On the hillside above Hov, two modest cairns of stacked stones mark the burial place of Hovgrímur, the Viking-age chieftain who ruled roughly half the Faroe Islands from this village. There is no inscription, no monument — just the rocks themselves, placed here over a thousand years ago, with a view across the fjord that Hovgrímur would have known well.
The story is told in the Faroese sagas: Hovgrímur died fighting Brestir Sigmundsson on the island of Stóra Dímun. Neither man survived the encounter. Tradition holds that the chieftain is buried under one pile of stones and his horse under the other. The grave is a short walk uphill from the village and takes less than half an hour to reach.