This year I have realized a personal dream of mine: to interview the absolutely wonderful Eivør, in my favorite country as well, as she arrived in Finland to perform at the Tuska Festival not so many days ago. What did we talk about? Well, music, food and of course feminism. You can read the full interview below!
Benedetta
I am here with the incredibly talented Eivør. How are you doing today?
Eivør
I’m good. I just played a show and didn’t get much sleep. But it was so great to play this show in Tuska. And I’m feeling great. So grateful and energized. The audience gave me my energy back.
Benedetta
Absolutely. You have just performed an amazing, mind-blowing show here at Tuska. Do you have any rituals before going on stage?
Eivør
I keep it very simple with my rituals, but I have rituals. Maybe an hour before the show I like to just be alone and focus and just have a very grounding, quiet moment to myself, to go through the concert in my head. But yeah, I don’t do so much else. I just need that little space before the show and then I’m good.
Benedetta
Of course you have just released a new album “Enn”. Were there any songs in it that changed drastically from the initial idea to the final result?
Eivør
Yeah, I think they often do that. Like the title track, “Enn”, for example, I wrote that song while I was walking in the mountains. So I just wrote it like a melody in my head. I came up with that. I came home to my studio and recorded the melody, only the voice. You know, that was all. And then it became that track, which is a very beat-driven track. So I think the ideas often start somewhere and then they travel to another place. But there are some songs on the album that I wrote actually many years ago, which I took back out of my drawer. Reconstructed them completely, so, yeah. Music should be a living organism. Depends on where you are in your life, I think, creatively. You might want to change some things. That’s always been the way I work, also, with my live shows. I play many of my old songs, but they change all the time. Now I feel we should do this because this is how I feel now. So it’s important for me to kind of keep things alive.
Benedetta
Wonderful. I wanted to go a little back in time. Do you remember who was your first music teacher? And what was him or her like?
Eivør
Yes. My first proper music teacher was an opera singer from Iceland. Her name is Ólöf Kolbrún Harðardóttir and she came to the Faroe Islands when I was just 13 years old. I didn’t know proper singing teachers in the Faroe Islands, so I went to her to get singing lessons. She became a lifelong friend to me, every time she came I would go to classes and then when I was 17 I moved to Iceland to study with her, just all in, like every day. I went to classical training and singing school for five years. So she is my first teacher and she’s still someone I go to sometimes, just to, like, reset myself a little bit. I’ve used the techniques and the things that I found in classical singing that I felt I could use. I never wanted to be a classical singer. I did my own thing, but I just was very fascinated. I was fascinated also by the discipline you have to have as an opera singer. You have to take it very seriously. So yeah, that gave me a lot. And still gives me a lot when I have long tours and have to sing every night.
Benedetta
Do you think the artistic life is lonely?
Eivør
Perhaps. Yeah, in a way you do so many wonderful things. I think an artist’s life is both lonely and also very social. It’s a strange balance. It’s very social in a sense that you meet people all the time, and perform with people, and you spend a lot of time with people, but as an artist, you have to find the loneliness also, to dive deeper with yourself and find out what you want to do. Nobody else can tell you yourself, your own voice and that part is a lonely journey for an artist, and also the creative side of it. Nobody can do it for you, yourself. So, you have to kind of peace with the loneliness. I think.
Benedetta
We talked about your teacher, but have you ever taught anyone how to sing or perhaps to play an instrument?
Eivør
I have sometimes given lectures. Some people have asked me to give them singing lessons. I’ve done it every now and then. I don’t think I’m a very good teacher, but I enjoy it. It’s quite healthy to teach sometimes because it reminds you of what you learned.
Benedetta
Have you ever felt discriminated against or has somebody ever treated you differently than some male colleagues?
Eivør
Yeah, I think so. I mean, being a woman in the music industry, I think I started so early, I was 16 when I released my first album and started touring, so I think as a girl you just adapt to it. This is how it’s like, so I have to work a little bit harder than everyone else and be a bit more pushing through, you know. I think it’s a little bit like that for girls. But luckily I’ve seen a lot of development in the music industry in the past years. You see many more female artists now at festivals. I played at Hellfest now in France and so many great female artists and musicians everywhere. So I think it’s going in the right direction. But yeah. I also heard from many of my female colleagues that they find it very hard to get the same kind of recognition and respect. It’s that stupid thing that women are not allowed to get old. They’re not allowed to gain weight. They’re not allowed to have some wrinkles. They always have to be perfect. And that’s a stupid thing to mix with music, in my opinion. Because art is a world on its own. And good music is good music. Art has no gender. It’s not about how you look or how much you weigh, it’s about what you create. That’s where the problem lies for women in music. They always get measured by their appearances. I think it’s, it’s starting to kind of go in the right direction. I hope it continues. Yeah. We’re artists and we create. And that’s what we do and we have the same dreams. We have maybe the same idols. There’s no difference in that sense.
Benedetta
I wanted to play a little game with you, if that’s alright? If “Enn” was food, what food would it be?
Eivør
I love that! You know what it would be? It would be something interesting. It would definitely not be fast food. I would say it would be slow food. Because it’s an album that you have to kind of listen to properly, you have to kind of give it your patience to dive into the world of “Enn”. It could maybe be something fermented because it’s something old. It has so many roots to my roots in folk music and my background. Then it also has a lot of new elements like new landscapes that I’ve explored. So I think I would say it would be like some kind of exciting fermented food with a new twist, like a Michelin-star restaurant with fermented food. I’m very proud of it. It’s such a relief to have it out now. I’ve worked on it for like two and a half years. It’s been a journey to work on it. Sometimes I felt like I was almost not touching the ground. But that’s always an exciting place to be. I think you feel you move your limits a little bit. It expands your space or something. I felt very much like that with this album. It was a long, long process and very detailed.
Benedetta
Thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview with me. It was such a pleasure. Is there anything else you want to add to our readers of FemMetal?
Eivør
What I would like to say to anyone who listens to my music, I just want to thank them for the support and for being there because my shows, the people who listen to my music, they’re the ones who keep me going, so, gratitude. My favourite part of music is performing live, especially because it’s where the people are. Music finds its purpose. And it’s in the moment to share a very unique moment with the audience. Now I’m doing festival tours in the summer, but yeah, then I have my real indoor tour in the fall.
