Hiking is becoming an increasingly popular leisure and holiday activity. Often, hikes are associated with well-known landmarks and their specific histories, but there are also many lesser-known stories connected to these routes — stories that hikers might not be aware of.
This idea was the starting point when Faroese Linda Mortansdóttir, Danish Rikke Houd, and Icelandic Jón Hallur Stefánsson launched a project in 2018 titled Hiking and Local Storytelling, which aimed to bring local narratives to life through audio walks — walking stories in the literal sense of the word.
Linda Mortansdóttir is a cultural communicator with experience in producing radio documentaries, audio walks, sound collages, and audiobooks. Rikke Houd has a similar background in radio, audio documentaries, and storytelling. Jón Hallur Stefánsson holds academic degrees in literature and Spanish philology, but over the years has also worked with sound and narrative as a radio producer. The group was later joined by Danish anthropologist and communicator Lars Christian Kofoed Rømer.
The project received half a million Danish kroner in funding from NORA in 2018–2019, and was also supported by Nordic cultural funds. This has so far resulted in the creation of an app called Sansâga Walks, which uses GPS to guide hikers through fascinating stories tied to specific geographical locations.
Currently, the app features seven location-based audio stories — one from the Faroe Islands and six from Bornholm in Denmark (one of which is available in both Danish and German). The intention is to continuously expand the app with new stories. Iceland is, of course, included in the plans, and material for Icelandic walks is ready. However, the significant work of implementing the walks on-site was initially delayed by harsh weather conditions and later by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In principle, the stories could be tied to places anywhere in the world. “There are countless stories linked to all imaginable places — in the landscape, in towns and villages — and we often walk right over them without even knowing it,” says Linda Mortansdóttir. “Our motivation was to tell these good stories along hiking routes and give hikers an immersive audio experience. But we lacked the necessary tool for this purpose — so we had to create it ourselves. The result is the Sansâga Walks app. And it only became possible because NORA supported the project.”
Some of the stories on the Sansâga app are free, while others require a small payment to access. The revenue is used for maintenance and further development of the Sansâga Walks app.
