Now the container is empty

Machine-translated from Faroese and not yet reviewed. Read the original.

In 2008, B68 and Tofta Leikvøllir decided to get rid of all the athletics equipment that belonged to the track at Svangaskarð. Before everything was thrown away, they rang FÍF and asked whether FÍF might be interested in storing the equipment. There was an option to rent a container from Faroe Ship, which could stand by the harbour in Toftir. The FÍF board felt it would be wrong to dispose of the equipment, and accepted the offer to store it in a rented container in Toftir.

Now that four years have passed, no one has yet been in the container, apart from the time we took scoreboards and flags out of it. A few hurdles also went north to Klaksvík on that occasion. But the monthly fee has fallen due faithfully, and in the end the board has admitted that this is money wasted, so the lease is being terminated and the equipment disposed of.

“It grieves me so to treat the stock that way,” writes Mikkjal á Ryggi in Brestikvæði. Those words came to mind on Wednesday evening as we cleared out the container and got it ready for the lorry to come and collect everything. “It grieves me so to treat the goods that way”… because goods this was, and of some value too.

For those who are interested, I can tell you that Mikkjal is writing about the distinctive breed of sheep that is said to have lived on Lítla Dímun. Coal-black and brown, and truly as wild as a wolf, and legend has it that the people of Hvalba saw no better solution than to cull the entire flock and bring in new sheep.

“Quick and wild as a wild bird,
uncommonly hardy in spring,
and so it is said the Hvalba men
did away with the whole breed”

And that is when Mikkjal wags a moralising finger:

“It grieves me so
to treat the stock that way,
the oldest sheep in the Faroes were,
I’d have liked to see them still”

Niels Jákup, Gutti, Einar, Rebekka and Hallur were the Hvalba men who did away with the first real athletics equipment in the Faroe Islands. But when the people of Toftir want nothing to do with it up at the track, there is nothing to be done. Besides, much of it had been badly worn by the ravages of time. A rusty javelin or two, a high jump mat with several rats’ nests, and then 10.. ten! high jump crossbars, most of them still in their wrapping.

But all this is history now. Peace be with the container in Toftir.