Vágur (Settlement)

Vágur, mentioned in Hundabrævið, has 1,392 inhabitants and covers 49 merkur and 11 gyllin. Of this area, 16 merkur and 8 gyllin are copyhold land divided between eight copyhold tenants, and 33 merkur and 3 gyllin are freehold land. The sheep herd consists of 1,722 animals.

Since 1907, Vágur has made up Vágs Kommuna together with Nes.

The village has access to the sea from two sides: To the west, the entrance goes through Vágsfjørður, and to the east at Vágseiði, smaller boats can be hauled ashore. On the west side are high cliffs and free-standing rock formations called drangar and stakkar, and in the northern part are semicircular valleys, called botnar, of varying depth. In one of these vallies is the lake Ryskivatn, from which pipelines were laid in 1921 to a hydropower plant in Botni, a valley further down. In 1967, for three weeks there were a series of earthquakes in the underground at Vágseiði, which measured 2 on the Richter scale.

Vágur originally consisted of the eight býlingar við Kráir, við Gjógvará, við Misá, í Smillum, á Oyri, á Skála, við Hvanndalsá and í Toftum.

As Faroese maritime history has it, Poul Poulsen Nolsøe, Nólsoyar-Páll, built the first Faroese-built ship on the field Fløtuni Fríðu in Vágur, and the small schooner Royndin Fríða was launched on the 6th of August 1804. A memorial to the event was erected in 1962.

After the introduction of free trade in 1856, Vágur, like Tvøroyri, underwent rapid development. The first trading companies in the village were established as branches of other larger trading companies in Tórshavn and Tvøroyri, but they soon became independent companies. The largest were J. Mortensen á Marknoyri, Nap. Nolsøe á Marknoyri, Peter H. Dahl á Tjørn, Thomas J. Vilhelm (Tummas við Kráir), Jaspur Hjelm á Løðhamri, J.A. Godtfred (Hjá Diasi), A/S J. Dahl á Gørðum (Garðahandilin) and F/A D.J. Vilhelm við Misá. The ocean-going fishing vessel, the smack Johanna, which has been preserved and restored, was bought by A/S J. Dahl in 1894. Like Tvøroyri, Vágur became a centre for fishing and production of dried cod in the first half of the 20th century.

In Botni, northwest of the village, a hydropower plant was built in 1921, and in the same year Vágur became the first village to get electric light. The first quay facility was inaugurated in 1925 and extended in 1952. The port was further expanded in 1970 and again in 1976 with a fish factory. Since then, the port expansion has continued in order to accommodate more moored vessels, and landing stages and an industrial area have been established on the south side of the fjord. Parts of the port were upgraded to an oil terminal in 2012, allowing ships that required a depth of at least 10 m to access.

During World War II, a Loran-C navigation station was built in við Eggjarnar in Vágur. It was put into operation in 1943 and was administered by the British forces until 1946, after which it was taken over by Denmark until it was closed in 1977. Today, Við Eggjarnar is a popular tourist attraction offering a view of the bird cliffs on the west side of the island.

The crisis of the 1930s also led to bankruptcies and stagnation in Vágur. After a period of herring fishing in the 1950s, the filleting factory Suðurfisk was established in 1967 with Ove Mikkelsen as general manager. In 1977, Jákup Joensen, Jákup í Lopra, set up the filleting factory Polarfrost, the village’s largest employer in the 1970s and 1980s. Polarfrost had several trawlers.

The banking crisis of 1992 hit Vágur hard, and several businesses had to close, resulting in widespread unemployment. Since then, the local business community has taken many new initiatives. A new innovative company is Rock Trawl-doors. Since 2004, it has been manufacturing trawl doors based on the injector principle, invented by Helgi Larsen and managed by Hans Joensen, called Hans í Líðini. P/F Bakkafrost, which farms salmon in the area, has taken over Polarfrost’s buildings.

Around the turn of the millennium, the couple Karin and Árni Brattaberg founded the company Sirri, which produced yarn from Faroese wool for a number of years. This led to a revival of knitting and Faroese knit design, and the design company Guðrun & Guðrun was founded.

The current church, built in the period 1927‑39, was designed in Gothic style by the Faroe Islands’ first qualified architect, Johan Hofgaard, and built in concrete with an iron roof. In 1958, Ernst Trier from Vallekilde Højskole (Vallekilde Folk High School) decorated the choir with a stained glass window.

The village’s first school dates from 1875 and today serves as an exhibition room for art and cultural history. From 1933 to 1946, the village offered classes at middle-school and qualifying school level with examinations at Tvøroyrar Skúli. The new Vágs Skúli was inaugurated in 1951, and since, then it has been expanded with a swimming bath in 1975. Today, the school also has students from the villages of Hov, Nes, Agrar, Lopra and Sumba.

