(Credits: Far Out / Nordichouse Faroe Islands / Tutlrecords)
Mon 12 February 2024 14:30, UK
During my time in the Faroe Islands, I kept reminding myself of one single confounding fact: you could fit the entire population within St James’ Park. The first weekend after my return from the Emerald Islands, I took my seat in that stadium. I found myself gazing around the snapshot of the northern populous gathered within the sporting cathedral and wondered: is it possible that among this 50-odd thousand there is an internationally touring punk band (Joe & The Shitboys), an avant-garde folk trailblazer (Dania O Tausen), a pioneer of spectral music (Sunleif Rasmussen), a psyche electro progenitor layering domestic tales in a language that 0.006% of the world’s population understands over futurised sounds (Supervisjón), and around 50 other full-time professional musicians, not to mention the professional visual artists, writers and so on?
The answer was, of course, almost certainly not—and that’s in a city that has always famously punched above its weight regarding the arts. But the arts are currently floundering in Britain. In total, we lost 125 venues in 2023. While the grassroots scene contributed £501million to the economy last year, it operates on an unsustainable profit threshold of 0.5%, so causalities are incumbent without support. However, the Faroe Islands serve as a model of how the arts can thrive with the right ecosystem in place.
Much of this is down to one man: Kristian Blak. He is a jazz pianist extraordinaire, and he’s also a record store owner. He established Tutl Records – an unassuming corner shop at the upper end of one of Tórshavn’s main streets – back in 1977. This humble cultural stronghold in one of the world’s least bustling capitals is the epicentre of everything artistic. It is owned by musicians. It always has been. And the Tutl record label that goes along with it is also democratically owned by those who contribute to it. He tells me all this in a blasé manner without even the slightest hint of ‘isn’t this great’ in his voice, just an authoritative aura of ‘this is how it works’.
Blak, who looks not unlike Father Time, humbly announces over his coffee that he puts out one new album every year and has done so since ’77. He is one of many who operate in a similar manner, and there’s a sense that he always will do until this little shop at the end of the Earth truly arrives at the Earth’s end. “There are at least 1100 albums in Tutl’s catalogue,” he says while searching his laptop unsuccessfully to find the exact total. He closes his Mac a little flustered and repeats, “Yeah, at least 1100, I think.”
Once again, the comparison to St James Park confounded me— when I was back on the terraces, I gazed around at its many pie-eaters and pondered, ‘Imagine if more than one in 50 people in this stadium had released an album’. And of that 1100, there are punk records, folk records, traditional singing records, jazz, classical, rock, metal, electronic, field recordings of puffins, choirs on the cliffs, noise featuring samples of YouTube and more. Often, this diversity is even housed within the same singular guitarist’s discography.
This is, in itself, a very Faroese facet—it’s not uncommon for the skipper of a fishing vessel to also be a chef or a school teacher to shepherd sheep in the holidays. In the Faroe Islands, things just seem to function whichever way they can—which, it turns out, is a very good way to make things function very well. Isolated and bashed by Atlantic elements in endless days of sun or darkness, you have to make do and go about things as best you can. Now, after centuries without even the faintest kazoo for an instrument, the art in the region is embracing that hardened ‘make it work’ mentality, and it is thriving with Tutl as its singular, hallowed, and extremely humble repository.
So, that is where their music is housed and fostered, but where do the musicians all meet? The boozer bestowed with that honour is Sirkus. Glenn Larsen, the head of the music desk and my guide to its scene, explains, “I always think in any town there’s at least one bar where all the artists hang, the cultural hub. In the Faroe Islands, that’s Sirkus”. Seven pints of Oy and endless sly sips of bloody horrible Underberg later, I couldn’t help but feel he was right. This queer, ramshackle establishment, resplendent with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and flour-to-ceiling canvas, thrives with indie identity amid the quaint harbour that surrounds it.
(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Stills / Nordichouse Faroe Islands / Tutlrecords)
Steadily, as I interacted with more and more artists from the area, it appeared that the lifeblood of the recent Renaissance was a stern sense of defiance. And yet this seemed peculiar in a way, given that I was unable to find a single person on the whole island who didn’t ostensibly seem to wholeheartedly support it. At worst, there might be the odd fellow who said, “I think it’s great what they’re doing. I much prefer Pantera myself, but good luck to them.” Yet they’ve offered more than mere luck in return.
A music scene in the Faroe Islands was always going to need that. As Blak explained, you can’t really extensively tour a nation of just over 50,000 people. And yet, later that evening, as I sat in the plush premiere venue, The Nordic House, built from only the finest glass, grass and pine, it became clear that the industry was so well supported that many up-and-coming talents were doing just that before shipping off overseas with a fitting Faroese wind behind them. And once again, as I slyly sipped horrible Underberg and watched the ethereal beauty of Einangran, the mindboggling extent of the backing became clear as I gazed around and thought, ‘Almost one in every hundredth Faroese person is at this gig’.
An hour later on that very same evening, huddled into a concrete cavern called the Perlan – a space specially designed for raves – watching Supervisjón, it became increasingly clear why culture really is thriving here: like everything else on the Islands, there is just enough of everything you need and never too much. For example, in the UK, plans for a copy of the Las Vegas Sphere were drawn up for London, prompting the sanest political commentators to point out, ‘Does London really need another huge venue?’. Such discussions don’t seem to be happening in the Faroe Islands. With a fellow like Glenn at the helm, who has been in every role the music industry has to offer, he understands the fine balance at play.
So, he recognises you need free spaces for musicians to practice, you need free venues for them to showcase what they’ve been practising, you need the grand mausoleum to aspire to on the top of the hill, you need the indie bar to chat about it all, you need the home-run festival to form a cultural celebration and get the odd Songhoy Blues or Kristof Kristofferson to join in, you need all of this to be scattered and seeded across the various little townships, you need international reach, you need a hub like Tutl, and you need someone like Blak at the helm of it, you need world-class recording studios in converted fisheries, you need it all, and you need it as cheap, accessible, inclusive, and encouraged as you can get it.
When you have that, it all begins to take care of itself—and I don’t just mean the cultural side of life. A thriving society is one that connects. Civility is like a nervous system, and music is firing the synapses in places like Sirkus… which then floods out drunkenly onto the harbour and searches out a place to eat, which keeps local restaurants bustling, which makes local farmers happy, which makes land bids for bloody oil go away, and so on and so on. So, it’s not an overstretch to say that part of the reason that the Faroe Islands is forming into a little utopia is because egoless record store owners, punk bands, fellows who prefer Pantera but still happily sit through nu-folk, and Visit Faroe Islands’ lavish pre-paid policy.
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