In the harbor, masts poked out of the mist like knitting needles from white cotton batting. The gulls swooped over the glassy water and perched watchfully on boats. Leaving the Seaman’s Hotel after breakfast, I could feel the cobblestones of the old town under my feet, but I couldn’t see my legs. I imagined that the islands might well have drifted overnight even farther away from the rest of the world. That morning I left Tórshavn by bus for the island of Sandoy to the south. I’d decided to visit the village of Húsavík overnight and to see the ruins of a medieval farm once owned by the “Lady of Húsavík.” Gudrún Sjúrdardóttir, a ship owner and merchant, was once counted as one of the wealthiest women of the North. She was born in Bergen, Norway, in the mid-fourteenth century; her father was Sjurdur Hjalt, Hjalt meaning that he came from Shetland. When he died, Gudrún inherited his considerable wealth and property: many houses in Bergen and some twenty farms along the west coast of Norway, as well as land in Shetland.
