‘We’re learning by doing’: Inside the Faroe Islands’ new music boom

Spaces Between the Beats is a series spot­light­ing music and cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties around the world, explor­ing their sto­ries as they build resilience and find mean­ing and hope in con­nec­tion.

In mid­sum­mer Tór­shavn bare­ly sees night­fall, just a fleet­ing hour or two of dark before a grey half-light envelops the green-red tim­ber frames and grassy roofs of its build­ings. Nei­ther dawn nor mid­night, it’s an atmos­pher­ic back­drop for what’s happening.

On one of the city’s nar­row streets, ​“queer veg­an shit­punks” Joe & The Shit­boys are com­mand­ing a mosh pit with break­neck songs about hid­den prej­u­dice, false enlight­en­ment and dou­ble stan­dards in a ter­mi­nal­ly ill world. Despite quaint first impres­sions of this toy box town, home to around one-fifth of the 53,000 peo­ple liv­ing on the Faroe Islands, the scene is apt for the country’s first alter­na­tive music show­case, Skrapt – a three-day spot­light on the young tal­ent, ideas and atti­tudes, reflect­ing chang­ing tides in a cul­ture often con­sid­ered to be float­ing adrift some­where between Scot­land and Iceland.

“We sing about issues a lot of peo­ple can relate to, but to us they’re pre­vail­ing issues we expe­ri­ence,” says front­man Fríði Djurhu­us, AKA Joe. Cit­ing their song ​‘Clos­et­ed Homo­FObe,’ he explains that veiled big­otry pre­vails with­in the Faroe Islands, even if its vio­lent crime rate is among the world’s low­est. ​“We also talk about cli­mate change and every­body think­ing stop­ping using plas­tic bags will save the world when lead­ers are fly­ing in pri­vate jets, destroy­ing every­thing. That doesn’t mean don’t try, but it’s use­ful to point out the absurdity.”

Tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty is anoth­er of The Shit­boys’ hot top­ics. With the nation’s lead­ing eco­nom­ic sec­tors – such as fish­ing and agri­cul­ture – still con­sid­ered the pre­serve of men, tra­di­tion­al gen­der stereo­types per­vade, although Joe believes these views are shift­ing with gen­er­a­tions. ​“In the moun­tains the men go gath­er the sheep, maybe shear them, maybe slay them. Whal­ing too. Every gen­er­a­tion cares a lit­tle bit less about these things,” Joe explains. ​“There’s a the­o­ry that small com­mu­ni­ties want to live in har­mo­ny even when they are dishar­mo­nious. You can have dif­fer­ent views but I’m still gonna see you every day in the store. You can go to a fam­i­ly gath­er­ing and some­one is maybe going to say some­thing prob­lem­at­ic. If you con­front them, you’re [seen as] the prob­lem. The vic­tims have to mask it. But I think those tra­di­tions are chang­ing slowly.”

Sun­ne­va Eysturstein, the co-own­er of Sirkus – a cosy wood-clad venue in cen­tral Tór­shavn – also talks about young Faroese artists push­ing against cen­turies-old expec­ta­tions through ​“dif­fer­ent music, art, dance and lit­er­a­ture.” Skrapt’s co-founder, her inten­tion for the fes­ti­val was to offer a plat­form for alter­nate forms of expres­sion – which ranges from NÖNNE​’s dark, spa­tial R&B, to Ayphin deliv­er­ing life lessons from his vil­lage of Fuglafjørður with razor sharp flow, to the infec­tious hip hop instru­men­tals of Ghost Notes, with Eysturstein’s bar host­ing the afterparty.

“In Tór­shavn you can def­i­nite­ly see things are chang­ing,” says 24-year-old Dania O. Tausen, who moved to the cap­i­tal before the pan­dem­ic from Toftir, a vil­lage on the neigh­bour­ing island of Eystur­oy with a pop­u­la­tion of around 980. Until a sub­sea tun­nel opened in 2020, it took over an hour to get from Toftir to the cap­i­tal – accen­tu­at­ing how lim­it­ed infra­struc­ture has meant iso­la­tion even with­in the country’s small geo­graph­ic area. ​“What’s sad is that [change] goes the right way but there’s always a reac­tion out in the towns,” Tausen con­tin­ues. ​“I moved here as I want­ed more cul­ture. Where I grew up there was reli­gion and sports. I real­ly want­ed to attend con­certs and I was inter­est­ed in poet­ry, but there was noth­ing there. Here, I can expe­ri­ence more.”

