TORSHAVN, Faroe Islands — “Can you shut the hell up,” I whispered. My voice cracked as the laugh I tried to hold in snuck out. “We’re going to get kicked out of here.”
“Come and take it,” my friend responded at a volume that exceeded the strict quiet hours regulations posted around the guesthouse.
“It’s fine,” another friend insisted, gesturing toward our host’s bedroom door. “She’ll wait ’til the morning to get onto us, and we’ll be gone by then.”
It was barely past ten o’clock, but the Faroese beers we’d been drinking since the late afternoon continued to linger in our bloodstreams. A few minutes earlier, our attempt to creep back into the bed and breakfast fell apart as shoes squeaked, heads bumped into low-hanging ceilings, and suppressed giggles turned into sudden bursts of laughter.
Nothing was particularly funny, not least the night on the town we’d had, but then again it was all funny. In the days before, visions of Nordic nightlife—Norwegian rock music, hard liquor, midnight sun raves—danced through our heads as we envisioned what our Saturday in Torshavn might look like.
The first warning signs came when we walked into what we had determined was the affordable option among the top-rated bars and restaurants in town. Beyond the prices, the environment was mellow and quiet despite the endless taps and bars all around the warehouse-style beer hall. Older people chatted in small groups and younger couples sat with their kids and played cards.
For the next half dozen or so hours, we tried bar after bar in search of the Faroese youth who, we imagined, would take us under their wing and show us a good time.
But to check out a bar, you can’t just give it a glance: one drink, minimum, is required to assess the situation. And so we weaved in and out of watering holes of varying quality; some, like a craft beer room, provided an authentic taste of Faroese ale while others, like a dimly-lit dive plastered with stickers from around the world, seemed like they might have potential on another night. We thought we struck gold when we ran into a store owner we’d met a day before—the large group he was with, however, was not a throng of would-be companions but a private dinner for a birthday celebration.
Since the streets of Torshavn are not laid out on a grid, or really any semblance of a geometric pattern, we ended up meandering up winding hills and along the waterfront. We eventually found ourselves at a crossroads where a bus station promised to take us right back to our place for the night. As No. 1 pulled up to the stop, we hopped on and laughed the whole way home.
🇫🇴 Read more from the Faroe Islands.