In the period 1974‑2013, it was possible to take the Higher Preparatory Examination (HF) in both Tvøroyri and Vágur; after that, all upper secondary education was centred in a newly built school in Hov. Since 2016, Vágur has had a sports academy with an adventure line. It accommodates a total of 48 students and is housed in the village’s old warehouses, but uses sports facilities both indoors and outdoors. In 2020, the housing company Bústaðir built a residential hall attached to the academy, accommodating 72 residents. One of the reasons why the academy is located in Vágur is the many sports facilities in the village, such as the multiarena Marghøllin with climbing walls and space for indoor football, handball and parkour. In addition, it is home to a football pitch and the local football club’s facilities, such as the VB Hall and the VB House. The Faroe Islands’ first 50 m indoor pool, the Páls Høll swimming complex, was built in 2015. It is named after Pál Joensen, who represented Denmark in swimming at the Olympic Games in 2012 and 2016. The complex is heated with waste heat from the nearby power plant. When the Faroese electricity company SEV won the Nordic Council Nature and Environment Prize in 2015, they donated DKK 350,000 to Páls Høll in recognition of this environmentally friendly heating method.

Marita S. Petersen, the first and so far only female Prime Minister of the Faroe Islands, was born in Vágur. The marine biology amateur researcher, author and cinema owner Jørgen M. Olsen also lived in the village.

Finally, the visual artist Ruth Smith must be mentioned. She too was born and raised in Vágur, where there is a museum dedicated to her works, the Ruth Smith Art Museum.

On a mainly voluntary basis, several initiatives have been taken to preserve the local cultural history. One of the initiatives is the smack Johanna TG 326 that has been restored and made ready for sea. It is used for leisure and tourist activities and has also taken part in several regattas both in the Faroe Islands and abroad. Ten old grindabáter (boats used for pilot whale hunt) have also been restored and made ready for sea: five boats with ten pairs of oars and five boats with eight pairs of oars, the oldest of which dates from 1873. The area’s traditions include a legendary New Year’s celebration with a torchlight procession and the burning of an old boat, attracting both locals and tourists.

The hydropower plant in Botni

The Faroe Islands’ first electricity producing hydropower plant was commissioned in 1921. The plant was municipal, and the Norwegian engineer Haakon Blaauw was in charge of the project, where pipelines were laid from the small lake Ryskivatn to the power plant in Botni. From 18 July 1921, there was electric light. In 1960, the plant was taken over by the intermunicipal company SEV. In 1982, a diesel engine power plant was added, the capacity of which was expanded in 2003 and 2016.

Ecclesiastical history of Vágur

An old legend tells that a Norwegian lady, whose husband had perished at sea, put an entire church, all dressed and ready to be put up, out to sea on a raft. The wish was for it to drift to a place where it was needed. Thus, the drifting Norwegian church became Vágur’s first, and the gift from the sea has since been a votive church.

The first Lutheran sermon in the Faroe Islands was given in 1538 in Vágur Kirkja by brother Andreas. The village has had a total of five churches. The fourth was built in á Kirkukletti in 1862. The builder was Guðbrandur Sigurðsson from Iceland, who lived in Vágur. In 1942, this church was taken down and rebuilt in Hov.

The churches in Vágur have had an organ since 1873. For the inauguration of the current church in 1939, Edith Dahl founded the choir Ljómur, the country’s oldest active church choir. The opera singer Rúni Brattaberg, who has since performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and Cincinnati Opera and in 2016 received the Faroe Islands Culture Award, was a young member of this choir.

The dean of the Faroe Islands during the period 1918‑44, Jacob Dahl, was born in Vágur. He translated The New Testament (1937) and the church rituals into Faroese, and he published a Faroese grammar in 1908. A statue of the dean, made by Janus Kamban, stands in front of the church.

Photographer Ellen Dahl

Ellen Dahl (1907‑90), who was born and raised in Vágur, apprenticed as a photographer with Johan Harald G. Kaiser in Køge in Denmark 1924‑29, after which she returned home and set up her own photo studio in 1930. She took portraits, sold photographic equipment and developed photos for her customers and coloured pictures. Of greatest importance to posterity, however, is her detailed photographic documentation of life in the village, whose history has thus been systematically immortalised in pictures over a period of 60 years. She left behind about 150,000 photographs, glass plates and negatives, which her grandson, the photographer Rógvi Johansen, has digitised and made available to all interested parties.

Further reading

• Ørðavík (Settlement) and Ørðavíkarlíð
• Víkarbyrgi and Hamrabyrgi (Settlements)
• Tvøroyri (Settlement)
• Tvøroyrar Municipality
• Trongisvágur (Settlement)
• Sumba (Settlement) and Sumbiar Municipality
• Sandvík (Settlement)
• Porkeri (Settlement)
• Nes (Settlement)
• Lopra (Settlement)
• Hvalba (Settlement)
• Hov (Settlement)
• Fámjin (Settlement)
• Froðba (Settlement)
• Akrar (Settlement)
• Suðuroy (Island)

Read more about The islands, towns and settlements