New book

by Josh Green

Perhaps the best way to introduce a new book on popular music in the Faroe Islands is with a brief that story has to do with what I learned about the nature of island life and island music, in particular, while in the Faroes and during the process of writing.

Towards the end of my first month in the Faroes, my “language and culture” class took a trip to the tiny village of Trøllanes, which lies at the northern tip of one of the Faroes' more remote and least populated islands. We took a ferry ride across the fjord from Klaksvík, the Faroes’ second largest town, and arrived on the island of Kalsoy, population about 100. We drove through four or more mountain tunnels, some of which connected to empty and uninhabited valleys. After the last tunnel we emerged above Trøllanes, a town of about 6 houses. Despite my best efforts at steeling myself against romanticizing this seemingly "remote and out of time" place, I couldn't help but feel a bit like I'd reached the end of the world. Here we met Mikkjal Joensen, the famed Faroese blacksmith who runs a shop and museum. After a smithing demonstration, I spoke with Mikkjal in somewhat broken English about my plan to study music in the Faroes and told him that I looked forward to meeting the Faroese country star, Hallur Joensen. He smiled and told me he knew Hallur very well and that I should tell him 'hello from Mikkjal' when I meet him: Mikkjal and Hallur used to play in a rock band together in their younger days.

Amused by the close interconnection of people across the archipelago and how often it is that music connects them, I strolled with our group around the village's few houses. One of them, I learned, stands empty most of the year. A few of us peeked inside and found an enviable and fully equipped jam space. It was starting to seem like it would be quite hard to get away from music anywhere in the Faroes. In some ways, I think my experience at Trøllanes makes for an apt metaphor for the Faroes and the Faroese music scene as a whole. First, it shows how even in some of the world's more ostensibly out-of-the-way places, music flourishes and forges connections between people. Secondly, as anthropologists and others have been cautioning for some time now, it reinforces (for me) the idea that nowhere can we treat cultures as isolates. The discussions of Faroese metal and country in this book attest to this, as well as to some of the ways in which people make music meaningful and useful in their lives as they are making it their own.

My new book, Music-making in the Faroes: The Experience of Music-making in the Faroes and Making Metal Faroese, was published earlier this year. Print version 188kr (DKK), e-book 90kr (DKK).