Page 115 - Monocle Quarterly Journal Vol 1 Issue 1 Q4

The Craziest Experience I’ve Ever Had in Consulting
BY WILLEM EHLERS
Afew years ago, we were asked to assist a bank with their metho- dology for credit risk models. It was a relatively usual request – with one glaring di erence. e bank wasn’t exactly around the
corner from our slick London o ces; it was in the Faroe Islands. In case you haven’t zoomed in on a map for a while, let me refresh your memory: somewhere where the North Atlantic Ocean meets the Norwegian Sea (take a left at Norway, if you hit Iceland you’ve gone too far) sits a cluster of 11 rocky islands. Not the sunny, clear-watered islands featured in alcohol adverts; the cold, wet, windy islands featured in National Geographic documentaries about deep-sea shing. Or extreme mountain climbing. Although today, they’re an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, the Islands have a history as rocky as its mountains, ravaged by Scandinavian Vikings, and invaded by the British in 1940. In short, no, it wasn’t on my list of holiday choices. To be honest, I didn’t even know they had banks there...
And yet, there I was, on a plane, heading to my Island meeting. Essentially, landing a plane in the Faroe Islands is just slightly more dangerous than landing a plane in the actual sea. We’re getting closer and closer and in front of me, I can just see – through the thick fog that’s delaying our landing – peaks of rocky outcrops. ere’s barely room to breathe, let alone y a plane between the mountains. At the last second, the plane banks, so the wingspan can t snugly between the jagged edges. And then suddenly we were making a bee-line to the ‘runway’. I use ‘runway’ loosely here. At the end of the runway is a lake, the nal destination for unlucky touchdowns (a very reassuring sight, I’m sure you can imagine). I was clinging on for dear life, hoping for the best, as the plane’s tyres screech to a halt seconds before Lake City.
My colleague and I were supposed to be accommodated in one of only ve hotels in Tórshavn, the capital of the Faroe Islands, but it turns out we were visiting Faroe in its ve minutes of bustling holiday season, and
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