ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the children apart, from forced labor, to the child-soldier phenomenon; childhood has been violently inserted in infernal cycles of exploitation. The Faroese believe that childhood on their islands is different from most other places. This small, isolated archipelago in the North Atlantic has a population of just over 50,000, half of whom live in the capital Torshavn. The Faroese natural environment – oceans, cliffs, wind, rain, cold – is omnipresent and brutal. The landscape is spectacular, but it is also foreboding; the islanders' national imagination is closely linked to nature and surviving against its daunting presence. The Faroese community is close-knit and family-oriented. The Faroese children on the beach and in the hills, and the young people hanging out in Torshavn, are free, to a large degree, and also they are known; it seems that everybody looks out for everybody else.
