The practical gain is the ability to keep an island home while reaching jobs, education and services elsewhere. That changes the choice facing someone who would otherwise have to move. It also changes what counts as a thriving island: more people can live there even if more of their working and shopping lives take place in the capital.
By January 2026, Sandoy had 88 more registered residents than three years earlier. The question is whether the link can sustain island life across different households, including people who do not drive.
The population is growing, unevenly
We added the official population counts for Sandoy’s six settlements: Dalur, Húsavík, Sandur, Skarvanes, Skálavík and Skopun. Their total rose from 1,221 on 1 January 2023 to 1,309 on 1 January 2026, an increase of 88 people, or about 7.2%. By 1 July 2026 it was 1,324. These are island totals; they exclude Skúgvoy, a separate island included in the wider statistical region.
The gains were not shared equally. Skálavík went from 128 to 168 residents between the two January observations, accounting for 40 of the island’s 88-person increase. Skarvanes went from ten to nine. On an island this small, a few households can noticeably change a village total.
Those counts show growth around the period in which the link opened. They cannot tell us how much the tunnel caused, how many people returned, or whether local employment increased. Births, deaths, migration and housing availability all affect the result. Treating every additional resident as a job created by the tunnel would turn a useful observation into an unsupported claim.
That distinction matters for places considering similar projects. As our article on Poland’s small towns and their connections argues, a home becomes easier to keep when work and services remain within reach. Sandoy illustrates a specific way of extending that reach. Whether the island also gains more work of its own is a separate question.
A permanent road still has a price
For an ordinary passenger car, the operator currently charges DKK 75 one way with a subscription at the first tier, versus DKK 175 without one. Regular users should not simply multiply 75 by every journey: the discount schedule lowers the price within each calendar month, for each car.
Crossings 1–10 cost DKK 75 each; 11–20 cost 65; 21–30 cost 40; and 31–40 cost 30. From crossing 41, the remaining journeys that month are free. Adding the four ten-trip bands gives DKK 2,100 for 40 crossings, the monthly maximum in tunnel charges under this schedule. The DKK 200 annual subscription fee is additional. Fuel, car ownership and parking are outside that calculation.
The declining tariff makes frequent use less expensive than the first-trip price suggests. DKK 2,100 is still a recurring household expense before the other costs of driving. A road on a map does not give every household the same ability to use it, a problem also familiar from Poland’s commuting households.
There is a public-transport alternative. The published route 650 timetable links Sandur with Tórshavn. Skopun passengers connect using route 600; eastern-village passengers use 601 via Sandur. Some school-oriented departures operate only on school days. The current last departure from the capital’s Farstøðin terminal is 18:35, reaching Sandur at 19:20.
That is a real connection, but it does not cover every possible working day. A late shift in the capital would require another way home under this timetable. For someone in an outlying village, the connecting bus matters as much as the tunnel itself. The physical link is permanent; convenient car-free access still depends on where and when the buses run.
Alexis Sancho Reinoso and Timothy Heleniak’s 2024 study of six decades of Faroese transport expansion helps put this in context. Using population records through 2023, they found that fixed links connected distant communities but did not, by themselves, produce a balanced distribution of population. The expanding road network also strengthened individual mobility and changed the relationship between the capital and peripheral places. Their research does not measure the tunnel’s effect on Sandoy’s 2026 population.
For a resident, access to a capital job can be a substantial improvement even if that job never moves onto the island. For regional policy, the distinction remains important: maintaining homes and a resident community is one outcome; retaining employers and services locally is another. An island can succeed on the first while becoming more dependent on the capital for the second.
Cover generated as a conceptual section through a subsea road tunnel. It is not a measured drawing of Sandoy’s tunnel or a photograph of the site. Population figures are our aggregation of Statistics Faroe Islands’ village records; tariffs and the bus timetable were checked on 4 October 2026.
