The city of Eiði includes the villages Eiði, Ljósá and Svínáir. In January 1988, population amounted to 678 inhabitants, 624 of which lived in Eiði and 98 children attended the village school. In the village, there are also a hotel, a bank, a loan and mortgage institute, a social centre, a museum, a church, a parish community and a medical centre.

The presence, in the port, of five big fishing boats and of a certain number of smaller boats for coastline fishing, shows how the population works mostly in fishing, both on ships and in the industries processing fish products. Some are instead employed in small farms.

The first office for the sorting, collecting and distribution of mail was opened on July 1, 1903. Between 1903 and 1926, Niels Kruse, who probably had already used his drugstore for that purpose, managed this service.

In 1926, the management of the postal service was given to Anthon Martin Ellingsgaard, until his death in 1957. Afterwards, his descendants guaranteed the service, until Elinborg Reinert became the manager in September 1995. On January 28, 1998, the first real post office in Eiði was opened, in an edifice built for that purpose.

The new Post Office has one peculiar feature: it maintain an exhibition space. There you can find works of the two artists of the island, the 82-year-old Oli Egilstrøð and Sigrun Nielasen, who both made an agreement with the post office to exhibit their works.

In the beginning, mail transportation from and to Eiði occurred with a boat from Haldarsvík traveling northwards to Eiði: then the boat would come back southwards, stopping at the villages of Ljósá, Langasandur, Svínáir and Norðskáli. The mail of these villages was sorted in Hvalvík. The distribution was carried out twice a week.

The boat, or rather the milk-boat “Dúgvan”, belonged to A/S Thorshavns Mælkeforsyning e Margarinfabrik ("Thorshavn Milk Supply and Margarine factory Ltd.").

The villages of Funningur e Gjógv were linked to Eiði by land through a walking path. The deliveries continued to be carried out for 42 years, from 1903 until 1945, by the same person. In 1964, after the construction of the first carriage road, this service was cancelled.

Frederik Ferdinand Eiðisgaard, born in 1910, was the last postal courier between Eiði, Funningur and Gjógv. He worked (or better, he walked) alone; the walk lasted between 6 and 8 hours in a good weather, but with bad weather, and during the winter in particular, when days were sensibly shorter, a day was not enough, and he had to spend the night in Gjógv.

Today mail is daily delivered by the Central Post Office of Tórshavn to the Post Office of Eiði, every day of the week, and it is collected twice a day.

The Post Office employs one full-time worker and one part-time, the mail is distributed everyday, and the office is open from 2:40 pm until 5 pm.

www.eidi.fo