Birgit Ernstsdottir Remmel
Cand.mag. in Latin, Spanish and Faroese

European Master in Conference Interpreting (EMCI) between German, Danish and English

loving - living a Faroese life since 1982 (with some Danish interruptions)

You don't know where the Faroes are situated? Look here! This is what the islands look like on a summer evening:

Nadav Kander: A view of the island of Koltur (population: 2) seen from Streymoy.
source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/travel/tmagazine/03well.faroes.t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
and on a summer day!

The village of Gjogv with the island of Kalsoy in the background
The village of Gjogv with the island
of Kalsoy in the background

source: http://images.google.it/imgres?imgurl=http://www.scotsell.com/islands/faroelg.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.scotsell.com/islands/orkandsh


The valley of the hay where the Faroese gymnasium is situated

In Hoydalar, the Valley of the Hay, I am one of the staff of 80 teachers in our country's biggest gymnasium, Føroya Studentaskúli og HF-skeið, teaching Latin, Spanish and Faroese.

Faroese is the national language, dating back from the Vikings and at present spoken by appr. 48.000 Faroese in the islands and maybe some 20.000 more living abroad.
About 700 students attend our school; most will have to go abroad to study. Traditionally, they choose Denmark, but the educational institutions aim at a bigger internationalisation.

The gymnasium is situated beautifully five minutes from the centre of the capital, looking out on the Atlantic Ocean. For each of the three years at Hoydalar, we have ten classes with 26-24 pupils in each; unfortunately, only those chosing the language branch have the privilege of learning Latin - but only for one year... They may choose to continue, but until now this has only nearly happened, never quite!
Godspell performed in HoydalarThe official logo of the musical FameJoseph and the amazing technicolor dreamcoat performed in Hoydalar The Faroese love music and singing. The traditional Faroese ballads have survived in an unbroken tradition since the middle ages - probably the only place in Europe... Faroese young people sing and play a lot. No wonder that our school performs another musical every three years, all with the school pupils. These performances are usually a tremendous success and take place in the beautiful  Nordic House of the Faroes.

Find some Latin proverbs here.
A wonderful organisation for European pupils of Latin

If you want to contact me, write to Birgit Remmel


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