Unpublished letter to an Italian newspaper

Among the documents I have produced, I recently found a letter that I wrote in July 2015 to the editors of the well-known Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano. Letter which, unfortunately, got unpublished.

Pilot whale meat for dinner!

“Gev okkum í dag okkara dagliga breyð” say the Faroese people, reciting the Lord’s prayer. Give us today our daily bread. Norsemen (from Old French normanz, probably from Low Frankish nortmann or directly from Old Norse norðmaðr, later Latinized in nortmannus or normannus: ”men from the North”) settlements in the Faroe Islands were originally built around the IX and X century CE, with the first vikings (from Old Norse víkingr: ”bay dwellers”; also note that the sentence að fara í víking means “to go on a viking”, that is, the seaborne raids that made the Norsemen infamous and are repeatedly told in our history books) reaching the islands in the VII century CE.

Sea Shepherd and four myths to debunk

[Originally written on the 26^th August 2015]

I find myself talking and writing about the Faroe Islands almost every day, because I’m a co-administrator of a Facebook group promoting tourism in the Faroes, sharing news, collecting photos and giving advices to Italian tourists that would like to know how to get there or what to do. Lately, things got a little rough around Tórshavn because of those funny little fellows of Sea Shepherd (SS, in short).

Grindadráp: instructions for use

It could be possible, theoretically, to talk about the Faroe Islands for hours and hours, describing breathtaking landscapes, the turbulent history of a stateless nation, the beautiful language which survived centuries of linguistic oppression and much more, but sooner or later most of the people will have to challenge the extremely sensitive issue of the grindadráp, which is seldom tackled with a real in-depth analysis. Now, I can well imagine your retches, tears, insults and so on.

Back to serousness. I swear.