Ini­tial­ly Tausen didn’t find many poet­ry read­ings, so she took things into her own hands and start­ed putting on events where peo­ple could read their work or sim­ply come to lis­ten. Our inter­view takes place after a read­ing from her debut poet­ry book, Skál, which touch­es on faith, reclaim­ing fem­i­nine sex­u­al­i­ty from the male gaze and per­son­al growth. ​“It was impor­tant to me there were authors or poets that had released books – but also young peo­ple that just love it, so every­one can share,” she says. This act of plat­form­ing Faroese voic­es also extends to her job at Tutl, a record shop in Tór­shavn with a label of the same name act­ing as the lead­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive and dis­trib­u­tor of Faaroese music worldwide.

Estab­lished in 1977 by Dan­ish com­pos­er, musi­cian, record exec­u­tive and Faroe Islands res­i­dent Kris­t­ian Blak, Tutl’s remit is as broad. Basi­cal­ly: any­one from the islands who wants to put music out. Its back cat­a­logue is a gold­mine of work by ama­teurs and renowned names like Eivør Páls­dót­tir. ​“When I walked [into the shop] I saw this wall of Faroese music – a whole wall! And I didn’t know any of it,” Tausen remem­bers. “ I was 20-years-old. I’d been liv­ing in a bub­ble of the town and church, so I only knew psalms and The Bible. I spent the next year explor­ing my own country’s music, then start­ed mak­ing my own.”

Tausen writes and sings in Faroese – a trend among many young artists that’s as much about accu­rate expres­sion as it is nation­hood. The islands gained auton­o­my but not inde­pen­dence from Den­mark in 1948, and the rela­tion­ship is com­plex. Copen­hagen runs the courts and sub­sidis­es var­i­ous sec­tors, includ­ing music. In 2019, the Faroe Music Export (FMX) office was found­ed to increase glob­al vis­i­bil­i­ty for artists through secur­ing inter­na­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties, from fes­ti­vals to stu­dio part­ners to press agen­cies.

FMX Head Glenn Larsen relo­cat­ed to Tór­shavn from Nor­way mid-pan­dem­ic. When we meet for a day out explor­ing breath­tak­ing Faroese land­scapes, he mod­est­ly half-jokes the job was a case of right time and place – him being an artist man­ag­er with long­stand­ing expe­ri­ence in a place where sea­soned indus­try pro­fes­sion­als are in short sup­ply. Even so, his desire to make the insti­tu­tion work is clear. ​“For me, when you find some new music or see a new band, you want to show your friends,” Larsen tells me. ​“I felt like I’d been hand­ed a whole coun­try to present to the rest of the music industry.”

This vibrant, exper­i­men­tal Faroese scene has also lured over­seas acts. Foot­work and ghost­ly garage pro­duc­er Lasse Jæger, aka Super­visjón, is a case in point. Fol­low­ing his set at Skrapt, where 140BPM drums thun­dered beneath chop­py sam­ples of sound­bites heard dur­ing his own mort­gage advice meet­ings, he recounts emi­grat­ing from Den­mark four years ago and dis­cov­er­ing ​“a short­er path between get­ting an idea and mak­ing it hap­pen, and an even short­er one to some­one say­ing ​‘come and play this con­cert” com­pared to larg­er countries.

He also speaks of a strong col­lab­o­ra­tive spir­it that’s fun­da­men­tal to the scene. ​“It’s a cliché that every­one on the Faroe Islands can do at least five jobs: work in a bank, as a fish­er­man and as a sound engi­neer,” Jæger laughs. ​“Musi­cians are the same. Tech­no pro­duc­ers play­ing in a jazz trio, or a cov­ers band mem­ber in the sym­pho­ny orches­tra also mak­ing death metal.”

For­ward-fac­ing tech­no artist La Leif, hail­ing from South Lon­don, has had a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence. ​“Every­one helps each oth­er out,” she says after her solo per­for­mance at Skrapt. ​“It feels real­ly refresh­ing, peo­ple look after you and I think are more invest­ed in what you’re actu­al­ly doing.” When we grab a beer she’s joined by Jens L Thom­sen – a go-to mix­er and engi­neer for many on the islands, and her part­ner in the Faroes-born ORKA elec­tron­ic music project. Both of them recount instances of this col­lec­tivist ide­ol­o­gy in action, from kit shared between music-mak­ing friends to shows booked with 24 hours notice by audi­ence members-turned-promoters.

