2022Europa – Stories & Myths - Stamp Booklet

Floating islands
In many island cultures we find legends of so-called floating islands - islands that have mysteriously drifted in from the sea, disappeared again, or run aground and conjoined with other islands, often as a result of witchcraft or similar phantasmic happenings.
The Faroe Islands are no exception in this regard. Most of our smallest islands have some form of floating island legends. In his work from 1673 ”FAROÆ ET FÆROA RESERATA” the priest Lucas Debes describes this phenomenon and attributes it to icebergs drifting past the islands, or a Satanic veiling of the superstitious population. A century later, in 1781-82, Jens Christian Svabo, a man of the Enlightenment, rejected Debes' theories and attributes the phenomenon to rocklike clouds drifting on the horizon or even ”pollamjørki”, the Faroese term for heavy drifting sea-mist.
And there is little doubt that Svabo's assumption was correct. Anyone who has seen dense sea fogs drifting over and alongside these tiny islands, cannot help feeling that the island itself had begun floating over the sea and through the fog. But reality is usually less interesting than a good story, so let us stick to the legendary world's colorful explanation of nature's visual illusions - and look at a few examples of islands that have come floating with their mountains and valleys - and even with pigs and giants following in their wake.