The Faroe Islands are facing a hefty economic blow as Russia threatens a fish boycott that would cut off the territory’s largest export market.
The archipelago, which lies halfway between Iceland and Norway, is a self-governing area within Denmark, bound by Copenhagen’s foreign and defence policies but free to form its own trade ties from a position outside the European Union’s single market.
The Faroese have used this freedom to establish a privileged relationship with Moscow, dating back to a 1977 fisheries treaty they signed with the USSR.
Since then selling fish to Russia — in particular mackerel, herring, whiting and capelin, a kind of smelt — has become an important source of income for the islands’ 52,000 residents, making up about 10 per cent
