Back in July, a group of Faroe Islanders launched their own version of Street View, cheekily called “Sheep View 360”, by outfitting sheep on the island with 360-degree camera and using that to fuel its own mapping project. “My sheep are great for capturing the tracks and trails of the Faroe Islands”, wrote Andreassen, who works for the Faroe Islands’ tourism board, “but in order to cover the big sweeping Faroese roads and the whole of the breathtaking landscape, we need Google to come and map them”. The team arrived last week and has been training interested residents in how to use the equipment to officially map their islands for Street View. Taking matters into her own hands, Durita Andreassen spent the last few months mapping out her handsome country using sheep equipped with solar-powered cameras, creating her very own SheepView360.
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“When we started this project, we wanted Google Street View available in the Faroe Islands so we could share our attractive country with the world, and with all the people who do not have the means to visit”, said Andreassen. The result is the creation of a new kind of Street View, created entirely by the sheep and the Faroese people. It may seem like a silly idea, but when Google Maps hasn’t visited and you want tourists to be able to check out the islands through Street View, you have to be creative. “So we chose to help the Faroese by supplying them with a Street View trekker and 360-degree cameras via our Street View camera loan program”.
The cameras can be loaned from Visit Faroe Island’s office in the capital Tórshavn and from the airline Atlantic Airways. The islands are comprised of 50,000 inhabitants and 80,000 sheep. Peter Neubauer, co-founder of the crowdsourcing photo map service Mapillary, recently took a trip to the Faroe Islands with his son where they set out to map as much of the islands as they could in five days.
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Meanwhile, Andreassen and her sheep haven’t been the only ones photomapping the Faroe Islands.
