Check out the adorable and inventive way this woman is mapping her islands.
Sheep View is the new Street View.
Durita Dahl Andreassen lives on a tiny cluster of islands where sheep outnumber people 2 to 1.
Durita and one of her sheep surveyors. All photos by Sheep View 360/Visit Faroe Islands.
They're called the Faroe Islands, and collectively they're a tiny self-governing archipelago in the North Atlantic.
You can find the Faroe Islands on a map, sure, but if you're interested in using Google Street View to take a virtual look around, don't bother.
The islands are so small, Google hasn't even ventured out there.
So when Durita, who works for the Faroes' tourist board, wanted to share her homeland in glorious 360-degree video with the rest of the world and encourage people to visit, she had to take matters into her own hands.
With no Google Street View cars stopping by in the near future, Durita found a solution using the islands' most abundant creatures: sheep.
Unlike Google Street View cars, sheep, armed with 360-degree cameras, can get to places on the island for views only they can see.
Durita wants to capture the most beautiful views her islands have to offer so Google will be more inclined to "put them on the map."
"My home country is beautiful, green and kind of undiscovered to the rest of the world — and I want to share it with the world," she said in a press release.
This sheep is the king of the world. The word "faroe" also means sheep in Danish, so the sheep pretty much own the place.
She's calling her project Sheep View 360.
Get it? It's like Street View but with sheep.
To get the project up and running, Durita enlisted the help of local shepherds who rounded up their most outgoing sheep for an initial trial to make sure the idea had legs (literally).
One of the sheep surveyors.
They gently attached a 360-degree camera, a mobile phone, and small solar panels to each sheep using a comfortable harness. This way the sheep can roam freely while sending back pictures and GPS coordinates to Durita. She then uploads those pictures to Google Street View, which — it turns out — anyone can do as long as they have images, coordinates, a camera, and a Wi-Fi-connected computer.
So far Sheep View has managed to capture panoramas from five distinct locations on the islands, and Durita has put together a fun 360-degree video from the perspective of one of their sheep surveyors.
There have only been two small hiccups so far: getting the cameras back from the sheep and losing the cameras.
Because the sheep are allowed to roam wherever they want, it's not the easiest to corral them back.
"We use dry food, but it doesn’t always work," Durita told Upworthy, explaining that the solution ended up being an old-fashioned one: "We’ve used the traditional way to get them back — herding dogs, and it works quite well.
GIF via Visit Faroe Islands/YouTube.
While Google has yet to contact Durita about mapping the Faroe Islands, the release of her Sheep View video should help.
If nothing else, Durita hopes Sheep View will bring some levity to a world that's experienced a lot of tragedy lately.
"A small idea from a small country … maybe it can bring some calmness to the world," Durita told Upworthy.
The Faroe Islands may be small, but this idea that perfectly (and hilariously) fuses the old world with the new is definitely big enough to attract some significant attention — and hopefully some visitors too.