On February 28th, Megan Keppie from Gulberwick, Shetland Islands, had the rather special and surprising experience of finding a message in a bottle on the shore, the Shetland News reports.
As she coincidentally picked up the bottle while out walking with a friend, she assumed the contents would be a recipe or something else of no particular interest to her; however, as it turned out, quite amazingly, the bottle contained a message, dated January 17th 2000. The remainder of the letter, meanwhile, Keppie wasn’t able to decipher on her own — it had been sent from Klaksvík and was written in Faroese. So she went to Facebook for help.
The 21-year old message was sent by a Finn Johannessen and the KFUM & KFUK scouts in Klaksvík. Translated into English, the message reads as follows:
Hey whoever finds this bottle!
We are the oldest of the youth scouts in the KFUM & KFUK scout group in Klaksvík. We have a lot on our agenda, and tonight we have gone out to learn something about traffic and reflective wear while we’re on a relay race. The purpose of the race is to find a bottle, the cap, and this letter, and then to put it into this bottle. Well, the reason you’re holding it in your hand right now is because we’ve thrown it out to sea.
Wishing you all the best, and thank you if you let us hear from you!
Sincerely,
KFUM & KFUK – the scouts in Klaksvík
Finn Johannessen
As per Shetland News, Keppie found the scout group of Klaksvík on Facebook and contacted them about the message. The scouts explained that Johannessen did not live in Klaksvík anymore, but that they would help her find a way to contact him, which, Local.fo has learned, they succeeded in.
Keppie said the discovery of the message in the bottle “made her day”, and that she usually never thinks to look at washed up bottles when out walking.
