The Roundabout at the Edge of the World: Subsea Tunnels, the Sea and the Islands

This paper is based on the thesis that there is a ‘sea change’ in the Faroe Islands (Faroes) of the twenty-first century, and that this multi-layered transformation in more than a symbolic understanding is brought about by the sea. Submarine space is being appropriated in futuristic infrastructure projects continentalising the Nordic Atlantic society. The relationship between the world above and the world below the sea is reconfigured, and the new vertical landscape gives us the opportunity to reassess images of island communities and ask the question: what is an island? The resurgence of the aquatic space in the lives of the islanders, soaking their cultural identities, is explored through the landscape of roads and tunnels in the Faroe Islands, with special focus on the subsea roundabout between the islands of Eysturoy and Streymoy. The paper argues that the tunnels not only connect previously separated islands, and centre with periphery, but also represent an avenue to a new water-land symbiosis in society. Life might be dryer than it was in the old days, but water continues to be the main source of cultural imagination, wealth, health, and futurity among island dwellers. Drawing on anthropological island studies, this paper represents an island perspective on what it means to conquer the sea-land frontier and to build a future through underground passageways.