LAMBAVEGUR, Faroe Islands — The cabin looked like little more than a storage unit. Its unglamorous facade had the appearance of a nuclear bunker, or perhaps an unfinished frontier home. We parked our car on the gravel path out front and lugged the bags in; the cheapest rental was a hybrid, because we’re in the Nordics.
Surrounded by other cubicle structures on both sides, the monochromatic structure did not betray what lay just behind. Once inside, however, the scent of warm wood walls guided our noses to a dramatic window and the vista of a fjord just outside. We laughed because there is not much else to do when confronted with such beauty.
An hour earlier we sat in a bright yellow building that stood out against the dark green evening and the lush hills of the Faroes. We, too, stood out; a trio of brightly-clad Americans piled together on a narrow bench. We whispered and tried to listen to the cooks at the restaurant.
“It might be Swahili,” my companions said to one another.
“You both speak Swahili,” I hissed back. “How do you not know?”
“Well, is it French?” they asked me quizically in return.
We were further away than I thought and I couldn’t hear. “Fine,” I replied. “I don’t know.”
Then our number was called—though they could have called any number; we were the only people in there—and someone worked up the courage to ask where they were from.
“Nigeria,” one of the cooks said.
Since all three of us had lived in Africa at one point or another, we struck up a conversation that the cooks at least pretended to find interesting. The Faroe Islands and their cold and foreboding landscape are not a top destination for migrants. Still, they liked it. Still, it was a nice life.
“Remember those Nigerian guys?” I asked after we had settled into the cabin and its deep, fur-lined chairs and wool blankets. “That was so random.”
The moon reflected off the sea, which was a narrow inlet by all accounts but felt infinitely wide in the dark of night. Summer in this region of the world means short nights—or, in the case of places further north like Iceland, no night at all—and the sun would be up again in a few short hours.
“I guess we sleep down there?” someone said, gesturing to the closed trapdoor on the ground. I figured it would lead to some unfinished basement with cobwebs and a lock that didn’t quite work, perhaps even an axe murderer lurking in the corner. The Nordic countries, after all, are renowned for their crime novels.
“I’m good up here,” I said. “Unless someone else wants the couch.”
Once we’d descended down, however, I had a change of heart. Instead of the dungeon I expected, the basement was a cozy chamber of bunk beds—in fact, it was almost entirely beds; there was hardly room to stand up, much less walk around. We all piled in for the night and shut the door above us.
“Let’s open that,” I said, not taking any chances on the whole crime thing.
“I wonder where the Nigerian guys live,” someone wondered aloud.
🇫🇴 Read more from the Faroe Islands.