Letters from the Faroe Islands
August 26, 2025. 2:00am Local Time
Tórshavn
What country this is. What an achievement not only as it pertains to the fact that mankind has settled here but that Austin and I arrived at all. As our plane descended, and we caught our first view of these jagged, vicious rocks protruding from the northern sea, I could not help but gasp and ask one simple question:
"Why did I do this to us?"
This is a sentiment I think I will repeat often as we lay down even these temporary roots. If I find any answers, I will document them here. As it stands now, I feel like I did this because I had to. In one sense, this is the literal culmination of a vacation years in the making and months in the planning. In another sense, I think I needed to prove to myself that it could be done.
Sally Rooney once wrote that money is the substance which makes the world real. I reflected upon that today as, apart from already blowing past our budget for this trip, I stepped off the plane and onto the saline, windswept tarmac. It is a rather lame reflection, surely, that the Faroe Islands are, in fact, real.
But I think that this is as much my personality and drive to create and discover as it is some bold proclamation about the universe. It's an instinct that tempers my excitement and disappointment, sure, and which also helps undersell and delay discussing accomplishment and adventure. Things are not real until they are already past, at least to me. Moving, then, creates a kind of release, and so I am in a state of perpetual grief—at least on an existential level.
Perhaps that is why I am so drawn to this place. It seems fit for beautiful, existential grief. Grieving, of course, is only one side of a coin whose inverse is love, or even celebration, in much the same way as grief is an extension of these feelings.
To be here is to celebrate many things. I am thirty. I have met a wonderful woman whom shares some of my views on the world and challenges me in immeasurable ways. I write this affectionately, thinking of her now. I have leapt into a career from which I take great satisfaction and which awards me the opportunities of travel and personal development I so desire, and perhaps require. Likewise, I have parents who love and support me—one set who saw fit enough to sacrifice their parentage of me, and another who have given me all the tools to become the person who rushed to these tiny, immaculate islands.
And, they are immaculate. It is as though they are defiant by nature, for they defy nature. What crueler, more capricious wonder is the sea, and what right have these islands to exist? Verdant, rocky, mysterious, and enthralling. Sheep roam free while salmon live in pens and seabirds flicker through ravines. The air is clean and constantly tinted by the sea. One feels a constant, pleasant vulnerability, exacerbated by the weather.
I wonder if this is what has made the people we have met so far so kind? Is there something in the Faroese spirit, that of it which we have seen, which is in a constant state of celebratory humility? Here are a folk living on rocks striking high above and yet intrinsically linked to the sea. How does one not feel small, and yet prideful in that smallness? What new direction will we discover as we venture further afield?
Later today, for our sleep schedules remain displaced, we explore Tórshavn. Dinner last night was exceptional, especially the shrimp toast and braised lamb. Our first hotel, Hafnia, offers free wine at 1700 and Austin has fallen in love with Muller-Thurgau. Oh, and our server at dinner did cheerfully inform us that Nebbiolo is an Italian wine made from Tempranillo. Maybe Tórshavn needs a sommelier?
Practical concerns: cash, gifts, and temperament. We are, it is, as Austin put it: too late to turn back now. But on the flight from Paris, I found a little magazine with a quote from a Faroese sommelier living in Copenhagen:
"I would rather be out and wishing to be home, than home and wishing to be out."
That is the spirit of this trip, and perhaps of life.
Ran into a couple from Illinois who knew a lot about wine at dinner. Most everyone here speaks English. Money might become a problem if I cannot find somewhere to convert the currency I brought. My cell carrier is frustrating. Cafe, then wandering up to the Nordic House. Gallery. Gifts!
JXMC