Mid-way between Iceland and Scotland, the Faroe Islands are a country of approximately 50,000 people. The Faroe Islands are part of the kingdom of Denmark, but self-governing for the most part. The Faroese are of Scandinavian and Celtic descent and speak their own language which is very close to Icelandic. For an Icelander, reading Faroese is relatively easy, but the pronunciation is very different. The seafood industry is by far the largest sector in the Faroe Islands. The Faroese are a close-knit community, proud of their history and traditions, famous for their ring dance, locally called Faroese dance (Föröyskur dansur), which has lived on ever since the Middle Ages, while mostly disappearing in the rest of Europe.
The approach taken by the Faroese authorities at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic was starkly different from that of most neighbouring countries. The Government did not issue any lockdown mandates, only recommendations, similar to the approach Sweden took. One of the most vocal opponents of COVID-19 restrictions in the Faroe Islands is musician and events planner Jón Tyril. Jón wrote to several ministers, members of the Faroese parliament and others in the political establishment at the outset. “I urged them to not adopt the same ‘epidemic law’ that Denmark had put in place, and which gave extended powers to the ministry of health and the police, to avoid mandates and forced restrictions, but rather to build on cooperation and trust,” Jón says. This path of recommendations became the route they took.
Government offices and some public services were closed for a while and schools were closed for a few weeks at the start of the pandemic only. After that they remained open, even despite rising pressure for school closures towards the end of 2021. “There was strong pressure on closing schools a week early before last Christmas, but I did not agree to this,” Minister for Education Dr. Jenis Av Rana said in a recent interview with Icelandic online newspaper Frettin. “It is important for children to keep their freedom and lead a normal life, this is important for their development and well-being. There was a heated debate on this amongst the Cabinet members. At first I encountered strong opposition, but in the end we agreed on this,” the Minister said. Dr. Rana, who is also the Minister of Foreign Affairs, along with Education and Culture, decided not to get vaccinated against COVID-19. A practising medical doctor for 35 years, the Minister said using vaccination to counter the spread of coronaviruses is futile. Events have clearly proved him right.
Frettin also interviewed Kaj Leo Holm Johannesen, former Prime Minister and currently Minister for Healthcare. The Minister said it was still not clear if people registered as dead from COVID-19 actually died from the disease or from other causes. “We cannot claim anyone has died from Covid, all we know is that people have died diagnosed with Covid. An autopsy is needed to verify the cause,“ the Minister told Frettin reporters.
During the initial lockdown in 2020 and into the summer, care homes and hospitals were totally closed to visitors. The decision to open up was made by the Heilsuverkid, the Faroese version of the NHS, and Kommunufelagid, which is the municipalities association together with the National Council on Ethics. The policy statement claims the level of isolation resulting from continued closures was far too harmful to be justifiable. Instead people were urged to take the utmost precautions when visiting. As in most other countries, the Faroese epidemic committee pushed for mask mandates, but unlike most other countries the Government decided against them.
Stricter lockdowns in Iceland made no difference
It is instructive to compare the development of the COVID-19 pandemic during its first year (before vaccines were available) in the Faroe Islands and neighbouring Iceland, another tiny nation, very similar in terms of culture and living standards. While Iceland implemented strict measures (despite recent claims to the contrary), closed schools, intermittently closed bars and restaurants and hairdressers and other personal service businesses, and put strict limits on gatherings, the spread of infections remained largely the same in the two countries throughout those first 12 months.
By the end of February 2021, confirmed cases in the Faroe Islands were just under 14,000 per million and deaths were at 20 per million. In comparison, Iceland had 16,000 cases and 80 deaths per million during the first year of the pandemic.
In Iceland, the Government Ministers took pride in delegating all decisions to the Chief Epidemiologist, the Head of the Directorate of Health and a police officer, who formed a committee of three, “the troika”, which practically dictated the response to the pandemic. Until very recently, the Minister for Healthcare and the Government simply rubber-stamped their decisions every time.
