Faroese feelings
A reverie contemplating life, hope and more on the Faroe Islands
As I perch here on the rocky Faroe Islands waiting to hear if planes are coming in and out on the world’s tiniest runway - yes apparently it’s a thing. The fog rolls in and you just stay in or out. I have been thinking a lot about this week’s episode of Critics at Large on the New Yorker - Is travel broken?
It’s this great show where three of the smartest humans (Vinson, Cunningham, Naomi Fry and Alexandra Schwartz) debate all kinds of interesting cultural things. This week’s episode is about travel and whether, well, it’s broken.
Listening to them and then really critically thinking about travel it might not be broken but I cannot quite row away from the rocks here…it is literally my job and my greatest pleasure.
And as with everything it depends on how you see it - are we overtouristing by going to the edges and most remote places on the planet? Is it getting harder with too many people traveling and things becoming harder to manage? Is climate change causing more turbulence? Did “White Lotus” ruin resorts and luxury hotels for us all now? My bestest friend said (and I paraphrase), “I love gorgeous hotels - but it is always so unfortunately they are filled with the worst horrid humans I don’t want to be around.” God I love her, because she’s right. It is often the case. Wise woman she is.
But then so many small communities, and remote places depend on tourism for income and work. So should we find other ways to support them? Do we need legislation for this? Like Bhutan has. And Venice recently implemented. Should it all just be more expensive? But then isn’t reversing the democratization of travel going to just offer it up to the elite few? But how do we expand our minds if we’re not going around the world experiencing the other, the unknown? We can simulate and AI can help us, and we can travel in our minds sure, and using headsets etc. But, let’s be real, that’s a parallel activity not an instead-of-activity for travel.
So is it broken? Or do we just owe it more thought and critical thinking that ever before. Can we think of leisure travel, without thinking about travel that is more out of necessity. The giant migrant crises, the immigration situation all over. The fascism that is taking hold because people are not seeing what is real and therefore travel could actually LITERALLY be halted.
Or is it somehow just harder than ever, from one perspective? I mean I saw the lines at Newark last week. I see you clipping your nails on the plane. I see you coughing all over other passengers in the passport line. I see that taxi line. Oh yes sure canceled again, oh the fuselage fell out…oh there was no quality check, got it. Oh you’re restraining the mentally ill person on the plane who’s tried to open the door after falling down the stairs from the top deck. Ok sure. Oh yes, that’s dog poop. And people are behaving worse and worse and worse. Sure we can all be part of your loudspeaker phone call. So we’re at this place. But hard it might be, but we’re all still white knuckling it hoping that sheer will and some barmy pressure will make it all work out.
Global tourism is projected to be up by some crazy margin this year. Trillions of dollars now balloon this industry.
But as the New Yorker trio said, it’s a confusing time to travel.
It’s like we pandemic’d and then decided we may get locked down again and therefore we must rush out to go see the world. At all cost, no matter how hot it will get this summer, no matter how it might be wasteful. Just go and see it all. Remember when they called it revenge travel? People were rushing to these hotels destinations like Iceland and Mexico City etc etc to go see something new (no matter that everyone else was also there).
And then there are these bucket lists people are truly now trying to tick off - and maybe Faroe Islands is one for me (not in that annoying bucket list way, but nevertheless here I am). But there is an overwhelming desire to feel alive we want to experience things that are new to us.
Because what we are not saying, but should, is that nothing is new - someone was there before you so you’re not the adventurer or finder of an ‘authentic genuine only-I-know’ place anyway. As they say, the off the beaten quickly becomes the beaten. And yes that’s partly my fault as the travel writer promoting places of course. On the show they say this great thing about how people all think THEY are the travelers and everyone else are the tourists. Of course, that irony is golden and offered up the illusion for us to unpack.
Brene Brown says we’re not feeling hope - and because we don’t have agency - we are lashing out and rebelling and feeling some kind of way - and perhaps this is one way. We are desperate to feel something and to take back agency. Maybe we think travel will offer up newness, offer us up a feeling of being foreign and ‘not of that place’ and give us back our hope. And in some ways of course it does. And because travel is so much about death as it is about living - there are only so many weeks of our lives, there will only be so many trips, there will only be a finite amount of places that I can get to and see in this life. It brings up feelings - if you let it - that are complicated. Like Slave Play, Jeremy O. Harris’s theatre genius.
