They’ve employed the island’s sheep to help them with the mammoth task – by mounting them with cameras and uploading the results to Google.
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Five sheep have been involved in the Sheep View project. The archipelago, located between Iceland and Norway, came up with an inventive idea to map its 18 islands.
They’re accessible daily from Copenhagen, as it’s a territory of Denmark, but its location is extremely remote.
The sheep of the Faroes are no ordinary sheep.
The islands have a population of 80,000 sheep and 49,188 humans. With the help of a local farmer and a custom sheep harness, one Faroese woman has outfitted five of the island’s almost 80,000 sheep with 360-degree cameras.
The harness carries a battery, and also has solar panels so that the cameras can operate for longer.
Andreassen receives the ovine-sourced images with Global Positioning System coordinates, which she then uploads to Google Street View.
So far, the animals have visited Tjornuvik, Hosvik, Kaldbaksbotnur, Bour and Sydradalur. “My home country is handsome, green, and kind of undiscovered to the rest of the world-and I want to share it with the world”, Andreassen said in a release.
“Here in the Faroe Islands we have to do things our way”, said Durita Dahl Andreassen, who works with islands’ tourism board, in an interview with the Guardian. Google Street View has been all over Europe, even to the top of Mont Blanc, but never to the Faroe Islands. Last year the Google Sheep View blog was launched, which collected images of sheep found on Street View to celebrate the year of the sheep.
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‘In turn, of course, we hope to encourage more people to visit our magical wild landscapes and enjoy our warm welcome’.