Judging from discussions with locals and recent interviews with Faroese politicians, it looks as if a key differentiator between the Faroese approach and that taken by most other countries is that in the Faroe Islands it was the Government that took direct responsibility for decisions and often went against the recommendations of the epidemic committee. Decisions were based on broader considerations than just the number of infections. It also looks as if they were fact-based to a larger extent than elsewhere. Schools were kept open, both because of the importance of avoiding disruption of children‘s education and also based on the low risk to children and low infection rates among mostly asymptomatic children. Mask mandates were never introduced, as the authorities never saw any solid evidence masks would limit transmission. “Masks do not prevent infections,“ Dr. Rana told Frettin‘s reporters. “They are not designed for this, but to protect physicians and patients in the operating room,” he said.
It was only in late 2021, with a large surge in cases and an outbreak at a care home that suddenly drove up deaths, that the Government bowed to public pressure to impose somewhat stronger restrictions. In November, a Covid-pass (vaccine passport) was allowed, but not mandated, only to be discontinued again about a month later. “This was not a good move,” Jón Tyril says. “In a small community like ours, refusing friends and family members entry to establishments can easily ruin social bonds.” A petition against the pass was started immediately and had reached 1,500 signatures when the measure was abolished.
All Covid recommendations and restrictions were lifted in the Faroe Islands at the end of February 2022, despite a strong rise in cases during the previous weeks.
The success of the Faroese approach shows how a pandemic can be dealt with without imposing strict lockdowns and mandates. The comparison between the Faroe Islands and Iceland strongly indicates the futility of mandatory lockdowns. Avoiding mandates is also likely to have helped avoid the friction seen in many other countries. In the words of Jón Tyril: “I think that we had less of a divide in the public than many other nations. We did not have pro- and anti-maskers, since there were no mask mandates. We did have a certain level of pro- and anti-vax divide, but the Government never went in and talked down to those who chose not to get vaxed, as we saw in other countries like Denmark, France, Italy, Canada. In fact, they kept saying that this was voluntary and nobody should feel forced to take the vax. So, the pandemic was divisive, especially because we are a very closely knit society, but my impression is that we were not nearly as divided as countries with mandates, long standing Covid passes and hard rhetoric from the leaders.”
The Faroese authorities never fell prey to the irrational fear and scare tactics that unfortunately prevailed for the most part in the rest of the world. Instead, they showed the self-confidence, the respect for fact-based decision-making and consideration of the broader picture needed when confronted with an acute situation. Finally, what the Faroese approach shows us is how important it is that elected representatives take direct responsibility for all decisions, instead of delegating them to officials without any democratic accountability. This might in fact be the most important lesson we can learn from the tiny Faroese nation.
Thorsteinn Siglaugsson is an economist who lives in Iceland. Find him on his blog.
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I take it that the Faroes don’t send anyone to the Davos jamborees, so they must have missed the memo.
Or it could be they haven’t been indoctrinated in green doomsday cultism, a much more rational explanation than the mindless conspiracy theories posted on the subject
Po-TAY-to, po-TAH-to.
One sensible island on the planet. Let’s hope it is contagious
Thank you for a very interesting reading. Remember being impressed by the sanity of the government early in the pandemic when they did not stop incoming fishing vessels from abroad, just accepted they must be open. The common sense approach was just such a stark contrast with the UK approach and this was highlighted in LD sceptics at the time.
I thought the covid hysteria was over.
And we’re on the next level, of the same game: Russia!
We’ve had the first level, Brexit. The second, Trump. The third, Covid.
Getting a nice balance of for and against this comment. Interesting. It’s mirroring the outside world quite well.
I always try to resist falling for a ‘narrative delusion’!
How do you know you are not, even if you know you are resisting?
The game called ‘Hysteria’. We’ve moved to the next level of the Hysteria Game. Level 3 was covid. Level2 Trump. L1 Brexit. Each level gets progressively more hysterical. You lose if you cannot survive the previous level and get stuck there (i.e. perma-masking, Trump Delusion Syndrome, Bremoaning etc). You win if you can rise above the hysteria and move on to face the next level.
I like the idea. But I think induced hysteria is just a permanent feature of contemporary propaganda on all sides, eg, the notion of the EU 4th reich invading poor small Britan unless … is foundationally no less hysterical than so-called project fear.
Snakes and ladders? Or Alice in Wonderland?
I’ve already faced Russia and am ready for the level after that. If it’s ‘climate change’, I’ve already written Greta’s obituary for WUWT. What’s the one after that that I need to embrace?!
