Biography

Annika Hoydal,  actress, singer and composer of songs, grew up in Tórshavn, the capital of the Faroe Islands. Her father, Karsten Hoydal, poet and politician, took an active part in the cultural and social life of the Faroes, and their home was open to all the writers and artists that lived in the Islands or visited them.

As a young child she was introduced to a much bigger world when the family moved to Ecuador in South America, where her father worked for three years on a project for FAO. But the small islands of her home country remained a solid base for her, so that even though she later settled in Denmark and worked in all the Scandinavian countries, the feeling of belonging in the Faroe Islands has never left her.

Her first performances date back to the students’ revues of the sixties, at first as a singer but later also as an actress. Among other plays she had a role in ‘Færinger frænder’ in 1968 at the ‘Fiolteater’. The director, the well-known Arne Skovhus, encouraged her to try for the new theatre school  in Copenhagen, and she graduated from there in 1973.

After that she has appeared on stage, in films, on television and radio. Her co-operation with Brigitte Kolerus at ‘Teatret ved sorte hest’  was very important for her, but she has always refused to be permanently employed at a theatre, and she has always been independent and done things her own way.

Her work with music gradually developed and she has by now released 14 records and CDs where she has mostly composed the music for texts by Faroese poets. She was the lead singer in the legendary Faroese group ‘Harkaliðið’ , and in recent years she has appeared with her own band.

Annika Hoydal is well-known in Scandinavia and in Germany where she has performed many times and she has had an important role in imparting Faroese culture and tradition to other countries. Open to the world she always brings new interpretations to her Faroese origin.

Selected works - Click here