FAROE ISLANDS -- In a country with only three traffic lights, the arrival of 8,000 foreigners to watch a total solar eclipse is something of a spectacle.
In the days leading up to the astronomical event, tourists filled streets and restaurants in the Faroe Islands, gawked at the quaint buildings in the city center of centuries-old capital city Tórshavn, and fretted about the changing weather forecast.
On Friday, a view of the total eclipse proved elusive and the reactions were mixed.
"Expect everything. Hope nothing," said a Faroese adventure tour guide, as a busload of angry Americans left a hillside eclipse viewing spot after clouds obscured the two minutes of totality.
He was referring to visiting the Faroes -- located halfway between Iceland and Norway, where the terrain is rough and the climate rougher -- but he may as well have been giving advice to total eclipse travelers, who travel hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles for the chance to be surrounded in darkness.
At 9:41 a.m. GMT, the Faroe Islands were indeed shrouded in darkness, although the clouds meant a view of the sun's corona around the moon was not visible from the main viewing areas.
Both before and after totality, the sun peaked out from the clouds. That gave island inhabitants and visitors a nice view of the partial, as they looked on through eclipse glasses.
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"Amazing," said a British eclipse fan who said that the clouds didn't take away much from his experience. "I just saw it through the clouds about a third of the way covered. It could've been much worse."
Unlike many of the travelers here, this was his first experience with a total eclipse, although he did see a partial eclipse from the UK in 1999.
"It wasn't totality, but I did see the shadow coming along the cliffs and along the coast, and it was really fantastic," he said. He and a friend are likely traveling to the U.S. in 2017 for the total eclipse that will sweep across the contiguous states.
British journalist Jamie Carter covers eclipses all the time, but for this one he wanted to try something he'd never done before: Use a slotted spoon to cast the eclipse's shadow onto a piece of white board.
The clouds nearly foiled his plan.
But before the eclipse was over, the spoon had its shining moment.
"Aren't you annoyed?" he asked.
But no, I can't say I was. Despite the clouds, totality brought near total darkness. It only lasted two minutes but it was more than a glimpse of nighttime. It was, as one eclipse traveler lamented calling it, "cosmic."
Some of the locals, who have been overwhelmed by what is probably the most tourists to ever descend on the island nation, were less impressed.
"It's kind of silly," said a local Faroese girl, looking at the tourists who had come in on bus to see the eclipse. "It's pretty cloudy."
When asked if she enjoyed the darkness of totality, she shrugged.
There was at least one overjoyed local, though. The tour guide's mother, who lives in a small town on an eastern island, was in a spot of sunshine at totality. She saw the whole thing and called him immediately after to gush.
Locals put together a celebration in a shed on the hillside, with a local band, various local fish delicacies, and of course solar eclipse beer.
"This is the next to the last total solar eclipse of Saros 120, which started in 933 and is extra special because it will finish at the North Pole and the Spring Equinox," Donald Kennerly, who traveled from his home in Camarillo, California, told Mashable.
He and a group of revelers headed to the Vagar airport, on a western island in the Faroes, to view the eclipse.
"Clouds collected and parted repeatedly between first and second contact, yet clearing well before second contact," he said. "Then 1 minute, 18 seconds into totality, a dark cloud hastened its way across the sun to obscure third contact, after which the flirtation continued until fourth contact."
"Not perfect, but we were all feeling pretty happy."
Kennerly, like many of the foreigners here visiting the Faroe Islands, has a wealth of knowledge about astronomy due to his lifelong love of eclipses. He saw his first eclipse in 1963, in Trois-Rivières, Canada.
"My parents [had] noticed a half a column article in Newsweek which indicated the next chance would not be until 2017," he told Mashable. "Who knew then that you could chase them around the world."
And chasing he's been. Friday's was his ninth total solar eclipse, adding the Faroe Islands to a list of his eclipse destinations that includes Iwo Jima, the Bering and Black Seas, and Baja, Mexico.
Friday's total solar eclipse was the 61st eclipse of Saros 120, according to Fred Espenak, a retired NASA astrophysicist who performed the administration's eclipse calculations and is known as "Mr. Eclipse."
"The next member of the series occurs on March 30, 2033 [and] is the last total eclipse of Saros 120," he wrote on EarthSky.
The eclipse is now over, but the festivities on the islands are just getting started. "The Faroe Islands have of course prepared for some major celebration," the mayor of Tórshavn said. That includes musical performances and much more in the city center.
The last total solar eclipse visible from the Faroes was in 1954, so there are locals who have been here for both. Finnur Johansen, 82, is one of them.
"I remember the reaction of the birds. They go to sleep," Johansen told the Associated Press. "The hen, they go into hen house, under the perch, and slept there with the head under the wing."
Horses, sheep and chickens brought up to the hill for the express purpose of being viewed during the eclipse Friday didn't seem too impressed by the eclipse.
People alive today won't be able to witness the next one visible from the islands -- it won't arrive until 2245.
BONUS: Views of the solar eclipse from all over, in under a minute
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