Fulmar Egg Hunt

I joined Jóhannus, Sørin and Eivin on trip to rappel the steep sea cliffs of Kalsoy to gather fulmar eggs, a tradition in the Faroe Islands spanning back decades, and only possible two days of every year.

It felt good to be back. I’d missed the landscape and the pace - the friendliness of the people here in the Faroe Islands. I’d been talking to my friends about the “fulmar egg hunt” for years, manifesting a time when I could experience it firsthand. And there I was, looking down across the valley and open sea, down onto the village of Trøllanes. Kalsoy was a beautiful place. I’d visited back in October 2019 when the land was all oranges and browns, slick with rain, and the wind had howled ominously. I remember I felt scared as I tried to reach the famous Kallur Lighthouse. It had been an unrelenting battle against the gale that seemed to move my feet backwards as I walked.

Now, I was back. It was a cold, windy day in May, and I could hear the cries of plovers and oystercatchers furious at our infringement upon their nesting territory. But we weren’t here for them. My legs tingling and numb, I turned towards the summit and watched the locals climb like mountain goats, steadfast in flimsy wellies and double-layered wool socks. The three men carried only light gear: a few ropes, a thick metal rod, several plastic containers and most importantly, the 12ft stick with a small wire net fashioned at its end, creating an ideal scoop.

The view was breathtaking once I joined them at the top, ankles seizing and sore from the steep, zig-zagging climb. “Try not to get any vomit on your clothes,” Jóhannus warned, “it smells so bad you’ll have to throw the clothes away.” He was a sixteenth-generation sheep farmer and tour guide on Kalsoy, responsible for most of the sheep around this village and the upkeep of the hiking trail to Kallur Lighthouse. He’d also helped the No Time To Die production team, dubbed the ‘King of Kalsoy’ in the film’s end credits, and maintains James Bond’s “gravestone”, which has become a tourist hotspot.

Alongside Jóhannus was his cousin Sørin and friend, Eivin. They’d come across on the ferry from Syðradalur that morning, as had I and my friend Ragib. The three quickly set the anchor point and secured Eivin to a rope, and without much warning, he casually made his way towards the cliff edge. Rag and I watched as he slowly disappeared, the long stick moving back and forth until we could no longer see it. He shouted up to Jóhannus and Sørin when he made it to the first ledge, and they eased the tension to enable Eivin to move around, Sørin always keeping contact with the rope.

After securing another rope to my own waist, I lay on a nearby ledge, peaking down at the several hundred foot drop inches away from me. Havhestur (Northern Fulmar) flew barely a wingspan from my head as the wind lifted them above the rock face, and I fought the urge to hold out my hand and touch them. I’d always been jealous of birds’ ability to fly - I imagined it would be so freeing.

I couldn’t see much of Eivin from where I perched, only catching glimpses of the wooden stick weaving into the nests and scooping up the eggs. I watched as the adults vomited their discontent, an oily, luminous orange, foul-smelling, sticky defence mechanism they all had. Havhestur lay one egg per year, so it was no wonder they were furious as we took their eggs from underneath them. The chicks that did hatch would mature quickly until they were ready to leave the cliffs for the open water.

Four hundred years ago, havhestur sightings were such a rare occurrence within this archipelago they’d been viewed as an omen of bad weather to the country’s fishermen. Now, the population is steady at over 600,000 breeding pairs, and you’re likely to see them wherever you go across the islands. They’re a relatively new species to the Faroe Islands and considered invasive. The population has boomed over the last century, and scientists sometimes collect their eggs and chicks to monitor pollutants such as plastics.

Just as Eivin came back over the precipice, he leant too far forward, and a couple of eggs fell from his container and down the slope as if in slow motion. Shouts of “nei!” followed them as they rolled off and dropped to the grassy ledge below. They asked if I wanted to try to retrieve them myself. More than the danger of falling, I was scared to drop their wooden stick, and I became increasingly more aware of how clumsily I manoeuvred it as I abseiled the cliff edge. I looked down, the grassy ledge making its way up to my feet. I shouted for them to stop and then again to feed me some more rope. I reached with the stick, willing the egg not to be cracked, willing it into my little net. I couldn’t quite reach it, and I felt the adrenaline kicking in, becoming aware of my body and all its limbs. I shouted again for them to feed me a bit more rope and managed to scrape the egg from the grass, turning it over to reveal it had cracked, yolk and white leaking. What a waste, I thought. I sidestepped a few feet around the ledge and picked the other one up - sadly, it had also cracked. The birds squawked and vomited at me, but luckily, I never got hit. I liked this jacket and didn’t really want to bin it. Shouting up one last time, I planted my boot onto the cliff and started to walk up; just as I reached the top, my foot slipped on some loose rock, and I fell hard into the side of the cliff, dust blowing straight into my eyes. Rag took a video of it, and I look back and laugh now, though it was mildly embarrassing at the time.

Time passed, and the wind had started to pick up; the locals wanted to continue further up and summit the mountain’s very peak, collecting stray eggs as we went. Sørin gathered up the ropes neatly, Jóhannus and Eivin filling the containers and packing them with grass and moss to help cushion the fragile eggs. As we walked, took photos, collected more eggs and talked, I felt awestruck again, just as I had when I first visited the Faroe Islands in 2019. I thought the people here were much more in touch with nature and wildlife than most of the world, and I envied that connection.

Jóhannus recounted rare times when a local had fallen from the cliffs we were now walking, highlighting the main danger was wind and fog, that it was easy to lose your way even if you grew up here. It was also one of the reasons they set up the tour guides on Kalsoy - to prevent tourists from facing that same danger.

The three disappeared awhile, scouring every nook and cranny at the peak. Rag and I took shelter underneath a bit of rock, trying to get some last bits of footage of the seabirds flying overhead. They made a loud swooshing sound as they navigated the air and thrust forward, their feet tilting to pick the angle of the wind perfectly. It was a comforting sound that became muffled by a wind that set in, and we started to feel the cold and stiff under our little shelter.

When we got back to Jóhannus’ house (and after I slid down the majority of the mountain on my butt), we counted the eggs and inspected each one under a light. They were looking for any veins that had started to form on the inside. If there were any, only a handful of locals were happy to eat them. The yolks were deep orangey-red, giving baked goods a dyed look. Jóhannus told us you could store the eggs for a substantial time before they went off as long as they were flipped from one side to the other every couple of days or so. I noted that perhaps flipping them was something I could try with chicken and duck eggs at home, too.