Get ready for the behemoth.
Zero Carbon and Ruinables.
A picturesque place, with sane and rational administration, what more could one want, if only
Well, someone clearly doesn’t want such a thing judging by the down vote!
Yes extraordinary presumably they want to live in dystopian hell ad Infinitum.
Covid-19, the plandemic and fake vaccines are only one part of the West’s problem.
Whilst Russia conquers Ukrainian city after city, the mighty United States army is fretting about the gender identity of its personnel. US army officers are being ordered to take courses on gender pronouns and on when to offer soldiers gender transition surgery.
This is an example of what these US army officers are being instructed on:
It might be *medically necessary* to cut off this female soldier’s breasts, sew up her vagina, make her a fake penis from rectal tissue and dose her with male hormones? While under fire on the front line you’d want this mentally disturbed person watching your back, wouldn’t you?
But then, this is the army that got kicked out of Afghanistan by a few tribes of goat herds, leaving almost $100 million of equipment behind, along with their idiotic rainbow flag fluttering from their headquarters.
The UK isn’t to be outdone, though, the head of MI6 makes sure of that. Check his tweets below. Not so long ago if the head of a major UK intelligence service came out with rubbish like this, he’d be immediately removed from his post and ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation.
Bye Bye West, whom the Gods want to destroy, they first make mad.
Head of the intelligence service and cheerleader of “Let’s Show Putin by Tweeting For Transvestites”. Why not a gay James Bond film to press the point home?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2ecasPqhgk
It’s not like that in Russia.
In a WW3 against NATO, Russia would win hands down. The morale is much higher.
Maybe fly a huge LGBTQ flag from the MI6 HQ? Already some are flown from US embassies. Did the US army fly it in Afghanistan or at the Pentagon or both?
Day of Visibility? They’re hardly invisible any day- boy, do we know they’re there!
Do you think if I turned up in Ukraine to fight the russkies wearing a rainbow coloured scarf, a female skirt and adorned my face with lipstick, mascara and eyeshadow rather than war paint that they would refuse to shoot me?!
You’d scare the shite out of them!
I heard a figure of sixty five billion dollars worth of gear.
one hundred million doesn’t go far these days.
Star, your wish is their command.
As I write “they” are working on Jane Bond.
$100 billion or more, not million surely!
Whatever keeps the US out of the fray …
More than $100,000,000 of military kit.
Try adding three zeroes.
000
Yep, we’ve clearly got an absolute fruitcake in charge at MI6.
‘A soldier is assigned female at birth. But she suddenly decides she’s a man, and tells her sergeant that she’s now a man and would like to be treated as one.’
I would tell ‘him’ that his physical fitness and upper body strength is now considered to be woefully inadequate and they needed to sort it out or ferk off.
I know a young woman who did exactly that. She had always wanted to join the army. However, she had a sex change and officially became a man. That meant she had to achieve the standards for men, which she couldn’t, and was rejected.
Tom no problem.
The US military have lowered the physical fitness requirements to the female level.
No problem!
Furthermore, it ensures any Tom, Dick or Harriet could or would be rounded up for conscription purposes.
Point of order, I understand that all branches have now adopted the same “physical readiness standards” for all the genders, real and imaginary.
In other words, dropped their fitness tests to the point where women can pass them.
The namesh Bond, Jamesh Bond (they/them).
This is a lovely story. Kudos to the Faroese government!
Unfortunately, though, they may well find that the islands are now high up on Big Pharma’s hit list…
Two more choice facts to add to the content of the first paragraph:
The Celts as Caesar tells us very clearly lived in NW Gaul long before the arrival of the British army from Wales that created Brittany.
Not one single historical source even vaguely hints of any Celts in Britain, Ireland or Scandinavia so please stop repeating this silly myth. The Celts were French.
When I say this on genealogical sites I catch unshirted hell.
The myth was invented in 1707. A book by an academic (who fails to put the knife in) is “The Atlantic Celts, Ancient people or modern invention”.
The last straw, was when I checked supposed La Tene and Hallstatt artefacts to see whether they were concentrated in the area known to be occupied by the real Celts (West of the Seine). It appears the real Celts were not into decorative art and the only examples are found at the border with the Belgae.
