Muddy Bay Diaries (3)

Thursday evening
While on the expotition through Lerwick, I got a phone call from Brian Smith, the organizer of the conference on the Shetlandic site. The bus that would bring us from the hotel in Lerwick to the conference in Scalloway would be leaving at 9am the next morning. And could I please tell all the other people who would be going to the conference?

So while I had dinner in the hotel that evening, I kept an eye out for possible conference people. I knew hardly any of them, only some of the Faroese and they were nowhere to be seen. There were some people who were talking in English with a Scandinavian accent, but that doesn’t necessarily have to mean that they were conference people. So I ended up not identifying anyone and later asking the hotel reception if they could pass on the message.

Hotel staff doesn’t seem to be English. There was a Scottish woman there (who later turned out not to be a conference person) who asked for a glass of rioja with her food. They brought her a glass of milk. This is a true story.

Friday morning
So the next day I find out why the Faroese were nowhere to be seen the day before: the Norrøna had only arrived at 5am Friday morning. Which for the passengers means being woken up quite loudly in Danish at 3.30 or something rude like that. So at the breakfast buffet I said hello to Turið, and later also met Leyvoy and Hjalmar (æh?) again. Plus being introduced to a busload of other Faroese, I think there were about twenty of them.

There was also this blond girl who looked really familiar but I couldn’t quite figure out why. It turns out she was the cousin of the people I stayed with in Argir in 2004, so I did see her then but only very briefly. It was nice though to see all these people again, and speaking Faroese again. A bit rusty, but that was soon to improve...

The bus came at 9am as promised and drove us to Scalloway. They have this massive fisheries college there, where the conference was held. There I saw Doreen again, and she introduced me to a host of people that I’d read books and articles by, so it was nice to put some faces to names. They already seemed to know quite a lot about me, which was pretty scary.

Name badges are very useful.