Faroe Islands, almost heaven
Somewhere over Inverness, the plane began to shake. The last flight I was on, I suffered a violent panic attack. It was the sort that can make you never want to fly again or else fain a heart attack and demand that the pilot lands in Dover where you can be whisked off into the safe bosom of the NHS at the earliest possible opportunity and cuddled back to sanity by a nurse named Margaret. As I boarded the flight to the Faroe Islands, I had tried to put this lingering haunt behind me, like Anne Boleyn bravely getting back into speed dating.
But as the plane rattled violently above stark Northern Scotland, the tremor shook the dreadful trauma back into harrowing focus. ‘Is this how it ends’, I thought. My first proper foreign press trip fails to break the border as I plunge into desolate ferns. Highland cattle lap the blood from my magnificent corpse until a fireman delves his hand into my excrement-splattered M&S ‘worn by David Gandy’ chinos to retrieve the Dictaphone that houses my last babbled attempts to be this generation’s more measured, lager-based, ad-revenue-driving Hunter S. Thompson.
But the turbulence soon ceased, and the pilot made an announcement, ensuring us that all was fine. I was instantly becalmed, not because of what he said, but because he was an upper-class Scotsman. I can’t think of a single demographic more called upon in a crisis. His voice alone carried the commanding timbre of a man who could glance casually out of the plane’s wing mirrors, see both engines engulfed in flames, and calmly land us in the North Sea with all the grace of a goose who had graduated the Vaganova Ballet Academy, then fling a fishing line out of the cockpit window and rustle us up a fish lasagne with his catch while we awaited rescue in his friend’s trawler, getting roaring drunk on whisky as we returned to terra firma, basking in the brilliance of a man who has never met an atrocity he couldn’t overcome.
In fact, from thereon, I couldn’t help but think that I would never suffer the merest blemish of fear of flying for the rest of my life, safe in the knowledge that captains are an entirely different breed to nervous, drunken music journalists. Now, a few hours down the line, reflecting on this in a toasty hotel room, it seems to me that it wasn’t only the pilot with the voice of many great explorers and football managers before him that had soothed any dread but the calming concept of the Faroe Islands itself.
For months, I have been looking forward to this trip. I have sat on stuffy underground trains with vaguely threatening drunks carelessly farting, and I have fantasised about a more civilised speck of land ruggedly cast in the North Atlantic. I read facts about the cleanest air in the world lingering over their emerald isle, imbuing it with healing qualities. I had heard rumours that they hadn’t even bothered with setting up a police force. And I had marvelled at the fact you could fit the entire nation of 52,000 into St James Park, the home of my beloved Newcastle United, and there would still be a few seats to spare.
This utopian jewel of steep cliffs and waterfalls, capriciously cast somewhere between Scotland and Iceland, offered a sense of total escape from the rat race, and yet it was only a 70-minute flight from Edinburgh—a fabled Narnia only a figurative step through a cupboard door away from feted urban reality. And the notion that I had perhaps built it up too much was already dissipating before we had even landed.
As you descend, you see dramatic green valleys that have no business being quite so close to the plane’s wing tips. In fact, it is such an unconventional landscape to observe from a lowering jetliner that you half expect the Jurassic Park theme to be piped out from the plane’s PA system alongside a decree that we had successfully made it back to the year 22,000 BC.
Then it happens, the first sign that you have reached some sort of heaven: the world over the pandemic has decimated the functioning of airports, but the queue to enter the Faroe Islands is a 15-second walk from the aircraft. It takes even less time to find yourself at the front of it. There, you will be greeted by two guards that shockingly don’t actually see themselves as some sort of desk-based James Bonds, the way these aggressive passport stampers often do in more triggering border control stations.
The welcoming nature continued to abide as we arrived at the hotel, too. Having weaved our way to Tórshavn, the nation’s colourful capital of 13,083 people, via roads that hug to the waterline beneath towering green slopes and tunnels recently etched beneath the ancient lands, a woman beams a broad smile as we check into the hotel. The greeting is not the sort of highly trained service you’d get in a five-star Parisian establishment; it’s a superior bespoke service derived from her sincere wish that we do indeed enjoy ourselves in her proud homeland.
While this might be a travel feature, ostensibly, I am here covering the nation’s music industry—which is perhaps the most thriving in the world. This makes it the most pertinent factor of Faroese existence to mull over for a visitor grappling with what to expect. You see, somehow this cultural boom is less fathomable than a punk community popping up in Patagonia; in that case, you can imagine how an offshoot of outsiders might abscond from society at large and hole up in a commune, but these Islands are a connected civility outstripped by the sheep population, and yet somehow enjoying a nationwide renaissance period.
This comes as a great comfort to younger visitors such as myself and my better half. You see, any moron with Google Maps could tell you that the Faroe Islands is beautiful. Even those I mentioned it to who have never heard of it were allured by the name alone, albeit many clearly thought I had said the Pharaoh Islands and instructed me to pack plenty of sunscreen, imagining a mythic spot off the coast of Egypt. However, mythic remains an operative word when it comes to the real place, which instils modern culture with an enigmatic edge.
