A FARAWAY LAND - Filipinas In The Faroe Islands

Pea interviews Ghoulie (real name Gutlur), a 49-year-old mechanic born and raised in the Faroe Islands, about the surprising Filipino community on this tiny North Atlantic archipelago between Iceland and Norway. The conversation covers how Faroese men find Filipino wives, the brutal annulment process, long-distance love, and a critical review of the movie "Far Away Land" that both agree badly misrepresents Filipinas and Faroese men.

What's Covered ​

• The Faroe Islands basics

  • An archipelago of 18 small islands, a self-governing territory of Denmark, with about 53,000 people
  • The Faroese language is spoken by fewer than 100,000 people in the world; most Faroese also speak Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, understand German, and some Icelandic
  • Ghoulie jokes about the Viking heritage — Icelanders tease the Faroese by saying they were "the wimps that didn't dare to go all the way to Iceland"
  • Fishing is 90% of exports, with salmon farming as a major industry
  • Many husbands go out fishing and are away most of the year — some come home less than one month per year
  • The economy is booming with near-zero unemployment

• The Filipino community in the Faroe Islands

  • Out of about 500 Asian residents, 360 are Filipinos — the dominant immigrant group by far
  • The trend started booming about 10 years before the interview (roughly 2011); before that, there were very few foreigners at all
  • A key demographic factor: there are 2,000 more men than women on the islands, leaving many men single simply because there aren't enough local women
  • When asked why specifically Filipinas, Ghoulie says: "the Filipino woman remind us how things used to be" and suggests that "western womans are more demanding"
  • Local Faroese women generally don't mind because the gender imbalance means there are plenty of single men to go around

• Ghoulie's personal love story

  • He was in his mid-40s, single, and didn't see the possibility of finding an available local woman his age
  • Found Filipino Cupid online, paid for one month of membership, chatted with three or four women
  • One stood out — after two or three weeks they exchanged Facebook accounts and continued there; he didn't renew the paid membership
  • First visited her in the Philippines in July 2017 — "it was love at first sight"
  • He went with the practical mindset of "if I don't like her, at least I got a vacation" and booked his own hotel rather than assuming he'd stay with her
  • Comically, not knowing about Angeles City's reputation, he booked a hotel on Fields Avenue (famous for bars and sex workers); his girlfriend was nervous about sleeping with him the first night, so she brought a friend — meaning he was in a hotel room in Fields Avenue with two women, which "looks kind of creepy"
  • The first night he met all of her family — about 15 people crammed in the same house, noisy, everyone wanting to talk to him; after the quiet Faroe Islands, it was "very confusing"

• The annulment nightmare

  • Ghoulie's girlfriend was previously married, which requires a Philippine annulment before they can marry
  • The process has taken four years and counting at the time of the interview
  • He paid 250,000 pesos for the annulment process, plus an additional 2,500 pesos (~$50 USD) every time she attends a court hearing
  • The pandemic made everything worse — hearings kept getting postponed, and delays stretch from weeks to months ("it's Filipino time — it's not like 'come back next week,' it's three months")
  • Around May or June, the judge granted the annulment, but she still hadn't received the actual paperwork months later
  • The emotional toll is severe: Ghoulie describes a cycle of hope and disappointment — "okay, February" becomes May, October becomes January, the papers are granted but not yet issued
  • He hadn't seen her in person in three years at the time of the interview, coping through hope alone — "it's really, really, really, really hard"
  • He'd hoped to spend Christmas together but was starting to doubt it

• How Ghoulie first connected with the Philippines

  • About 30 years before the interview, he started attending a church with a Filipino preacher
  • The church did an outreach trip to the Philippines in the '90s that he couldn't afford to join, but it gave him a lasting connection to the country
  • He's visited the Philippines three times; his first impression was the chaotic traffic — he immediately decided "there's no way I'm going to drive in the Philippines"

• The movie "Far Away Land" — both Ghoulie and Pea strongly disliked it

  • Ghoulie felt the film was "too generalizing" toward both Faroese husbands and Filipinas
  • It portrayed Filipinas as gold diggers who only wanted to get out of the Philippines and didn't care about their husbands
  • The Faroese husband was made to look like "a disposable bystander" — a lucky loser who found love but didn't receive any in return
  • Specific scenes they critique: the Filipino man and the wife falling in love in six days (unrealistic); the apple scene where the wife is scrambling on the ground while the husband just stands there helplessly; the scene where the wife and her Filipino lover sit at the table lying to the husband's face right after sleeping together
  • Pea calls it "misrepresentation of both cultures"
  • Ghoulie notes that local Faroese reactions focused more on pride about how beautiful the islands looked in the film than on whether the story was accurate
  • The film reinforced a local stereotype that Faroese men "buy" Filipino women online — at his workplace, coworkers say things like "you've been waiting five years, why don't you just get a fish girl?"
  • Ghoulie pushes back: people at the fish factories ask each other "where did you buy that girl?" as if it's a transaction, not love
  • He points out the irony that people don't understand long-distance love when it's already normal in the Faroe Islands — husbands are away fishing most of the year and still love their wives

• Ghoulie's advice for men considering dating a Filipina

  • Meet her in person — not just for one day, but stay with her for an extended period (he suggests around 14 days)
  • A person can lie online, but spending two weeks together doing everything together reveals the truth
  • Be prepared: book your own hotel room so you have a fallback if it doesn't work out; don't plan to stay with her immediately
  • His girlfriend is from Mabalacat, Clark, Pampanga

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