For something to be called Celtic, is has to be something primarily found in the areas we know to be Celtic. But the reality is almost the reverse. Go from Germany to Eastern France and the supposedly “Celtic” material disappears where it should be most concentrated.
There were Belgae Gauls in Britain … but they arrived about 150BC, they are well documented in the archaeological record as a change in elite burials only found in the SE of England, so even the Belgae didn’t get anywhere near Wales, Scotland or Ireland.
I’ve had numerous academics swearing blind to me that there were Celts in Britain … but when asked to substantiate that with actual evidence they all get annoyed and eventually give up. There is no evidence at all of Celts in Britain.
My sample indicates heavy Celt. So naturally all this has peaked my interest. And I disabused myself, years ago, the notion that Celt was shamrocks and whiskey and Riverdance.
The real Celts lived in NW France … quite literally a Welsh Nationalist decided to call people who have no historical basis for being called Celt “Celt” and then the Irish and Scots did the same.
If you are an English member of the upper classes (i.e. of Norman descent) you are far more likely to have Celtic blood than someone living Wales, Scots or Irish.
At least you know who to spell(spill) the crauter
They weren’t really French since France didn’t exist at the time…oh I can’t be arsed anymore, it’s all bollocks.
The area of Gaul is almost exactly the same as France, so the two can be used interchangeable without confusion.
Yeah but, no but were the people occupying Gaul ethnically the same people who now occupy France, that’s the question? Does the blood of Vercingetorix run in the veins of Macron?
It just shows what can be done when there aren’t any Johnsons, Whittys, Vallances, Hancocks and Fergusons on the scene, along with their SAGE, SPI-M and other covens.
Would I be right in assuming…
I think the “lockdowns didn’t work” stories are good but well worn. And I’m not sure that the experience of the Faroe Islands, population 50,000, adds a lot of extra weight to the already substantial evidence.
However, vax passports for travel are still a thing. The WHO are pushing for a global vax passport standard and for additional pandemic powers. The EU are extending their Green Pass scheme.
I’m not saying the lockdown battle is completely won. I wouldn’t bet big money they don’t come back. But the bigger and more imminent danger I see is that under the false sense that things are back to normal, very not normal things like digital health surveillance remain in place and we just end up living with them.
One should also keep in mind that things are back to normal in England under the current UK government. Very much not so in other parts of the UK and certainly not so in Europe in general.
Apart from the crippling debt, vaccine injured, backed up hospitals and increasing inflation, apart from that ‘steady as she goes’.
The damage done since March 2020 won’t magically undo itself overnight. But I don’t think that was implied by normal here. I also don’t think Face coverings are recommended is normal enough. But the situation has nevertheless improved a lot.
Great to see ITV shares down about 25% today. My guess that’s all thanks to Hilary Jones. Not a spot in Dr Rana.
It was obvious I think even to many of the participants that ‘lockdowns’ were never about preventing illness and death. There was a sense in early 2020 of a need for a pause and perhaps a reset that was shared all over the world. You could see this in the planning exercises that were being undertaken in the months previous. The February 2020 crash was greater than that in 1929. In a sense it was totally necessary to create the pandemic at that point and maintain it for a number of years. The world bank says 2020-2025. Perhaps they have revised this in light of recent events. In terms of wealth transfer upwards it is continuing apace. Accelerating centralisation and impoverishment on a level that we thought we would never see again in western countries.
You are being steered from one Ahrimanic force to another and quite seamlessly. Wherever they want to direct your gaze is the wrong place. If you concentrate long enough the right place might appear. Many of us partook of the poison during the good years. This is the first level of understanding. Rudolf Steiner was asked by some of his acoloytes, how do we attain knowledge of higher worlds? He said the best first step is to go to an old people’s home and take some of the residents out for a walk. Gnosis in large part is knowledge of the heart. You have to open it to see the higher worlds.
This is very interesting.
Unfortunately I know that when I show it to even intelligent close friends and family members it will go straight over their heads (not least because many of them now believe that it’s all over and we’re ‘back to normal’).
Of course, I hope they’re right but I suspect that they’re not.
