Name: |
Mikladalur |
Municipality: |
Mikladals (list of municipalities) |
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Population |
42 (01.01.06) |
Football team: |
- |
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Zip: |
FO 797 |
Rowing Club: |
- |
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Location: |
N62°20'9 W6°45'50 |
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Mikladalur is the largest of Kallsoy’s 4 villages.
The tunnel to Trollanes is 2248 meters long. It was finished in 1985.
The stone church in Mikladalur is from 1856.
There is an old water mill in the village. It is able to work with only a small amount of water. Every village had one of these in the old days. They were used for milling grain.
Tradition says that a battle was fought between Faeroese (the son of King Sverri) and Norwegians who Wanted to claim taxes on the island. This happened in Mikladalur in the beginning of the 14th century.
Páll Fangi came from Mikladalur. He was accused of having killed his father in 1657. He was sentenced imprisonment with hard labour in Copenhagen. He fled 3 times on the Faroe Islands and lived through a year in the mountains on Kalsoy. He finally tried to row to Norway in a little boat but bad weather forced him back to the islands. Here he was caught by the chief constable who hooked him in the back with a huge hook that is supposed to be used for whale hunting while he tried to swim away.
The legend of the Seal-woman took place in Mikladalur.
Seals are said to be humans who took their own life in the sea. Once a year these humans go ashore strip out of the sealskin and party all night long. This happens on Twelfth Night (6th of January) after sunset.
On an evening like this a boy from Mikladalur hid by a cave close to the sea where the seals were said to go ashore. As the sun set seals in large numbers surfaced and went ashore. They stripped out of their sealskin and became humans. Amongst them was a girl so beautiful that the boy from Mikladalur decided
that he had to have her. He crept towards the skins while the seal-people were dancing. He got hold of the
girls skin and took it to his hiding place.
Just before sunrise the seal-people put on their sealskin and jumped back into the ocean as seals. The beautiful girl searched in vain for her skin. The boy came out hiding place. She begged him to give her the sealskin but he refused and she had to follow him to his home.
They lived in his house as man and wife and had children as well.
One day as the man went fishing in his boat he forgot to lock down the sealskin in a coffin. On that day the Seal-woman disappeared in the sea with her sealskin.
In the end of the myth the Seal-woman returns to Mikladalur as a furious troll because men from the village
had killed her seal-husband and seal-children in a seal-hunt. She curses them all and says that men from
Mikladalur will die on the sea and fall down from the mountains until so many have died that if all the dead
men took each others hands they would be able to form a chain around their island Kallsoy.
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