Eivør Pálsdóttir. Do you know her? If not, click play and discover the most beautiful voice on this planet. She’s one of my favourite singers on the entire planet. And of course, she just happens to be Faroese. This Friday was one of the best nights I’ve had here in Copenhagen – because I finally got to experience that magical voice of hers!
It was Friday the 13th, an otherwise scary date, but I knew that it was going to be an amazing day. The day before, my friend Amanda had asked me if I wanted to go to the annual Kulturnatten (‘Culture Night’) in Copenhagen with her, and as a surprise, Eivør had agreed to play a short concert at the City Hall Square – inside a ginormous globe!
Without even hesitating, I said YES and got us tickets for just 95 DKK each!
We met up Friday evening at 6 PM, four hours before the concert. There were events going on all over Copenhagen for the Culture Night, and there was a lot which would’ve been interesting to see, but we had decided to keep to the Faroese theme.
We started off on the City Hall Square, where we experienced the temporary Climate Planet concept. This is a ginormous globe-construction, which takes up most of the space on the square. The outer construction is 24 meters in diameter and 20 meters tall – as tall as a 5-storey building. Inside the globe there is a smaller floating globe, which displays real-time footage of the Earth from space made through live satellite transmission, as well as several screens and seating space. Climate Planet is stored with global weather data collected since 1905, and shows Earth’s climate development since then and into the future, as climate experts predict it to be. The future depends on our actions now, and the point of the Climate Planet experience is to show that we together can still make a beautiful future for our shared planet.
That evening, Climate Planet had a focus on green energy and the climate challenges in the North Atlantic with the Faroe Islands as their green case. We heard a short presentation of the challenges in the Faroe Islands, and then watched a Faroese short film called Vetrármorgun (‘Winter mornings’), which is about a lesbian girl finding her place in a world full of bullies and bad friendships.
Afterwards, we walked to Det Færøske Hus (‘The Faroese House’) on Vesterbrogade, where there were also activities all evening such as a knitting convention, a jazz concert and Faroese chain dancing. We would’ve loved to participate in the chain dancing, but it was happening the exact same time as Eivør was playing in the globe! Chain dancing will have to wait for next year at Ólavsøka on the Faroe Islands!
We decided to go back to the City Hall Square to see what else was going on there, and we found out that it was possible to take a tour of the metro construction site! We even got to go down a few storeys of the soon-to-be metro station! And we got free “security” hats – don’t we just look great? 😉
Afterwards, we met up with our friend Nikolai and walked into the Copenhagen City Hall, which Amanda and I hadn’t seen before! There was a lot of activity going on, as all political parties were handing out brochures, balloons and candy to try to gather votes for the upcoming communal election in Copenhagen.
The city hall from 1905 was beautiful from the inside, decorated in National Romantic style.
We also got to look inside the city archives, which is a collection of material and stories from Copenhagen about the city, its citizens and its development, which dates all the way back to the medieval times and to today!
We said goodbye to Nikolai again, and went back inside the enormous globe. Here we watched another Faroese short film, this time a horror film called Skuld (‘Guilt’). This film was weird, but also kind of good. It was about a mother, who had strangled her child and made it look like an accident, but then had horrible nightmares about the situation. This was the one horror film that actually made me jump – and I mean JUMP – in front of everyone…
After the short film our highlight of the evening came! We waited around for a while, and then she finally came out – Eivør!
She played a short concert with four of her best songs, two English and two Faroese, and a cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Bird on the wire’. My favourite of the concert was ‘Trøllabundin’, which she sung to perfection – it’s also one of my all-time favourite songs!
The concert was better than I’d ever imagined it to be. It was so intimate and real. Her voice is simply incredible, I don’t even know how to explain it. I’ll let the videos I took do the explaining!
I took a video of the whole concert, which you can see below, but if you want to hear the songs separately, I’ve also uploaded them to YouTube:
Mjørkaflókar – Remember Me – Bird on the Wire – Trøllabundin – True Love
Afterwards, we got pictures with Eivør – and I’m telling you, I still can’t believe we’ve actually touched her, haha!
All in all, it was a great evening with a lot of fun activities. We got to see new parts of the city, we learned about climate change, and we went to the best concert of our lives. I can’t wait for Culture Night 2018 – and for the next Eivør concert! It was nice with a Faroese evening in Copenhagen – my favourite place on Earth came to my city and brought their best singer with them!
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