TITLE PAGE

iii

DEDICATION

v

Come on girl
let’s sneak out of this party
it’s getting boring

BJÖRK

vii

CONTENTS

1. TITLE PAGE
2. DEDICATION
3. SUÐUROY
4. THE ARRIVAL
5. DEPARTURE
6. THE HOUSE AMONG THE FIELDS
7. NO ISLAND
8. BJØRNØYA
9. GREAT-AUNT INGRÚN
10. THE PACT
11. RUTH SMITH
12. GÁSADALUR
13. LITTLE PASSENGER
14. AEOLIA
15. THE GOLDEN BREAST
16. THE PLANT
17. THE DOG KING
18. ROYNDIN FRÍÐA
19. MA
20. THE HULDER STONE
21. BORÐOY
22. MR SINKLAR
23. THE LISTENING STATION
24. BEATE’S GULL
25. MYKINES
26. NOTE
27. AVAILABLE AND COMING SOON FROM PUSHKIN PRESS
28. COPYRIGHT

1

SUÐUROY

She stands with her back to the low copse of planted trees, looking down the mountain to the village, blue in the August night, and the sheep that are like stones among unbroken grass. Further off, the sea is sleeping. Vágs Fjord is still, blue on blue against the sky above the ruler-straight horizon, strung taut between the headlands, a line only ghosts and legends can walk.

Now she closes her eyes. Bending all her young will she follows the blue road: past the Shetland Islands and Norway’s compact mountains, across the sea between Sweden and Denmark and then in over the low land, the butter land, the fields, the farms—all the way to the Zealand market town where Fritz must now be sleeping heavily.

Marita, her name is. She’ll be leaving soon, and this is where she starts: Suðuroy, the southernmost island in the Faroes. Here the fjords are deep and the hills rugged. The landscape is knottier and more abrupt than on Marita’s island, Vágar, but it’s the first one you come to from the rest of the world. 2

In the country she’s going to there is a railway. She pictures the tracks sluicing through the inhabited earth. People streaming away. Taking a train. You can get off wherever you like. In a city, perhaps. Another city. A forest.

The trees sit up high in the uncultivated land further away from the village.

The pines are battered and young. Windswept.

She hears the noise.

From up here the village looks tiny. The houses doze, turned towards the fjord. Their roofs catch the blue forelight, shining palely like the crown of an infant’s head.

Vágs Fjord is long and thin, a sausage of water between the mountains, which the currents of the sea have munched at. Au revoir, dollhouse fjord. She thinks it. There’s more to life than this.

She wants to hitch up her dress, take a running jump, sail clear over all of it—the parting, the journey. Now she’s in the new country, now she’s walking down a flat, paved street and into a house that smells of wood, and there stands her fiancé, there stands Fritz, as if no time has passed since they were separated, just turning and saying, ‘Oh, there you are.’ Just like that.