Home Rule (Cone-Shaped)

Thirty years ago a young wife was hauled up a sheer 600-ft. cliff to her new home in the Faroe Islands. She hasn't yet made up her mind to come down again. Six hundred years ago her Viking ancestors on the craggy basalt archipelago, jutting sharply from the sea 250 miles north of Scotland, came under Danish rule. They haven't yet made up their minds to shake it off.

In overheated Faroe kitchens, hotheaded partisans recently have let the whale-oil lamps burn low while they argued the merits of proud independence on the one hand or Danish protection on the other. Some have even suggested alliance with the U.S. or Britain. But last September, when the Danes offered them a flat choice between full freedom or continued rule, the Faroese, unable to decide, turned down both alternatives. Last week they elected a new Lagting (local parliament) with instructions to work out some compromise which would adapt Danish rule to local conditions in the Faroes.

Why not? Faroe shepherds have adapted themselves to seeing their sheep blown off the cliffs; Faroe ponies (who double as sheepdogs) have adapted themselves to eating fish heads when grass is scarce; and the Faroe sea birds have learned to lay cone-shaped eggs that roll around, but not off, the narrow ledges where they nest.

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