Og mánin græt draws from the Faroese chain dance, something carried through a ring of voices and bodies. A recording removes the physical circle and reaches listeners elsewhere, often alone. What survives that journey?

From the very beginning, I felt this song carried the energy of something ancient.

There is a certain moodiness and a pulse in the track that takes me back to being in the chain dance with my dad as a child — that heavy, steady rhythm, the voices chanting the old ballads for hours, growing more and more intense as the night goes on.

It’s a feeling like no other, created by the people in the room, the voices, the bodies moving together, and the shared knowledge of these stories. You can’t recreate that in a recording, and I would never try. But that feeling and that sound are an endless source of inspiration for me. They find their way into my music in different shapes and forms — and very strongly into this song.

So perhaps what survives the journey are fragments of that mood — echoes of something ancient that still lives in me.

When Studio Bloch closed, you rebuilt the recording process inside a house with the band. What did that displacement change in the way you listened to one another? Is there a sound on Tungl that could only have come from that house?

Hedvig was incredibly generous to let us turn her whole house into a studio. It was quite an adventurous project, dragging all our recording gear up all those stairs through ice, snow and storms in the middle of winter. :)

With music, I think the environment always affects how you play and how you listen to each other. In that house there was a very strong sense of togetherness and groundedness. We were all living inside the music for a while, and it felt very intimate.

It felt like home. And in many ways, that is what this album feels like to me.

And also the ceiling was dome shaped, so the acoustic environment was quite unique and inspiring.

You have said that you value the struggle of creation, especially now that AI can be asked to write a song. What trace does that struggle leave in the finished music? And what part of making music do you refuse to make easier?

For me, it has to do with soul. You have to put something of yourself into the work, otherwise it feels empty.

If you want to create something you haven’t created before — something that only you could make — you sometimes have to push yourself. You don’t always settle for the first idea. You dig deeper and deeper until you discover another idea hidden inside it.

I think all the doubt, and frustrations, wrong turns and little breakthroughs leave traces in the finished music. Even mistakes and quirks can give it depth and personality. I wouldn’t want to remove that struggle, because often that is where you discover what the work actually wants to become.

What part of your process has become slower as the tools around you have become faster?

Finishing songs. I think I have become much slower at deciding when something is actually finished. But I also think I write better songs now than I used to, so perhaps I’ve simply become more patient with the process.

You have described Healer as a conversation with a younger version of yourself. What did she need to hear from you? What would she recognise in your voice today?

That she should never stop believing in herself, no matter how many times she falls.

And I think she would still recognise my stubbornness — and my burning love for music. Those things haven’t changed very much.

Drekafljóð began as a poem you carried privately before completing it with Marjun S. Kjelnæs. What did inviting another person into it require you to release?

It can be a little scary to invite someone into your unfinished work. You have to let go of some control and allow some space for new dimensions you couldn’t see on your own.

Marjun has such a gift with painting images with words, and she brought this poem to a new level.