When sailing across the open seas became more viable and the Nordic empire started to wane in the later Middle Ages, the Faroes slipped onto the sidelines of history. Their ownership passed from Norway to Denmark, almost as a footnote. And while the Old Norse language developed and branched off in mainland Scandinavia, the Faroese continued to sing ballads of warships and magic and Vikings, firmly anchoring their language, Faroese, in the age of the sagas.

Today, the country looks like a prosperous modern Nordic outpost: harbours full of ships, wireless broadband in many houses, trendy cafés, flocks of sheep speckling the hillsides and brightly coloured wood houses with traditional turf roofs. The biggest employer is still the fishing industry, but the service economy is diverse and thriving. It's a fascinating, fully functioning, modern and complex nation — in miniature.

But scratch just a little bit, and the Old Norse comes out. And in that respect, weddings are like a bad case of poison ivy.

Our first problem was how to get married. We were told we had two options: to be married in a Lutheran church by a minister or in a police station by a police officer. I am neither Lutheran nor a criminal, so we asked about other options.

Yes, there were some exceptions. You could get married outside the police station by the mayor, if he agreed. So Jens Christian asked the mayor, who agreed but added that we would also need permission from the Danish representative in the Faroes. The Faroes has its own parliament and home rule, but in some things, it seems, colonial habits die hard. So Jens Christian trotted off for permission.

The Danish representative said no. He explained that the mayor is supposed only to marry friends and family. When Jens Christian pointed out that everyone is equal under the law, the Dane agreed and, with a complete lack of irony, said that all the mayor's friends and relatives were equal under the law.

We then considered a range of increasingly desperate backup plans, including getting married on a ship. That was ruled out because the ship must be flagged to a country that allows the captain to perform weddings at sea, which, needless to say, Faroese ships don't allow, even if the captain is a Lutheran minister. In the end, we invoked the "family and friends" option to enlist a police officer buddy of Jens Christian to get permission to marry us outside the station.

So far, so good. Now the only question was where to hold the ceremony. That was an easy one. Faroese fishermen often stop in Greenland, a fellow Danish possession, where they sometimes fall in love with local women. This has happened often enough that Greenland expats have built a cultural centre in the Faroese capital, Tórshavn, which means "Thor's harbour." It combines traditional elements of both Greenlandic and Faroese architecture — accordingly, it is shaped like an igloo and has a turf roof. It looks like a golf ball with a bad toupée.

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