"Sheep View" Is Faroe Islands' Answer To Google's Street View
It is true that Google’s Street View has become a tremendously helpful tool since it first came to existence, allowing everyone, wherever they are, to visit a bunch of places all over the world without even leaving their desks. However, this does not mean that Street View’s grace has reached every part of the world, since, for example, Google’s specially equipped cars with 360 cameras have never set foot (or better yet, wheel) in Faroe Islands- and the reason why is so far unknown, but it might have to do with the fact that the Faroe islands, which are 18 in number, are quite isolated from each other, making it a difficult operation.
Therefore, the locals of the Faroe Islands decided to do something about it, since they didn’t want to be left out. So, they went ahead and created their own... Sheep View, recruiting sheep on the island to help them in their difficult task, by equipping them with 360 cameras on their backs and uploading the optical material to Google Street View! Well, it’s not a coincidence that “Faroe Islands” also means “Sheep Islands”, since the population of the sheep is greater than the population of humans!
As the animals climb on tops of rocks and other inaccessible places, they explore in an ideal way areas of the islands that are difficult for one to reach. The cameras are programmed to take one photo per minute. “Here in the Faroe Islands we have to do things our way”, says Durita Dahl Andreassen, who works with islands’ tourism board, to The Guardian. “Knowing that we are so small and Google is so big, we felt this was the thing to do.”
As the sheep walk around the island, with their 360 cameras on their backs, the pictures that they take are sent back to Andreassen with exact GPS co-ordinates, which she then uploads to Google Street View.
Andreassen aspires that the sheep help “get Faroe Islands on the map” and started a campaign to get Google Street View in there. Note that the 18 volcanic islands which form the Faroe Islands is Danish territory, but they are far from Denmark- between Iceland, Norway and Scotland.
