Earlier, over the Atlantic, I had listened to the voices in the cabin. To the Icelandic pilot, who spoke Danish and Faroese with the same vaguely moist lisp. To the peculiar Suðingar dialect. The slower one from the north fjords. I strained to understand the sleepy exchanges between the seats. Thought again of the young Faroese musician leaning forward in a smoky Christianshavn bar and saying, ‘You? You can’t even pronounce your own name.’

‘You don’t have to speak Danish,’ Bára had said. ‘My friend’s half Faroese.’

The journey from Kastrup to Vágar is short, but the approach feels endless. The mountains lean heavily against the plane. Green fills the window. Reaches in. I closed my eyes for the last bit. If sheep walk by at the right moment, you glimpse their yellow slitted eyes a split second before the wings scrape past. I’d had a schnapps, then another. There was still a whine in my ears.

As soon as we’d been let off the plane, the Tarantula and I looked for a place to smoke. 10

Ma said something about the bags and disappeared.

Beneath a large NO SMOKING sign a clutch of Faroese were lighting up. One had brought an ashtray. Heavy, creamy white. The conversation drifted with the smoke.

They’d arranged themselves into a circle around the arm holding the outstretched porcelain. I held up my lighter like a plastic orange ticket, and we were ushered in.

Politics was the current topic. A woman in an egg-white pullover was insisting it was a good thing the Faroe Islands had had the wit to keep out of Europe. What a shambles. She puffed authoritatively through her nose. Everyone in the circle nodded. A small lady in a blue windbreaker responded with åhja, which can be a question or unqualified assent, and which here was the latter.

The arrivals hall was a greying white, the way transit dirties walls. Through the pane of glass and beyond the car park I saw the mountains. Deep green. The clouds drifted low along the crash barrier. I needed air. The scent of Faroese air.

The Tarantula coughed. His face bobbed above the hair-dos in the group like a friendly, full-bearded balloon. Now he stooped a little until he was eye level. The Faroe Islands, he objected politely, were in Europe, actually. All of us, when you thought about it, including the people in the airport right now, were in Europe.

The circle of puffing Faroese surveyed him. Not unkindly.

Nobody nodded. 11

Then the authoritative woman spoke up. Switching into Danish, she answered slowly and clearly, almost tenderly, as though to an obstinate sheep.

‘No. We’re not in Europe here.’