This year’s Christmas Seals depict portrait photos of sheep with flower wreaths on their heads. Harriet Olafsdóttir av Gørðum is a photographer, farmer and entrepreneur, and she is known for her beautiful posters of the animals on her farm, especially sheep.
All sale profits go to the Christmas Seal Foundation, which supports children and youth activities in the Faroe Islands.
Christmas Seals 2021
The Faroe Islands are often marketed featuring the puffin as a national symbol, although in the Faroe Islands we have more sheep than humans. The Faroese sheep is emblematic of the Faroe Islands – both because for several centuries it has adapted to our harsh nature and landscape, and also because we see sheep everywhere on the islands.
I grew up with sheep farming. When dealing with them daily, one notices that they are quite dissimilar individuals, each one having its own distinctive appearance and personality. Therefore, in my work both as a farmer and a photographer I have chosen to photograph the sheep decorated with flowers.
The idea of decorating the sheep with flowers and leaves lends them a more engaging, eye-catching and even adorable appearance. Thus, we realize that they also represent an appealing asset and we see them not as just food and wool. For me as a farmer, it is also a way of increasing the worth of each individual sheep, and I can therefore make a living from being a sheep farmer in the Faroe Islands today with a flock of only 75 sheep.
The sheep posters, together with Heimablídni* and soon also Bed &Breakfast, help to raise the standard of the farm, both when it comes to animal welfare and the marketable aspects of sheep farming. In short, mutton is not the reason why I am a sheep farmer, but much rather a by-product of all the other activities that we engage in here on the farm.
