Tórshavn

Instead, the Faroe Islands defeated them once again.

Goals from Haller Hansen and Brandur Olsen produced a 2-1 victory in Torshavn.

The second result proved that the first had not been an accident.

The national program continued making measurable progress.

So, um, I, I wouldn't say I find it hard.

Funnily enough, um, my friends in Torshavn, the capital, they will often message me after a few days and ask if I'm okay.

And do I need to be rescued? And, uh, Have I gone crazy yet being on the island? And it's not like that for me.

Ava asked me a very interesting question last year.

Saturday, he's VAR at Rangers and Dundee.

Now it comes out today that he was in Estonia, I believe, or Estonia or Lithuania at Torshavn versus Flora Tallinn on Wednesday night for a Youth League game.

Now, think about that from a traveling perspective, not just in terms of should he be in that position.

Does his, does he merit being in that position to get three big, reasonably big games? You're traveling from Estonia to Scotland within two days, and then he's traveling from Ayrshire to Dundee, I, I'm assuming by car, in the space of 24 hours.

Like, uh, we actually tried that for three days.

Uh, I was in Torshavn, the capital of the Faroe Islands, and I didn't know how the city looked like because we were just...

Yeah, this fog was just all over.

So that's really a thing.

Um, sort of backed away of that with the current geopolitical situation around the main contest.

Um, and so basically this all stemmed from the fact that as soon as the date was announced for, uh, Pan-Arctic Vision in Tórshavn, it became immediately clear to me that it was taking place on the same day as the Faroe Islands hosting Slovakia in a, uh, [laughs] in a European, uh, football, soccer match, basically.

Um, and so I've spent a crazy number of the last few months going, "Okay.

Well, how am I going to be able to get to both?" Given that despite happening around the corner, they are literally taking place at the exact same time.

One of the things they did do in terms of the in-person experience that was really good was that clearly they had kind of asked for all the artists to turn up about a week in advance of the main show.

And I don't know if that was for jet lag reasons or rehearsal reasons, whatever.

But what this meant was that although we didn't get to see a lot of this, throughout the week in Tórshavn, there have been public concerts with a lot of the main Pan-Arctic Vision artists.

So very much like you would get in a sort of Eurovision fan zone kind of area, it's clear that an effort has been made to kind of not only boost the profile of the contest here, but try and boost the profile of the artists involved.

You're listening to ESC Insight Presents Go North, or perhaps we should say Gone North, because we're recording this in Torjan, the capital of Foria, a.k.a. the Faroe Islands, and it's the day after Pan-Arctic Vision 2026.

Shall we maybe start off by just giving a few general impressions of what Torshavn is like?

We've had really good weather, so it's been very green.

Yeah, I think it's actually been warmer and sunnier here than it is back home in Wales.

Yeah.

It's not been very arctic.

Yeah, I mean, when we were coming through from the airport, you got the impression that it really is a place where outside of the main town, city, we call Torshavn a town or city.

I've heard people call it a city, even though it is really just a small town.