Sheep fight in the Faroes

Somehow, I knew what was going to happen from the moment I laid eyes on the ram, even though it all began innocently enough. He was just standing on a boulder above my head, facing away from me and chomping on some grass. His stringy wool was pitch black and it was falling off in clumps, and underneath I could see he was as muscular as this subarctic summer’s day was long. Then we locked eyes, and his jaw went completely still. I don’t know if sheep are supposed to blink, but the ram didn’t even seem to have eyelids as his coal-black gaze bored into mine. Pure rage suddenly filled his eyes and I began to doubt the fact that sheep are obligate herbivores. I shuddered and scurried past him up the hill, hoping he’d be gone by the time I came back.

The road I walked on was a defunct highway that wound around a nauseatingly steep fjord. There was nothing out here besides the sea and the mountain and the road, no sound besides the gulls and the distant waves far below. A tunnel had recently been punched through the mountainside and it had rendered this road useless, so now it was only used by walkers and bikers and the occasional tourist driver out for a joyride. It was already past 10 p.m. and I’d only intended to hike around the bend in the road to see what lay down the next fjord, but it seemed no matter how far I walked, the bend never got any closer, and anyway the late evening fog had started to creep down from the mountain peaks. So I turned back to return to town.

And what do you think I saw?

That bloody ram, standing dead-center in the road now, staring at me. He wasn’t even chewing grass anymore, as staring sheep are wont to do. He was just…there. Like he’d been waiting for me.

Shit.

This 6-meter-wide road was literally the only route I could take back to town. To my right was a rocky cliff. To my left was another rocky cliff, but this one also featured a 100-meter drop into the North Atlantic Sea, whose temperature rested at a balmy 7 ° C. Town was a kilometer away down the hill, and the only other person I’d seen since I’d come up here had long since disappeared. No one would hear me if I screamed. 

I still had a little ways to go until I reached him, so I slowed down in hopes he’d move. Somehow I stretched those 300 meters into a ten-minute ordeal. It was futile. He held his ground in some uniquely Faroese brand of road rage. He was literally standing at the center line of the road, which meant I had a choice to make: did I walk around him on the sea side or cliff side? The drop to the sea was a bit grassy at least, so if he threw me off the road, there was a chance I could grab hold of some foliage as I bounced down the hill and might even survive long enough to die of hypothermia in the ocean. Meanwhile, the cliff side was just a wall of rock that he could probably crush me against with a single hit. Sea side it was.

I inched closer. He pivoted as I did so, always keeping his head pointed straight at me and his body perpendicular like a compass needle following true North. I could only assume this was so he could achieve maximum momentum whenever he finally decided to yeet me into the sea. I had a metal water bottle in my hand and flipped it so the neck was in my fist and the butt was up like a club. I didn’t believe for a second that hitting him would do anything besides further enrage him, but at least I’d go down swinging. 

The moment of truth was upon us. I finally snuck right past him, letting out a strangled squeak as I slid through the space between the ram’s horns and the knee-high guardrail that would have done absolutely nothing for me besides maybe break my legs. The gap was only a meter wide, since he’d been slowly inching towards me the whole time. Was I supposed to lock eyes with him again to assert dominance, or would he take that as some kind of unforgivable threat? I compromised and kept my head turned just enough so I could watch him out of the corner of my eye. I’m mildly convinced that was the only thing that kept him from charging now that my back was finally turned. I took one step, then another…he shadowed me, less than an arm’s length behind. Three steps, four…I could hear his rapid breathing. I made it to six steps before I panicked and broke out in a flat sprint, hoping like hell that running away wouldn’t invoke some primal predatory instinct and cause him to give chase. 

I fully expected at any moment to feel the impact that would send me flying ass over teakettle. 

Finally I risked stopping and looking back. 

He was standing right where I’d left him, head pointed towards me, bum towards the fjord. 

Staring. 

Just…staring.