Given that none of this would have been possible had the majority of people said No, it’s clear that the only way to ensure that it has ended, and to hold accountable those responsible, is to persuade more people both to see what really happened and to build in tbhem and anger and disgust and a resolve both to prevent it ever happening again and to punish those behind it all.
How do we help people to open their eyes if charts and stories like this won’t do it? It’s a puzzle.
What form of punishment do you suggest?
What level of proof will you require, before they are condemned?
Hopefully something more than the infantile nonsense of this article….
Misconduct in public office carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, but I would say a minimum is banning from holding office ever again. That would be the politicians and civil servants. Not sure about the rest of the guilty, for example “journalists”, “scientists” and “academics” – maybe just professional misconduct and thrown out of their “professional” bodies.
The “professional” bodies and academia were the first targets for GangGreen.
Conquered with hardly a struggle.
It isn’t going to be pleasant when the truth comes out. Even for those of us who resisted. We are talking about immense numbers, a significant part of the population. We just need to remain chill and understanding. Anyone can fuck up sometimes.
Pretty low standard of “proof”.
Still it will be good enough for “sceptics” ….unless they are actually sceptical about what they read.
Logically, a general statement is disproved by the existence of at least one counterexample. And there are a lot of counterexamples for the Coronaut’s TINA[*] claims.
[*] There is no alternative.
Was it not Einstein who said “Just one person can disprove my theory – no need for hundreds”
Extraordinary theories can only be justified by extraordinary proof.
This is why the theory of man made global warming has NEVER been proven.
Burden of proof is on the evil loonies who threw out evidence based plans in favour of untried, dangerous, mad rubbish. Burden not met, ergo mad rubbish should never have been used and should never be used again.
all those words with one headwand. congratulations.
After this article, this nation is probably going to get at least 50,000 citizenship applications. I imagine it might also be as safe as anywhere in the world from nuclear war that seems more possible than ever.
I guess I need to learn how to fish or provide needed services or products to those who do.
Nuclear war is as impossible as ever[*]. That’s just an 1980s scare story which keeps being reycled a lot at the moment as the Great Corona Reset increasingly turns out to be the fantasy story it always was and thus, something else is needed to strike fear into people and lend crecedence to the It’s a secret world conspiracy! stories.
[*] That is, due to the fact that nuclear weapons are ubiquitious among the club of state capable of (and silly enough) constructing them, hence, no major power can expect to launch a nuclear war and win it. The conjectured outcome is always universal devastation, ie, it would be equivalent to losing a war, only much worse, to everybody including the initiator.
Surely, everyone understands the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, but this doesn’t mean events couldn’t spiral out of control and some nation launches the first strike – which would almost certainly result in a barrage of returned strikes.
I do think we are closer to World War III than we have been in my lifetime. If America (and its NATO allies) enter a war against China and Russia (and whatever allies they have, including Iran and North Korea) who knows what would happen if one side started to be routed in said war.
Even if any possible global war stayed conventional, who would control the nuclear warheads after this war was seemingly concluded? Could some of these nukes fall into the hands of really crazy people?
I don’t lay awake at night worrying about nuclear Armageddon next week, but I also think a scenario that not too long ago would have been unthinkable, is not thinkable.
I think you should explain that to the mad Ayatollahs.
Let us know how you go on.
The short version is I don’t buy into your stories. Which includes the fashionable psychobabble.
Correct. What I worry about is a senile squatter in the White House.
Just imagine him sitting on the pot unable to wipe his derryair and instead of pressing the ‘help’ button he presses the Big Red one.
That is scary.
The reason for the decision of the Faroese Parliament is probably down to the close proximity of the electorate to their politicians. The more the political class can distance themselves from those they claim to represent, the more likely they are to commit atrocities.
Comparing the Faroe Islands to Western Australia, I think you may be on to something there.
No doubt you still have to wear a face nappy to fly there (via Denmark), but it looks an interesting place to visit, and boasts the world’s first (I think) undersea roundabout. Yes, really. Part of a tunnel system connecting the islands. That the Faroese didn’t lock down raises them way up the respect table.
“That the Faroese didn’t lock down raises them way up the respect table.”
At the very top by a country mile.
Common sense isn’t very common but it looks likes the Faroese are the exception. Good on you let’s hope it’s contagious.