Opening reception at Mikkjal´s Smithy in Trøllanes

25 March 2011 a big celebration took place at Mikkjal’s Smithy in the small village Trøllanes high profiled representatives from among others the Ministry of the Interior, the Foreign Minister, the Municipality of Klaksvík, NORA and the tourist industry.

The smithy is one of many Economusées in a European and Canadian network that is aiming marketing and bring new life to traditional craftmanship.

Mikkjal´s Smithy has been rebuilt to make room for a forge. And an extension on the southern of the building is being added with rooms for a shop, exhibition, café and course facilities. Mikkjal is a self-taught blacksmith, who has mainly been engaged with maintenance and repairs.

But he has also made decorative iron gates, stair rails, churc spires as well as smaller items candelabra and racks. The establishing of his smithy as an Economusée has made it possible to make a real living in the craft.

The aim is that the smithy shall uphold dwindling competences and give the youth an opportunity to experience blacksmithing as it was before mechanisation. So far it has been well received youth in the remote island Kalsoy, who are gathering around Mikkjal to try for themselves of their ancestors.

In the rebuilt smithy there is a forge and the tools used by the traditional blacksmith alongside modern tools, which are required in a smithy today.

The smithy is expected to attract many visitors both from other parts of the Faroe Islands as from abroad, so there is high hopes that the island can become a tourist magnet and that the smithy can help to sustain development in this peripheral community.