Norðoyri
| Norðoyri | |
|---|---|
| Village | |
Norðoyri
|
|
 Norðoyri
|
|
| Coordinates: 62°12′50″N 6°32′27″W / 62.21389°N 6.54083°WCoordinates: 62°12′50″N 6°32′27″W / 62.21389°N 6.54083°W | |
| State |
 Kingdom of Denmark
|
| Constituent country |
 Faroe Islands
|
| Island | Borðoy |
| Municipality | Klaksvík |
| Population (1 January 2011) | |
| • Total | 87 |
| Time zone | GMT |
| • Summer (DST) | EST (UTC+1) |
| Postal code | FO 725 |
| Climate | ET |
Norðoyri (Danish: Nordøre) is a village in the Faroe Islands on the northern island of Borðoy. It belongs to the municipality of Klaksvík.
Norðoyri has an elongated settlement character and is sited along the eastern shore of the fjord Borðoyarvík that opens up in a SE direction. The lengthy 'infield' lines the shore. The 'outfield' covers the SE half of the peninsula between Borðoyarvík and Árnafjørður. It descends rather steeply from the central mountain-ridge, 400 to 563 m high, and specially in the SE part there are steep slopes and this outfield is generally regarded as difficult to tend and dangerous, as many sheep are lost there in severe winters.
Norðoyri is first mentioned in writing in 1584, but excavations at Islendingatoftir, a few miles south of Norðoyri have demonstrated that this place was already inhabited during the Viking Age. Near these Viking graves on 12 March 1745 a farmhouse was destroyed by a snow avalanche. Exactly 20 years later this farm met the same fate again. Its ruins are still visible today. In 1945 a stone was placed there to commemorate these tragic events.
In 1813 Samuel Michael Matras, sheriff for the northern islands and Royal tenant of the Uppistova farm in Norðoyri, started to register various data related to the operation of the farm in a journal, such as sheep taken in the outfield, haymaking, grain and potato growing. When Samuel died in 1857, his son Albert Josias Michael (1815–89) took over and continued the journals until his death. Finally, his son Samuel Michael continued the diaries for three more years until 1892. These journals (the Matrasdagbøkur) have been preserved and give an unprecedented insight in faroese farming during a large part of the 19th century (1813–1892). The diaries show that a new crop, potatoes, first planted in Norðoyri in 1823, gradually displaced grain and had almost taken over by 1855. This happened because of potatoes' weather resistance, stability and more flexible harvesting period compared to grain. Furthermore, the journals contain information or proxy data that admits statements on climatic variation. When e.g. transforming the data on potatoes and barley yields into 10 years moving averages, both crops show similar chronological yield variations, with good harvests in the early 1830s, early 1860s and mid-1880s, separated by poorer periods with minima around 1825, 1844 and the 1870s. The analysis of the journals also shows that haymaking for winter fodder for cows was relatively stable.
...
Wikipedia