The grow arctic char at a place called Botnar, deep within the lava field of Eldgjárhraun and almost surrounded by another lava field called Eldhraun. There they grow about 100 tons of char and the farm has a policy of being as sustainable and environmentally friendly as it can be and there is no waist from the farm. For the farm they use fresh water from the glacial river of Skaftá that has flown through the lava fields and has been filtered by the process.

Ólafur Eggertsson and Guðný A. Valberg live on the farm Þorvaldseyri and Ólafur is the third generation of his family that lives there since his grandfather bought the farm in 1906. Ólafur and Guðný have four children and their son, Páll Eggert Ólafsson, will take over the farm in the future. Þorvaldseyri farm is located south of a volcanic mountain chain called Eyjafjöll and is semi-surrounded by four mountains, the Steinafjall mountain to the west, Lambafell and Raufarfell mountains to the east and the infamous volcano Eyjafjallajökull to the north. It is this location that makes the growing conditions for crops so good, as glacial rivers move sediments down to the lowlands during spring flooding and glacial outburst floods and volcanic ash is periodically spread over the area during eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull, Katla Volcano and other nearby volcanic systems. The sediment and the volcanic ash have over time created a nutrient rich soil that is now used for agriculture. The last eruption and the following glacial outburst flood that spread ash over the area was during the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull Volcano. Large amount of ash settled in the area, and it took farmlands several years to recover completely. The thickness of the ash was about 4-5 cm near Þorvaldseyri farm and any thicker and it could have suffocated the underlying vegetation. The ash did a lot of good as well even though it did harm for a short period of time, as vegetation blossomed once the ash had been integrated into the soil.

The bay in the little beautiful village Fámjin on the western side of Suðuroy lies protected behind shallow scerries. Inside the scerries is a shallow lagune, while westward is open ocean. In Fámjin the tidalwater and natural environment provides good growing conditions for seaweed. The unique natural environment in Fámjin has caught the attention of Agnes Mols Mortensen. Agnes is a biologist, PhD, and has experience growing and using seaweed for food in the Faroe Islands. She and her brother Mortan Mols Mortensen have established the aquafarming company Tari, and their hatchery activities are located in Fámjin. The company grows seaweed and develops products to sell to markets in the Faroe Islands as well as abroad. Tari has developed various food products, such as Ocean Spaghetti (known as sea thong) which can be used as vegetables, and Ocean Wings, which can be used for spicing and salt. Agnes and Morten are developing a new product, which has caught the interest of large fish farming companies in the Faroe Islands and internationally. Salmon farming is an important industry in the Faroe Islands and one of the challenges that the industry struggles with is sea lice which are bad for the salmon. The little fish lumpsucker is commonly used in the salmon aquaculture as cleaner fish to eat lice off the salmon. However, with no shelter or resting places the lumpsucker thrives poorly in the salmon cages. Tari is developing a shelter made from seaweed, that the small lumpsuckers can use for hiding and resting. The seaweed shelters, named Akvanest, made from natural material, are a sustainable way to improve the living conditions of the sea lice eating Lumpsuckers which will improve the production of salmon for food consumption. The Akvanest is becoming a very interesting product that Tari can produce for the fish farm industry, both in the Faroe Islands as well as internationally.

The bay in the little beautiful village Fámjin on the western side of Suðuroy lies protected behind shallow scerries. Inside the scerries is a shallow lagune, while westward is open ocean. In Fámjin the tidalwater and natural environment provides good growing conditions for seaweed. The unique natural environment in Fámjin has caught the attention of Agnes Mols Mortensen. Agnes is a biologist, PhD, and has experience growing and using seaweed for food in the Faroe Islands. She and her brother Mortan Mols Mortensen have established the aquafarming company Tari, and their hatchery activities are located in Fámjin. The company grows seaweed and develops products to sell to markets in the Faroe Islands as well as abroad. Tari has developed various food products, such as Ocean Spaghetti (known as sea thong) which can be used as vegetables, and Ocean Wings, which can be used for spicing and salt. Agnes and Morten are developing a new product, which has caught the interest of large fish farming companies in the Faroe Islands and internationally. Salmon farming is an important industry in the Faroe Islands and one of the challenges that the industry struggles with is sea lice which are bad for the salmon. The little fish lumpsucker is commonly used in the salmon aquaculture as cleaner fish to eat lice off the salmon. However, with no shelter or resting places the lumpsucker thrives poorly in the salmon cages. Tari is developing a shelter made from seaweed, that the small lumpsuckers can use for hiding and resting. The seaweed shelters, named Akvanest, made from natural material, are a sustainable way to improve the living conditions of the sea lice eating Lumpsuckers which will improve the production of salmon for food consumption. The Akvanest is becoming a very interesting product that Tari can produce for the fish farm industry, both in the Faroe Islands as well as internationally.

The village Signabøur is located on the southern slope by the fjord Kollafjørður on the island of Streymoy. The steep north-facing mountain slopes mean that being in the village you would not see the sun in the middle of the winter and the whole mountain slope receives no direct sun light in the middle of the winter. The lack of direct sunlight gives some special challenges and opportunities to the farmer, Dorthea Joensen, who runs the farm Signabøgarður with her husband and family. They have run the farm as a family business for many generations and have learned how to raise sheep in the shadow mountain meadows. The Signabøgarður-farm is about 5,4 km2 reaching from sea level to the mountain of Kaldbakskambur 588 meters above the sea. The farm has a value of 6 merkur according to the ancient land value system which is still in use. In the spring, the north-facing mountain slope, which is in total shadow during the middle of the winter, suffers from slow and late spring growth. The farmers need to feed the sheep more and for a longer time than most other farmers. The land of the farm is steep in many places and sometimes so difficult to reach that it can only be reached by boat. To productively use all the land, the farmers put special effort into selecting sheep that in a natural way chose to live in the various places throughout the farm. In the autumn the benefit of the location on the north facing mountain slopes is evident. The grass that was so slow to begin growing the spring now continues growing late into the fall, providing the sheep on the mountain slopes with fresh grass until the time of slaughter. The fresh autumn grass from the north-facing slopes is good for the sheep, and the mutton that will be produced on the farm gets a special and good quality.