ELIN BECOMES A MUM
Not much happened music-wise in Elin’s life in the 90’s. She had a daughter in 1990, which took a lot of her time and energy the following years – as it should, of course. She finished her university degree and, subsequently, tried to build a working career in communication and marketing to help provide for her family, so there was almost zero time for an active music career.
Here is Elin just after having given birth to her daughter, Helena Heinesen Rebensdorff (a.k.a. BRIMHEIM) February 12th, in 1990:
WHERE DID ELIN & KÁRI GO AFTER NALJA?
Elin & Kári had planned to publish a second album in 1992 “NALJA II”, but at that time the Faroe Islands were hit by a very severe economic crisis, which made it impossible to finance the production of a new album. After that they became busy with other things in their lives and went their separate ways.
Kári has had a successful career as a music composer and producer in Denmark, and is the man behind many of the jingles, trailer songs or theme songs in popular TV programmes on Danish TV, as well as the man behind very popular pop acts – like the Faroese girl pop band Popp Korn some years ago, and the pop band Faroe 5. The albums of these two groups are some of the best selling albums on the Faroe Islands in the first decade of the millenium.
After Elin finished her – at the time – unusual university degree in Aesthetics and Culture Management in 1991, she applied for more than a 100 jobs in a year. She was desperate for a job, but employers had no knowledge of what her education was and what it could be used for, so she really had trouble convincing them of her skills and thus, could not find any work, relevant to her education.
But while she was home vacationing in the Faroe Islands in the summer of 1992, she finally got offered a job in SMS, the shopping mall in Tórshavn, as a marketing manager. It was important for her to get some useful job title on her CV to be able to get a job in Denmark, so she decided to take the job and stay in the Faroes. She ended up staying for almost a year, despite the fact that it split the family for a while, unfortunately. It meant that her daughter had to travel back and forth between Denmark and the Faroes, staying a couple of months at each parent, which was far from an ideal situation for the family.
MUSICAL / THEATRE: GLATAÐU SPÆLIMENNINIR
There was one exception though, regarding Elin’s almost non-existing music career in the nineties. Elin appeared singing on a theatre stage again in 1993, where she played a role in the theatre play/musical “Glataðu Spælimenninir” (The Lost Musicians) based on the novel of the same title by famous Faroese author William Heinesen. This took place at the Nordic House in Tórshavn.
Here you can see Elin back stage. She played the role of Sorte Mira in the play The Lost Musicians:
By the time the play was the biggest theatre set up in the Faroes in history with more than a 100 people involved on and behind the stage. It was also a great succes. They played for a full house 19 times in a row in the month of May 1993 and could have played many more times, but the Nordic House had other events on the program, so it wasn’t possible to prolong the period, because it would have interfered with the other events.
BACK IN DENMARK
After the aforementioned huge economic crisis hit the Faroe Islands, Elin went back to Denmark in the summer of 1993, where she got a job as a marketing manager in an old theatre in Copenhagen, Folketeateret. And so she could continue her life in the city,
Here is Elin and the nuclear family in 1995 outside their home in central Copenhagen:
Unfortunately for their daughter, the marriage didn’t last. Elin and her husband got separated in 1997 and got divorced in 1998.
RE-RELEASE OF NALJA
The same year something did happen in Elin’s music career, after all. After many requests Elin & Kári decided to re-release the album NALJA on CD in the summer of 1998 as a celebration of the 10 years anniversary of the album, published by the Faroese record company, called TUTL. On the CD were all the old tracks + a bonus track “Heimlongsul”. A song that they created together. Kári composed the music, and Elin wrote the lyrics, which were about what was very much on her mind at that time – the longing for going back home to her homeland.
Read more HERE.
Here is the re-released NALJA album CD-cover that Elin designed:
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