Eivør Pálsdóttir was born in Syðrugøta, Faroe Islands. At 13 she had her first performance on Faroese television and won a national singing contest the same year. In 1999, at the age of 15, Eivør joined the rock band Clickhaze. One year later, in 2000, she released her first album, ‘Eivør Pálsdóttir’. It is a mixture of classical Faroese ballads accompanied only by guitar and bass with jazz influences, and songs based on texts by famous Faroese writers, together with songs written by Eivør herself.
In 2001 she won the national Faroese band contest, Prix Føroyar, with her band Clickhaze. In 2002 Eivør moved to Reykjavík to study classical and jazz music. A mentor of the Faroese music scene, Kristian Blak, asked her to be the lead singer for the jazz group – Yggdrasil, which released its first album the same year. Well known as a jazz performer, she released a rock album with Clickhaze the same summer, thus again proving her wide range.
After her second solo album, ‘Krákan’, she was awarded best singer and best performer at the Icelandic Music Awards ceremony – normally only given to Icelandic artists.
Her album ‘Eivør’ from November 2004, featuring the Canadian Bill Bourne, sold well in the U.S. and Canada. Bourne’s contribution with acoustic guitar gave the project an American country flavour, with Eivør contributing several songs in Faroese. Eivør’s 5th album ‘Human Child’ was produced by Dónal Lunny and was issued in an English and a Faroese version under the title ‘Mannabarn’. It was released on 18 July 2007 in the Faroes. The album was recorded throughout 2006 and early 2007 in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. This was followed by an Irish tour in Summer 2007.
Eivør’s 2010 album ‘Larva’ presented a new side of Eivør, as she moves away from the folk sound of recent years into a more experimental and raw musical style. It included a cover version of Hounds Of Love, for which a music video was also produced.
In 2012 she married the Faroese composer Tróndur Bogason; they worked together with her album ‘Room’, which won huge acclaim and made her win three awards, ‘Best female singer’ and ‘Best artist’ and ‘Best album of the Year’ during the Planet Awards (Faroese music awards).
In 2015, Eivør released two albums, ‘Bridges’ and ‘Slør’, where the former was sung exclusively in English and the latter in her native tongue, Faroese.
Eivør Pálsdóttir about Kate Bush
I must have been around sixteen when I first heard about Kate Bush. I found a cassette in my mother’s drawer. I put in the tape recorder and out of the speakers came this very cool music with a voice clear as crystal. I had never heard anyone sing this way before and I was so breath-taken by this music. The first song I heard was ‘Wuthering Heights’. Kate is one of my favourite artists. I think she is a very brave and true artist. It seems to me that she creates the music that she wants to hear and not what someone else wants to hear. She breaks the frames and she is not afraid of trying new things. I always admire that quality in people. (…) Artists like Kate have inspired me to create the music that I want to create and finding my own path. I remember the first time I heard her singing I thought to myself: is it really possible to sing like that? I love that she dares to do things her own way. I also love the way she writes songs. There is some kind of openness and freedom in her songwriting. (Marta Oliehoek-Samitowska, Symphony in Blue: Kate Bush And Her Legacy, cop. 2013)