Litla Dimun has a fluffly little cloud cap, and floofy little sheep

December 31, 2019 4:49 PM

Lítla Dímun (Atlas Obscura) is an isolated island (Google maps) is often with a fluffy, lenticular cloud (Skybrary) cap (Flickr). This is the only island in the Faroes archipelago that is unpopulated, at least with people. But it is home to domesticated short-tailed type sheep, who replaced the Lítla Dímun sheep (Wikipedia), an extinct species similar to the Soay sheep, a tough breed descendant from feral stock (Wikipedia).
posted by filthy light thief (11 comments total)

Every fall, farmers head to Lítla Dímun, scale its slick cliffs, and round up the sheep to bring them back to the main islands.

If, like me, you are looking at the sheer cliffs and wondering how do they get them down?, according to Wikipedia, the answer is with some difficulty.

The modern Faroes sheep of the island are gathered each autumn. People sail to the island in a fishing boat, towing several rowing skiffs. About 40 people then form a chain across the island, driving the 200 or so sheep into a pen on the north side of the island. The sheep are then caught, restrained by tying their feet together, put in nets five at a time and lowered by ropes to the skiffs. Each skiff then takes its load of 15 sheep to the fishing boat, which returns to the island of Suðuroy. The sheep are unloaded on the wharf in the village of Hvalba, where they are placed in rows and distributed to their owners.

posted by zamboni at 5:08 PM on December 31, 2019 [3 favorites]

My first reaction is that those are some cute sheep. But also, I wonder what the vegetation on that island would have been like pre-sheep? The island would look very different with shrubs and maybe even trees.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:52 PM on December 31, 2019 [1 favorite]

“A few sheep escape the gathering, and from time to time these are shot,”
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:18 PM on December 31, 2019 [1 favorite]

how do they get them down?

As God is my witness, I thought sheep could fly...

But anyway, Madame Naberius and I were in the Faroes a few years ago! (Near Klaksvik, not this place.) Gorgeous landscapes, but ridiculously steep, and capable of going from beautiful sunny day to shrouded in fog in seconds. We nearly managed to get lost coming back down a hill because the fog rolled in over the top of the hill like a wave crashing down on us and we were suddenly engulfed.

By the way, you navigate overland by a series of stone cairns that lead you across otherwise unmarked open land from village to village. Our guide told us they're spaced so that from one of them you should be able to make out the next one through the mist. Back in the day, he added, you really didn't want to get lost because if you were found wandering away from the cairn routes you could be killed on the presumption that you were out there to steal sheep.
posted by Naberius at 7:36 PM on December 31, 2019 [9 favorites]

Here's a video of visiting it (annoying music, may want to mute). You get to walk along a slippery grass path about 15 inches wide with a hundred feet of cliff beneath you.
posted by tavella at 9:48 PM on December 31, 2019 [3 favorites]

I've been to the Faroes too! It's absolutely beautiful and magical, photos here. And very isolated and not a lot to do other than enjoy the beauty of it. Totally recommended as a tourist trip if this is your kind of thing.

The island would look very different with shrubs and maybe even trees.

There are no shrubs or trees anywhere in the Faroes. I mean there are a few here and there, but basically the whole country looks like this. It's very windy and yeah, I'm sure the grazing doesn't help. What they do have is incredibly lush grass, dense sod. Which grows everywhere, even on the roofs.
posted by Nelson at 7:34 AM on January 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

You get to walk along a slippery grass path about 15 inches wide with a hundred feet of cliff beneath you.

I’m pretty outdoorsy but that is sketchy as fuck without being roped up with training.
posted by RolandOfEld at 8:18 AM on January 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

“A few sheep escape the gathering, and from time to time these are shot,”

An ovine parable for Capitalism....
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:21 AM on January 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

that is sketchy as fuck without being roped up with training.

That was my reaction. Yeah, there's a hand cable, but it was awkwardly positioned even for a not tall woman, and no safety tether.
posted by tavella at 11:47 AM on January 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

It's like an island from Earthsea.
posted by lucidium at 11:58 AM on January 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

OK, I am going to be that person and assert that's an orographic cap cloud, not a lenticular one.

It forms there because the air is forced upwards over the hill, its temperature and pressure reduce with altitude, and it passes through the dew point where the water vapour in it condenses into a cloud of visible droplets. Then the air comes back down the other side and the water evaporates again.

Lenticulars form when the same thing happens in open air, due to a wave system driving the air up and down instead of a hill. But they're much smoother in appearance, because they happen in laminar airflow rather than the turbulent flow you get over a mountain.

The photos on this page illustrate the difference quite well.
posted by automatronic at 8:56 AM on January 3, 2020 [3 favorites]