That’s not a typo: Much of the original photography for the just-announced implementation of Google’s Street View for the Faroe Island was done by cameras mounted on some of the thousands of island sheep.
The 18 islands are an autonomous territory of Denmark, a cluster of small islands 320 km north of Scotland, and much further than that from Denmark. With a population of under 50,000 people and over 100,000 sheep, it seemed natural to local resident Durita Andreassen to start with five of her sheep.
As the product grew, islanders asked Google for help, and it supplied cameras and other help to finish the job, using kayaks, cars, ships and even wheelbarrows. On November 1, Street View for the Faroes went live.
The local tourism agency, which helped in the push, is also behind a project that created a Faroese translation site that looks a lot like Google translate, and is petitioning Google to add the language to its app. There are about 80,000 Faroese speakers world-wide.
