Cruising around the Faroe Islands
23 May 2001 | Torshavn, Faroes
Hello everyone! We have spent three weeks in the Faroes after an easy two-day passage from Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides. We had the most incredible experience here the other night, which I wanted to share with all of you.
Two nights ago, we boarded the 100-foot gaff-rigged schooner, Nordlysid (Northern Lights) with a group of about thirty people. We were all dressed in multiple layers and foul weather gear against the low 50-degree temperatures and steady drizzle. Birgir, Nordlysid's skipper and our friend, handled the six-foot long tiller (about as big around as a fence post), as he guided her away from the dock and out into the open harbor. There a large hard-bottomed inflatable and a traditional local fishing boat were tied astern, and we set out for Nolsoy, the island just a few miles from Torshavn harbor. Visibility was so poor, we couldn't see the island until we were within a half mile of it, and then the low cliffs of the northern side appeared as no more than a shadow in the mist.
We motored around to the east side of Nolsoy, and into a small bight among the cliffs where sea caves opened black maws at the base of the sheer rock faces. A series of boxes and bags were handed down to the skipper in the small traditional boat and then a dozen other people climbed into the twenty-foot boat, all of us wearing awkward life preservers at the insistence of the Nordlysid's crew. We bumped and jostled against one another and the boat swayed alarmingly at the shifting load as the skipper motored us into a sea cave through an opening only a few feet higher than the roof of the boat's small wheelhouse.
Once inside, the cave opened up a bit, and we found ourselves in an asymmetrical oval chamber about 150 feet from end to end and 50 feet across. We could see the Nordlysid silhouetted against the mouth of the cave, but it took a long time for my eyes to adjust so I could see the far corners of our rocky amphitheater. The water swooshed and huffed, wheezed and whooshed, breathing in half breaths and large sighs, creating its own rhythm. As I got my bearings, the group aboard started to open the boxes and bags. The rigid dinghy puttered into the cave with us, a dozen people sitting on its large inner tubes. Suddenly, a liquid note sounded into the darkness and reverberated in the stony space, its voice fuller and richer and deeper than in any concert hall. Light from the cave mouth glinted golden off a brass saxophone held to the mouth of a sandy-haired musician dressed in an orange survival suit. The concert had begun - "cave music" they call it.
They played with the sound of the ocean sighing, using its rhythms to measure theirs. Percussion provided counterpoint to the saxophone's sweet golden voice - one fellow played a large drum lying in the bottom of the boat; it's resonant pulse felt like the beating of the heart of the earth itself. Another shook a string of mollusk shells to create a rattling sound, a long hiss ending in a whisper or a sharp chattering snap to punctuate key phrases or accentuate the sound of the swell against the rocks. He also used a drumstick on the boat's engine compartment, gunwales and oars, a staccato beat of higher notes harmonizing with the rest. And then, another sound, one I couldn't place at first. A warbling, soprano note... A golden-haired woman raised her voice in an undulating wave, sweet as the saxophone. It filled the cave and reverberated until she was harmonizing with her own echo. The music had no origin but filled the cave from end to end, surrounding us, liquid as the water beneath the boat, a living thing in the cave with us, filling me with an indescribable euphoria.
Shortly after the music started, I had realized the cockpit of the boat wouldn't hold everybody while the musicians played. I had worked my way around the wheelhouse of the boat and now kneeled on the bow, leaning on the wheelhouse roof, looking down into the cockpit on the musicians. A young man knelt next to me recording the concert with a large, foam-covered microphone. The boat and the dinghy nearby rotated slowly around the cave, moved by the unseen currents of the water swirling in and ebbing out. Every once in a while, one of the men at the back of the boat would use an oar to push off the roof or side of the cave to keep us away from the rocky walls. At the farthest end of the oval of the cave, the cave mouth disappeared completely, leaving us in darkness except for a small riding light shining into the cockpit. Then we'd wheel slowly around the dinghy and come back into the light from the mouth of the cave, and the saxophone would drip gold and the singer's hair would turn platinum and pale, slack jawed faces enraptured by the music would emerge from the darkness one by one like ghosts.
The dinghy left after the first set, discharging the first load of passengers and then returning with the second. Evans sat among this group and I watched his face as he listened to this music made three-dimensional by the space we occupied. They played for about an hour and a half, until the cold of the cave had seeped into all of our bones and the moisture dripping off the ceiling had glazed their instruments with a fine sheen. The saxophone player kept up a melody as we left the cave, and in that moment of transition the instrument's sinuous call went from full-throated and omnipresent to small and localized; devolving back to the instrument itself, dwindling into a tiny, tinny voice dwarfed and mocked by the high cliffs above us. We emerged blinking at the still bright light outside, the music welling within us.
We hope all of you are enjoying your own sea music.
Beth and Evans