The municipality of Vestmanna amounts today to 1216 inhabitants, with 228 students attending the public school and 35 attending the Faeroese Professional Institute for Fishing and Aquiculture.

Five big fishing boats and some cutters below 20 tons constitute the city fleet. Two companies for the production of fries are located on the fiord. On the dock there are also two factories for fish processing. In the village, there are an export company, a shipyard, a factory for the production of plastic products, a gas deposit, various construction businesses, shops and industries. A peculiarity of Vestmanna is the national hydraulic plant SEV, established some fifty years ago.

In the village there are also a bank, a savings bank, a city hall, a gym, a public school, a priest and a presbytery, a surgery, housing for the retired, two day-centres for the retired, a youth centre, a choir and a bridge and chess society. 

In 1950, an indoor swimming pool was built in the school: the first in its kind not only in the archipelago, but also in the all Danish Reign.

The first postal service started with the opening of a mail deposit on 1 July 1903 and Jogvan Winther was its first manager.

Son of Niels Kristoffer Winther from Sandoy (at the time mayor of the district), Jogvan lived in the old city hall where the mail deposit was also located. Jogvan Winther worked for the famous executive Olavur ad Heygum, and afterwards left Vestmanna for the Isle of Sand, where he became district mayor for the Sandoy canton in 1923.

After the Jogvan Winther’s departure, Nielsen Kristoffer Poulsen (born in Skopum but married and resident in Vestmanna) succeeded to him in the mail deposit. Poulsen was always at sea as captain on Norwegian ships, so his wife, Kristiane Poulsen, was the one who really looked after the mail business. Niels Kristoffer Poulsen died at sea near Baroi in 1932 and the management was finally given to his widow.

On 31 January 1955, Kristiane Poulsen retired and her daughter Anne S. Durhuus took her place and kept the position until 1 May 1960, when Jogvan Durhuus, Anne’s son, became the office manager, a position that he is still maintaining.

The deposit, established in 1903, became Post Office in 1955, due to the increased trading activity of the city and the building of a big hydraulic plant in the early 1950s.

A circular letter from 27 August 1969, addressed to the manager in the Vestmanna Post Office, indicates that, at the time, the Post Office was probably to be turned into a mail deposit. The letter explains, “The post administration is considering the idea of turning the Vestmanna Post Office into a mail deposit starting from 1 January 1970. The direction is entrusted to find the location, while the administration will deal with the employees’ wages”. The question concerning the wages was the only one to become real, and the salaries were paid directly from the administration without the responsibility of the Post Office manager.

In Vestmanna, mail business employs today five people: two of them deal with the public and the others deal with the deliveries. The office is open every day except Saturdays, from 9am to 3pm.

www.vestmanna.fo