Tórshavn Things to Do

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In the small garden in front of the savings bank one can find a bronze statue of a couple made by the Faroes artist Janus Kamban. Benches surround the garden allowing visitors to rest underneath big trees right in the heart of Torshavn.

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On the house end a relief was put up during the summer of 1985. It is made of stainless steel and aluminium representing 3 playing girls. It was made by Fridjof Joensen. Hence this is one of the more modern buildings in the town centre.

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The Faroes Parliament building is situated directly in the town centre. It was built in 1856 with timber and extended in 1907.
Along with Manx Tynwald and the Icelandic Alþing it is one of the three oldest Norse assemblies of Europe, comprising one of the oldest parliamentary systems in the world.
Today, the Faroe Islands compromise one constituency, and the number of MP is fixed at 33

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This is a protected three winged building situated in a beautiful garden. It was built in 1860 and was then a "realskole", a secondary school. The bookshop opened in 1918 and is today the largest book store in Torshavn also with a good collection of books about the Faroe Islands.

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Right next to the parking space in a park overlooking the city there are two statues picturing a man and a woman returning from the outlying fields with milk and peet, this monument has been erected as a memory to the hardship of previous times when the town was not as modern as it is today.

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This is the former fort warehouse - the extreme building on Tinganes, built in 1750. The other red-brownish houses were all built after the fire of 1673 as warehouses and residential properties. Today most of the buildings are government offices.

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These are fortifications built in 1580 by Magnus Heinason a local hero, to protect the trade against pirates. During the Second World War the Faroes and the fort was occupied by British forces. They had their headquarters on Skansin. The fort has been modified several times and obtained its present shape in 1780. It was restored some years ago. There are two guns left over from the British occupation and some old Danish bronze guns from 1782.

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Nólsoyar Páll (oul Poulsen Nolsøe) was born on 11 October 1766 in Nólsoy and died 1809 in Sumba) is a if not the Faroese national hero. Páll was a seaman, trader, poet, farmer, and boat builder.

In 1804 at Vágur he built the first ship capable of crossing the Atlantic since the Middle Ages. In 1809, during the Napoleonic Wars, he would travel to Britain on this ship and stock up on food supplies to ensure that famine and starvatiopn did not take hold in the islands.

Although he is known for his sailing and blockade breaking - he is often thought to be better known for his poetry. His bird ballad uses the allegory of the oystercatcher chasing birds to represent the government officials and the smallbirds to be representative of the poor people of the Islands.