Við Áir

Við Áir
Abandoned village
The whaling station Við Áir, before the restoration started
Við Áir Location in the Faroe Islands
Coordinates: 62°11′23″N 7°1′51″W / 62.18972°N 7.03083°W / 62.18972; -7.03083Coordinates: 62°11′23″N 7°1′51″W / 62.18972°N 7.03083°W / 62.18972; -7.03083
State	Kingdom of Denmark
Constituent country	Faroe Islands
Island	Streymoy
Municipality	Sunda
Population
• Total	none
Time zone	GMT
• Summer (DST)	EST (UTC+1)

Við Áir is a coastal place on the east coast of Streymoy in the Faroe Islands, near the village Hvalvík.

Við Áir means "by the rivers" (á means "river" or "flood"; áir is the plural form).

Whaling station

There used to be a working whaling station at Við Áir. It was built in 1905 by Norwegians;^[1] later it was run by Faroese people. It was abandoned in 1984, when they stopped the work there. The buildings from the whaling station are still there, and the machinery is still there too. The buildings were in bad shape, but in 2011 some restoration work was done. There are plans to restore the whaling station back to the way it was, and make it into a maritime museum, where people can visit it and get an idea of how the whaling station functioned. In the autumn of 2011 the whaling station was open for the public, and around 500 people visited the buildings. In 2007, a group of people who were chosen by the Faroese government delivered a "Provisional report on the conservation of the whaling station as a maritime museum", which is available in English too.^[2]

School

There is a school at Við Áir. The school is called Dugni; it is for young people and adults who have a disability, have psychological or sociological problems. They can get a shorter education there, 9th or 10th degree from the public school or the Danish education which is called HFS, which prepares them for an education in the service industry or working in an office. The students can live on the school while they attend the school; they can also live elsewhere.^[3]

Sources