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riends,

Let me tell you a little bit about The Faroe Islands — where this episode’s guest, the musician and performer, EIVØR, an incredible ulti-instrumental songwriter and artist is from — since the landscape and waterscape and skies of those islands that play so heavily into the discussion. 

The Faore Islands, as you may or may not know are a group of 18 islands in the Atlantic Ocean somewhere between Ireland and Iceland. When you’re there, you’re far away from everything and everyone except the islands 55,000 inhabitants, the birds, the sheep, and the many many waterfalls rushing down from the mountains to the ocean.

The islands are also populated by incredible stories and connections; like stories about the huldufolk, beings that live in the otherworld and in the islands themselves. Stories about viking christianity, a passage of beliefs navigated by Sigmundur Brestisson, a viking chef in the 10th century who brought christianity to the island (and also navigated even earlier by Ireland’s Saint Brendan the navigator, who stopped on the islands).

When I say it’s isolated, what people usually think is an experience in an empty countryside or rural area that they’ve visited. But it’s so different than that: this isolation is surrounded by water. There’s no one else for hundreds of miles. You’re alone. The air is different. The sound of the air is different – it’s still – and that word, still, is also the name in fares of Eivør’s latest album, Enn. It’s not just the air that sounds different, either: there were no musical instruments as we typically think of them on the Faroe Islands until the 1800s. The music was woven differently there.

And the keeper and expresso of those lineages of the sounds of waterfalls, new encounters with instruments, the Faroese voice, the big sky and surrounding waters, is Eivør. Over more than ten albums and two decades of making music, Eivør has brought in the music and sounds of the world to the Faroes, transmuting it with her own presence, her powerful and dynamic voice, and then bringing that encounter to the rest of the world.

I’m so excited to share this conversation with you. If you’re new to Eivør, I’ve created a playlist of some of my favorite songs from her long, prollific career. For more, here’s Eivør’s website, and you can find her artwork here.

Enjoy the sounds, friends!
C