Oh Brene, she gives me goosebumps because she speaks truth.
And now I want my friends to host Hopeful Monday ASAP (they started a dinner party after that orangutang became president so that we could all be together and find HOPE - it all started with a cake - if you see me, I’ll tell you all about it. It’s one of my favorite things I have ever been a part of).
It’s hard to be hopeful (especially when even the first debate was just terrible) and because there is a 24 hour news cycle (also social media even though I don’t ever see that) showing you the crises in the world. So people want to LIVE and FEEL, and nothing does that better than traveling with, chuckle, the wind in your hair….
But travel also brings up some extra complicated questions - for me going home to South Africa often does that. The white boy from Africa. A place I love, but a place with a horrid history that I live - partly - through. A place which I am a part of, and a part away from. And again I sit with these feelings as the country decides how to move forward with a sort of coalition government trying to be a rainbow nation for all.
And that brings me to the Faroe Islands. Stick with me on my thinking around all of this.
A most beautiful, most meditative, most incredible place. But it’s hard to get here, flights come and go, or not. I in fact had to redirect to Copenhagen for a night to eventually arrive. I am a professional and pretty much used to it, so I was thrilled to go to my favorite coffee shop and stay at the gorgeous Sanders Hotel in Copenhagen. But for most people this trip would be a nightmare and a disaster. Is it broken? Or is this just part of the lessons it teaches us about being adaptable and going with the magic…
Some haters will hate on the Faroe Islands and their whale killing - but to them I say, come here and listen and understand this ancient culture (that is not yours) and then make up your mind about it. It is complicated and nuanced - like Gaza and everything else. And I learnt things that Pamela Anderson didn’t mention with her campaign for whales. Travel brings these things to the fore - they remind us that everything is essentially intertwined and that separating things is virtually impossible. It is easier to have a villain and a hero - it’s simplistic and it seems like people find it hard to hold two seeming conflicting ideas in their heads at the same time.
That’s why I always advocate for travel. It opens your mind. It shows you all the little intricacies that make life so hard, but also so hopeful.
Before coming here I perhaps had one opinion, or one judgment, of what the Faroe Islands were. I came, I ate, I met locals. I laughed, I learnt. And suddenly I see the world in a totally different way. Also a fluffy sheep smiled at me.
They’re not Danish, even though they are a territory. Oh and being a territory is less fun than I would think - you can’t even compete in the Olympics. But the beauty and the food. Oh the food. Actually let me tell you about KOKS - the Michelin two star - as they have an outpost here, I went with a bestie at their Greenland outpost and I may have to say it was one of the highlight meals of my entire life - I think about it all the time. In fact I drank this gorgeous sparkling drink called MURI there - and found it last night in Tórshavn at this fine restaurant, ROKS. It’s made with magic. Pure and simple just sorcery and alchemy. It has fermentation from sourdough starter, and then some gooseberries and herbs. It’s the best drink I have had in this silly little life. Made by some Great Danes.
Anyway back to Faroe outdoors, driving around and seeing these volcanic cliffs and mossy mountains (it is yes where James Bond dies in the latest Bond) it just stills me, it makes me feel something that I haven’t felt before. And then I try understand that inside me. Something that tames that restless spirit. It felt like a privilege to be there, to just stay in that loop of driving around seeing these dramatic landscapes. The girlfriend that came with me was the perfect partner for this - whip smart and very funny. So we spent hours contemplative life, and love…and bonded over our joint obsession for travel and how it shows us literally all the things we need to see, know, feel…it makes me a better person, it let’s me work better, be a better friend, be a better human and most importantly it makes me be better to my love - and thus to myself.
As the fog rolls in, I remember the Faroese have 35 words for fog…and my mind meanders somewhere else…travel is about curiosity. And that is always why I head out anywhere. Even though it is complex, even though nothing is new, even though the world feels like it’s literally on fire. I head out in hope of hope…
