About radio, telegrams, teapots and elderly Faroese men
A couple of months ago we were interviewed in the Faroese national radio about our music and the new album. In between the song “eitt minni” (a Memory) was sent on air and we talked about the background of it, Færingehavnen (the Faroese harbour in Greenland) and the past times. This seemed to have resonated with many people and the hours and days after we kept getting calls and being stopped in town from people that had something to share from this time. One of these calls came from a community house in a smaller village, where the community gathers every morning to have coffee and sort out the world situation. The radio had been on and that had started a talk about various stories and details. We decided to drive there the next morning to sit down and have a chat with these folks.
It wasn’t really possible to make any appointments or anything, so we just drove there in the morning and asked around where the meeting place was, found it, knocked on the door and stepped in. It felt a bit like when a stranger enters a saloon in a western movie. Like all sounds, movement and time itself stopped for a moment. We introduced ourselves and sat down. Coffee cups were placed in front of us and filled up with strong black filter coffee from the coffee machine that was bubbling in the corner. Slowly the talk in the room started to flow and stories were being shared. Here’s a small episode shared by one of the elderly, which gives a nice insight about the communication back then.
You couldn’t talk with the wife back home. It wasn’t possible to hear anything over the phone lines. The sound was totally broken. It cost 6 kr a minute. The Radio Godthåb was another possibility. The sound there was ok, but that cost 28 kr a minute. In comparison a four month shift earned you 6000 kr, so if you had a 10 minute talk you’d spent a good share of your salary and this wasn’t really an option.
Telegrams were mostly what was used. You couldn’t just send these on your own, though, but the trawler had to help sending and receiving these morse messages. All telegrams came to the trawler and on certain days all messages were read up. This was all made in public. All the many people in Færingehavnen gathered on the harbour to hear the telegrams being read out loud through the loudspeaker from the ship. In order to maintain a bit of privacy, different codes were invented. If you’d had a good catch in southern Greenland, for example, you shouldn't tell. Then all the ships would hurry there. You didn’t gossip.
One time there was this guy called Martin, whose wife was pregnant when he left. They didn’t want everybody to know that they were having a child and agreed that she would send a teapot, when she had given birth. As the time came, there was a telegram for Martin. This was read out loud. Martin had received two teapots. One with a spout and one without.