Feddie Distillery and the people of Fedje are throwing themselves into a new adventure. They have the sea and their gorgeous surroundings as a playground, a spectacular hotel on its way, climate-positive ambitions and good values. Time is a mantra. Now Todd Saunders is reinventing Fedje together with the women and the Fedje locals; the distillery, hotel, and a park are all on the drawing board. “If it had just been a proposal to build a hotel I would not have accepted the commission. So many destinations invest in just one single project.

I don’t have much faith in that idea. The people at Feddie, together with the locals, are thinking bigger and wider than that. It’s the nuances and all the surrounding elements that create the whole picture; that’s what creates a place people will long to return to. To travel to an island just to drink whisky – that’s boring. There has to be a lot more to it: we have to design an experience. What’s on your bucket list? At which restaurant would you wish to eat your last meal? Fedje deserves its place on that map.” What does that bigger picture on Fedje look like for travelers in a frenzied world? “We need to step out of time.

We’re drowning in everything digital and need to reclaim the analogue. We need to holiday away from the world; to disconnect, not to connect up. We need breaks and breathing spaces. When we speak of “island time” we’re talking about time that is regulated by the sea, where everything moves beautifully slowly. When you come to islands like that, you re-discover a different concept of time that has been lost for many people. When we build a hotel on the island’s finest building plot, we need to highlight the landscape.

It should be like an exclamation mark that brings out the best of its surroundings. We need to give the island a voice. Fedje is rugged, with lots of weather. Modern-day people have to queue up and live tightly packed. It’s different up north: at Fedje it’s all quiet. You can hear the sea: with the windows open you can get a good night’s sleep and wake up to no other sound than the waves.”