1 post tagged “faroe islands”

Show us a photo of somewhere you want to go.

I would like to visit the Faroe Islands and take part in the føroyskur dansur, the medieval chain dance done over all the islands. It is accompanied by the singing of the kvæði, the old Faroese ballads. 

The [føroyskur dansur] is a mediaeval ring dance, which only survived in the Faroe Islands, while in other European countries it was banned by the church, due to its pagan origin. The special features of the Faroese dance are the song and story. There is no instrumental accompaniment, only the voices and feet are heard. While a single or a few singers lead the song, the others take part with their dance steps and by singing the refrain after each verse. There is a live bond between the story of the ballad and the mood of the dance. The dance steps are always the same; if the story is a sad one, the steps are soft; if dramatic, the feet tramp hard. If it is a ballad that makes fun of something, the rhythm is springy and light. It is a dance where many take part, faces pass by one another; the dance turns inwards and can be difficult to appreciate from the outside. You have to participate, and when it is at its best the chain melts together and you feel a part of something vast.

(From Wikipedia and the Faroe Islands Tourist Guide)

When I first heard about the chain dance, I was reminded of the "Long Dance" in Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea novels. Her description of the dance, danced on the same night on every island in the archipelago captured my imagination:

As the sun rose the next morning the Chanters of Roke began to sing the long Deed of Erreth-Akbe… When the chant was finished the Long Dance began. Townsfolk and Masters and students and farmers all together, men and women, danced in the warm dust and dusk down all the roads of Roke to the sea-beaches, to the beat of drums and drone of pipes and flutes. Straight out into the sea they danced, under the moon one night past full, and the music was lost in the breakers' sound. As the east grew light they came back up the beaches and the roads, the drums silent and only the flutes playing soft and shrill. So it was done on every island of the Archipelago that night: one dance, one music binding together the sea-divided lands.

The Faroe Islands' dance may not have the literal magic of Ursula K. LeGuin's Long Dance, but I'd still love to experience for myself such a long-standing dance tradition. Like all folk dances, neither photographs nor descriptions can do them justice, only the act itself of joining in.