Hoyma Is Bringing Music Home in the Faroe Islands | Travel

The living room is cleared. The host taps a wine glass with a knife, and people file in, filling the couches and chairs that are pushed up against the walls. Soon every seat in the modern, glass-and-wood house is taken, a bottle of schnapps is passed around, and a few babies are passed around, too. The small crowd of about 20 people settles, and it falls silent. Lyon Hansen, who minutes before was milling about in the kitchen studying the snacks, walks over and picks up a guitar and starts to play. Hoyma has begun.

For one night, homeowners primarily in Sydrugota, a small town on Eysturoy, the second largest of the 18 Faroe Islands, open their doors, inviting friends, family and tourists in to enjoy intimate concerts by local artists of all genres. The tradition on the tiny archipelago that dots the Atlantic between Norway, Scotland and Iceland dates back nearly 500 years to a time when Faroese language and life had to move underground due to Danish rule. Home concerts helped keep their culture alive.

The modern Hoyma concert series started as an offshoot of the G! Festival, an annual musical event on the beaches of Eysturoy every summer since 2002. The festival attracts about 5,000 attendees, who take over the village of 400 or so residents for a three-day-long celebration of Faroese music and culture. While Faroese acts make up the bulk of the performers, the organizers also bring in a mix of international talent. Fatboy Slim, Yann Tiersen, Ben Gibbard and Princess Nokia have all made appearances.

Putting on a festival anywhere is a challenge, but adding in the logistics of getting musicians, their equipment and their fans to a tiny village on a small island in the middle of the North Atlantic makes it even more daunting. Around 2007, G! Festival’s creator Jón Tyril, exhausted by all the red tape, negotiating and infrastructure that came with putting on a massive music festival, started to dream a little smaller. Specifically, he started to think…