Meaning "Sheep Islands", the Faroe Islands owe much of their unique identity to these hardy, tangle-haired creatures.Standing in the Faroe Islands National Archives in the capital, Tórshavn, I opened a small cardboard box and stared at an ancient book bound in leather and burnished by hundreds of years of handling.Known as Seyðabrævið (the Sheep Letter), it's a collection of laws enacted by the Faroes' then-Norwegian ruler Earl Hákon Magnússon in 1298 and is the nation's oldest surviving document. Among other things, it details the level of compensation to be paid if a man lets his dog chase another man's sheep; takes grazing land away from a neighbour's flock; or drives a wild sheep into another shepherd's herd, thus disturbing the "calmer" animals.  I spent a year living in these sparsely populated islands, and I never felt lonely when wandering by myself through the dark green mountains, since there were almost always sheep within view. For more than a millennium, these hardy, tangle-haired creatures have grazed the slopes clear of most vegetation apart from grass, physically sculpting the dramatic landscape of this remote, windswept nation and shaping the country's identity.