As expected, the stunning landscape and quaintly cobbled abodes do indeed look like Peter Jackson has dramatically reimagined the Scottish Highlands, to coin a Lord of the Rings comparison that the locals are no doubt now sick of hearing. But the true beauty of these Islands lies beyond the idea that they are Europe’s very own New Zealand, with Dr Suess as a town planner. No matter how beautiful that may sound, for the uninitiated, there is still a fear that when you finally shelter from the stunning elements, you’ll find yourself in the only cold and damp pub in the village, surrounded by woollen men, drunk beyond belief, with pollock guts encrusted in their beards and nothing but belches to send your way. Therein, the darkest potentiality cooked up by your imagination has you fearing that you’ll be served beer that’s closer to dishwater slop than anything you’ve drank before, and then you’ll be forced to feast on fermented fish.
But that’s a fevered prejudice that was first dismissed when we met Glenn Larson, the head of the music export desk, who sported a pristine jumper clearly prised from a sheep that took enormous pride in itself and a smile that betrayed the fact he couldn’t wait to tell me about how an island of 52,000 has over 50 full-time musicians. It was then dismissed again as we ecstatically dined in Koks, the sister establishment of the ‘greatest restaurant in the world’. Once more as we chatted with Sunneva, who has cultivated the inclusive indie hotspot Sirkus, where weekend revellers gather for craft ales and great music. In fact, the entire stay was a continually confounding exhibition of coolness.
Even as we trundled out of Tórshavn for the first time, we were confronted by the nation’s five-star prison. It’s a pristine complex with views of an expansive bay, rolling hills to its rear, and a mini golf course for its few residents, all guarded by a chain link fence no higher than three feet. And as you veer around these hills, you find further surprises aplenty. Clustered towns with grass roofs on the cusp of the shore with a towering green wall behind them, pocked by a few grazing geese and the odd drenched shepherd. Puffins perched on cliff edges. And door-to-door music festivals whereby entire villages open their homes to the public to pop in to see a folk star and swig a beer before moving next door to repeat this peculiar yet perfectly wholesome procedure with a jazz pianist this time out.
This is the crux of what makes the Faroe Islands so great. Glenn, a musical guide who we became platonically enamoured with by the end of our stay, embodies this: he arrived from his native Norway just as things were getting heavy amid the dawning pandemic. He wanted to get away from that hectic upheaval, and he found peace, quietude and clean air awaiting him. However, he hasn’t left since because he now finds himself the head of a heaving music industry. This is because it isn’t a place to ‘just get away to’; it’s a thriving cultural hub that just so happens to be cast among a great awe-inspiring cluster of Arctic blasted rocks, and relaxation might be its default setting, but it houses raves, surfing and sold out football matches in its sprawling majestic midst too.
You can drive around the scattered lands for hours on end in a state of comatose marvel, refreshing yourself in its invigorating spray, and like a fell runner with a flatulence problem, have only whipping wind for company. Or you can station yourself in a town and within a single hour have sampled a delicious locally brewed beer, dined on a five-star salmon sandwich, visited a venue that’s free to the public, witnessed an avant-garde electro-punk artist play a table, and plodded around an old town so perfectly preserved you rudely gaze through windows and are shocked to find it isn’t a museum but rather the living room of Kristian Blak, the record store owner you chatted with earlier, who merely waves back at you.
And it has honed this utopian outlook on modern society to such an extent that it is now beginning to have fun with it. This was evidenced at a gallery exhibit where the artist Ole Wich was bestowed with the greatest honour in his career and met with its potential demise simultaneously after the establishment decided to recognise its most anti-establishmentarian creator, a man who had crafted his repertoire on the very premise of being an overlooked outsider, now gazed at and welcomed into the fold. He gave a thankful speech in a paradoxically pissed-off fashion as he mused over the unique predicament he found himself in, orchestrated by the giggling peers around him, further proof that the Faroe Islands also knows how to lighten the towering beauty around it with a bit of humour.
And it does this all in its own moderation. So, after four days of utter refreshment, we leave here platonically in love with the place and all those in it. And as we depart, stocking up on as much Oy beer as we can bring back to Britain, there’s not a hint of fear about flying in sight. The healing air has rung true. But the bulk of the rejuvenation has not been driven by any favourable pollution levels, but simply because, unlike most ‘vacations’ these days, it is not the sort of holiday that you feel you need another holiday to recover from—it’s just a blissed-out jaunt of culture and nature combined among friendly folks in a utopia that feels almost like heaven, or at least as close as a press trip can get.
Things to do in the Faroe Islands:
Visit the Art Museum, jog to the lighthouse, drive around the islands, eat fresh sushi, drink craft beer at OY, take in a high-end concert at the Nordic House, take in a rave at Perlan, don’t order pizza, chat with Joe and The Shitboys in a record shop, treat yourself to a nice woollen garment, don’t forget your coat, get pissed at Sirkus, flick washed-up jellyfish back into the ocean, pay your respects at James Bond’s grave, gaze out of car windows agog at floating rivers, hike, change out of wet socks, eat a sea urchin, join one-third of an entire nation at a single football match, wear two pairs of socks, drive over the only bridge that crosses the Atlantic, point at a puffin, get followed by a curious town dog, make a good friend, and relax.