Lat­er, we find Mar­i­an­na Win­ter low­er­ing her­self into a deep wood­en bath­tub of ice cold water at Skrapt’s Sun­day evening ​“extreme chill ses­sion.” One of sev­er­al con­tem­po­rary Faroese artists to break over­seas, her stun­ning voice and uptem­po soul tracks cap­ti­vat­ed the fes­ti­val crowd two evenings ear­li­er. Dry­ing off before speak­ing, she paints a vivid pic­ture of how nation­al­i­ty and self-deter­mi­na­tion are inter­linked with culture.

“It’s impor­tant for peo­ple to under­stand the Faroe Islands as our own coun­try. But in many aspects we’re still referred to as Den­mark, which is a huge prob­lem,” Win­ter says. ​“Peo­ple are no longer mov­ing from the Faroe Islands because it’s become a cool place to live. It wasn’t a cou­ple of years ago. That’s why all the young peo­ple moved to Copen­hagen or Eng­land. So more are stay­ing and that’s cool, but we have to fig­ure out what we have to offer, and what this coun­try offers us. The Faroese music indus­try is still far behind the rest of the world, as we are in many fac­tors – like politics.

“Look at gen­der equal­i­ty. Women don’t own the rights to their own bod­ies as we have very strict abor­tion laws, even though Den­mark changed theirs way back,” she con­tin­ues, cit­ing the ongo­ing influ­ence of Chris­tian­i­ty through­out day-to-day life in the Faroes, from high school to state leg­is­la­tion. A recent tourist guide puts 80% of the pop­u­la­tion as belong­ing to the nation­al church.

The depic­tion of Faroese com­mu­ni­ties bound by reli­gious val­ues rein­forces assump­tions of cul­tur­al iso­la­tion, but it also frames the pas­sion with which so many talk about break­ing free from con­ven­tions and being heard on their own terms. It’s a reflec­tion of things mov­ing into a more out­ward-look­ing era in which nation­al iden­ti­ty still counts, though it may not look like it once did. Art, it seems, is at the fore­front of this change.

“I think we’re see­ing a lot more indi­vid­u­al­i­ty in artists now. There are so many new musi­cians, and young musi­cians, in dif­fer­ent bands. Before it was often the same musi­cians play­ing in all the bands, giv­ing them all a sim­i­lar sound.” Win­ter observes, adding that it’s excit­ing to see writ­ing in Faroese become ​‘in’ again. ​“See­ing music released in Faroese, but aim­ing inter­na­tion­al­ly, even though there are like 50,000 peo­ple who under­stand the lan­guage, is real­ly cool.”

All artists I speak to believe that the suc­cess of Faroese artists relies on co-oper­a­tion, which is some­thing Win­ter reit­er­ates as our inter­view comes to a close. ​“I feel you have a lot of respon­si­bil­i­ty – not just to your­self, but to all the artists around you.” she says. ​“We’re all friends, we all col­lab­o­rate on dif­fer­ent projects, we’re all musi­cians in each oth­er’s bands – stuff like that. It’s weird, try­ing to teach each oth­er some­thing while you’re still learn­ing, but it prob­a­bly makes learn­ing eas­i­er. It’s kind of been like that for Faroese artists: learn­ing by doing.”

The need to share expe­ri­ence, knowl­edge and plat­forms isn’t just an ide­o­log­i­cal one across the Faroe Islands – it’s a prac­ti­cal neces­si­ty. It feels oblig­a­tory; com­pen­sa­tion for a notable absence of music indus­try infra­struc­ture and the sense of being phys­i­cal­ly removed from the world beyond a North Atlantic often shroud­ed in thick fog. Iron­i­cal­ly, it’s these lim­i­ta­tions that may well have cre­at­ed the per­fect con­di­tions for the envi­able scene today: a trove of tal­ent, void of cyn­i­cism, har­ness­ing the true spir­it of DIY.

All pho­tos by Gwenaël Aki­ra Helms­dal Carre.

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