The postage stamp is the mirror of a nation. It is a small glimpse into the soul of the country, its appearance, history, flora, fauna, life and manners.
On 10 August 2023, Posta Faroe Islands issues stamp No. 1000 at the Great American Stamp Show (GASS) 2023 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. This is truly a cause for celebration.
The renowned Faroese artist Edward Fuglø designed and illustrated the beautiful miniature sheet with a cairn motif in its center. Edward Fuglø has designed many Faroese stamps over the years, and he became our first choice for designing our stamp No. 1000.
The miniature sheet depicts a cairn in the outback on a summer evening. A summer atmosphere surrounds the cairn with seasonal plants, birds and animal life. Supernatural beings, fairies and water kelpies are also part of the picture. As mentioned below, a cairn can have different symbolic meanings – it can serve both as a signpost and a fixed point. Stamp No. 1000 can be seen as a memento of Posta’s numerous printings since 1975 when the first Faroese stamps were issued.
The stamp is a small culture bearer that reaches far beyond national frontiers, right into the remotest corners of the globe. On a small piece of paper, just a few centimetres across, it is possible to tell the history of many and sundry, and this has always been the aim with Faroese postage stamps.
The renowned Norwegian-Swedish artist and engraver Martin Mörck engraved the cairn and butterfly motifs which are printed in a combination of intaglio and offset. Furthermore, some special varnish effects have been added such as sand, soft-touch and neon orange.
The Cairn The cairn is a cone-shaped landmark or sun marker, made up of a mound of rough stones piled up by human hands. Since ancient times, cairns have been found all over the Nordic region as signposts and landmarks. The town name Varde in Denmark is indeed derived from this landmark.
In the Faroe Islands, cairns are always connected to the old village paths. It is ”gonguvarðar”, cairns serving as guideposts. Some cairns also mark the world corners of a settlement, such as Vesturvarði (West Cairn), Norðurvarði (North Cairn) and Suðurvarði (South Cairn) or cairns scoring the position of the sun. They are found in place names such as Middagavarði (Midday Cairn) or Nónvarði (nón = 3 p.m.). Cairns, in their monumental form, thus serve both as signposts and fixed points. Kongavarðarnir (King’s Cairns), which today refer to the neighbourhood building Undir Kongavarða close to Tórshavn, were built in 1907, on the occasion of King Frederik the 8th’s visit to the Faroe Islands.
From ancient times, the Faroe Islands have been a rural community where the settlement itself is surrounded by the infield (Faroese: bøur). Outside the settlement, separated by stone fences, lies the outfield (Faroese: hagi). Ordinarily, people stayed within the fence between the outfield and the infield. If you went outside, you had some particular purpose in mind. It was frowned upon, and even forbidden, for unauthorized persons to enter the outfield. However, shepherds and bird catchers were allowed to make their way to the mountains to catch birds. Exceptions were also made for people bringing peat from the peat stores in the outback, and in the summer, and, of course, for milkmaids who went out to milk the free-ranging cows. They did not want the sheep to be disturbed. If you went into outfield without a purpose, you might be suspected of being a sheep thief. If a sheep thief was caught, the punishment was severe. Meeting them could be dangerous, and lonely hikers walking their legal paths would avoid that.
The cairns marked the legal paths from one settlement to the other. On these paths one could feel reasonably safe from sheep thieves and supernatural beings. Hog errands could lead to you meeting the hidden people, e.g., the nymph sitting outside her mound spinning and wishing for a man to approach. If a man joined her, he was offered a drink of nectar, a magical potion. If he forgot to blow off the foam, she attacked him. The water kelpie, a supernatural creature, lived in lakes and larger streams. The kelpie could transform into a cute dog or a beautiful horse, trying to lure children and adults to its lake. If they touched it, the kelpie caught them by its tail and dragged them into the lake’s depths.
The outfield was thus a dangerous area, where you preferably only went in daylight, but something might prevent your departure, and then leave too late. Everything became more sinister in the dusk and the darkness, and supernatural forces approached the wayfarer. The light of the moon could also show eerie formations in the landscape. Even in daylight, one was not out of danger. The fog could become so dense that you couldn’t even see your hands, so the only trail available was the old, well-trodden path. There are stories of milkmaids who lost their way in the fog and strayed right into the abyss. It could even get worse in the cold and snow of winter, and then the best advice was to stick to the cairn you had reached without sitting down to rest. There are stories of men who kept awake by dismantling and rebuilding a cairn. They did this even several times to stay awake and keep warm. If they sat down, they fell into a deadly sleep.
Thus, the cairns showed the right way and became invaluable guides for people in the dangerous outback days of old. It was not until modern times, with a different perception of nature and wanting to experience nature, that people created problems for themselves when walking in the countryside.
The cairn has gained importance as a monumental symbol in Faroese history, but also as a fixed point in people’s lives and as a symbol of prominent people. The first Faroese literary society, which since 1921 has published the literary magazine Varðin (The Cairn), implying a variety of meanings. It is also no coincidence that one of the largest business and shipping companies in the Faroe Islands, established in the settlement of Gøta in 1985, took the time-honoured and symbolic name, Varðin.
Jóan Pauli Joensen,
Dr. Phil. in Ethnology
