We ate the roast meat and creamy potatoes, the green beans. Abbe listened to the speeches with his eyes closed. Everyone who stood up spoke Danish in slow, humming Dano-Faroese.

The commemorative song-sheets printed specially for Abbe were left until dessert, their bright colours clashing with Omma’s floral arrangements.

Afterwards the tables were cleared. Pushed back against the climbing bars. Abbe and a couple of the older men got up and held hands. It was time to dance.

Not long after that, Omma wet herself. People had begun to join the chain, which was growing at a steady pulse. Suddenly Omma was standing in the middle of the floor, her face trapped in a big, guilty grin. Tears came to her eyes. ‘Cuckoo, cuckoo,’ she sobbed.

Ma stepped forward between the puddle and us, as we fumbled with each other’s hands and shuffled on the spot. Gently she took Omma’s elbow, turned her around like a weathervane, and guided her towards the exit.

Abbe kept singing.

The chain began to move, tightening around him and slipping past the wet patch on the floor. 140

The cook picked resolutely through the guests and mopped up. Dancing, we kept as close as the segments of a centipede. As soon as she had vanished with the scrubbing brush, more space appeared between the segments. The floor filled up.

Now and again, someone would lean ominously against the person next to them, or they’d miss a step. Those who had the rhythm in their feet and were still sober stamped even harder. The chorus reverberated: Well before the break of day, they come across the heath. I barked along, smacking the heels of my sandals rhythmically against the faintly sticky lino.

The ballad was one I knew already. A short one with only nineteen verses. Abbe loved it, so I loved it too. We sang.

The Scottish raid had taken place during the Kalmar War. The Norwegians and the Faroese had been singing about it ever since.

They’d won. If not the war, at least the battle.

Captain Sinclair sets out from Scotland with an army of mercenaries in the service of the Swedish king. Their route takes them through Norway, which is already familiar to the captain. The landscape is much like his homeland. War is the same everywhere. Death is death, cold hard cash is cold hard cash.

But before he gets that far, in the fourth verse, the mermaid shows up. The moon is shining in the pale night, 141the waves are gently rippling; then a mermaid rises from the water and announces: ‘Turn back, turn back, oh Scottish man! Or else your life is forfeit. If you land here then mark my words, return shall ever be thwarted!’ Well before the break of day, they come across the heath.