Stationed on an island 40 miles south of the Faroe Islands’ main landmass, Streymoy, the tiny, shore-clinging hamlet of Sandvik is home to two monuments to seafaring peril. Standing over the slate-rock western bay is a broad stone cross in honour of 10th Century Christian Viking chief Sigmundur Brestisson, who swam from a distant shipwreck to shore, only to be immediately beheaded by a local for his gold armband.
Five hundred yards down the road, overlooked by a daunting, grey-green wall of mountain jutting out into a wind-whipped aquamarine fjord, is a fenced-off gravestone, erected in honour of 14 sailors who lost their lives on their return from a whaling expedition in 1915.
