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TÓRSHAVN — Living in the United States, we take a few things for granted.
We rarely have to worry about whether our drinking water is fit for consumption, there are little — if any — packs of wild wolverines running amok and our streets are filled with Google Street View cars capturing our neighborhoods.
The latter is a bit of a sticking point for residents of the Faroe Islands, whose archipelago country sandwiched in the ocean between Norway and Iceland haven’t had a visit from the documenting vehicles, much to the chagrin of the tourism board and resident Durita.
“I think it’s sad I can’t share it with my friends abroad,” Durita said in a YouTube video from Visit Faroe Islands. She also said that Google has sent vehicles to the top of Mont Blanc — the highest mountain in Europe — but not to the small country with a population of just under 50,000 people. Durita took it upon herself to start a campaign for the service: #wewantgooglestreetview.
What the Faroe Islands do have an abundance of are sheep, whose population outnumbers its human inhabitants. The name of the island actually comes from an old Norse word for the furry mountainside dwellers.
Since sheep have free reign on the islands, Durita and company decided to make their own makeshift sheepview of the country by affixing a 360-degree camera, a set of solar panels and a phone to the back of a sheep in order to get some stellar pictures of the island country. The cameras take a photo every minute, and Durita has been uploading them to Google Street View.
We dig the innovation in this initiative. And to put everyone’s mind at ease, the video did mention that only a few 360 cameras were harmed during the whole process and not the sheep they were attached to.
