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...began an eagerness to express oneself and to use one's own written language became a struggle for independence for one of the smallest nations in the world. At a certain moment toward the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, many different trends met and made it possible to bring the question of the status of a language to the fore and start a political movement.
This article analyzes three poems. Two of them took part in the construction of the Faroese nation and the third deconstructs this imagined Faroese nation. The two first poems are from 1933 by the erudite scholar and linguist, Professor Christian Matras (1900-88); the third is from 1997 and written by another learned man, Carl Johan Jensen (b. 1957).
INTRODUCTION
The Faroe Islands area semi-independent country in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. Its independence is due to a Danish law of Home Rule from 1948. Many people feel considerable frustration because the results of a referendum in 1946 immediately following World War II on the question of total independence or continuation of the union with Denmark. During the war, no political contact was possible between the Faroe Islands and Denmark because of the German occupation of Denmark and the following British occupation of the Faroes in order to prevent the Germans from taking this strategic point in the North Atlantic. In fact the Faroes were independent from April 1940 to May 1945. From 1816 to 1940 the Faroes had been a Danish county, but after the war, that status could not continue. The result of the referendum was a small majority in favor of independence. But--and this is the utterly frustrating development--the Danish government refused to acknowledge the vote. Instead, the Danish authorities insisted on continuing the negotiations that led to the Home Rule act of 1948. These events have since become a traumatic feature of Faroese politics. Due to these facts, the national consciousness is high regardless of one's opinion about Faroese sovereignty.
However, by 1948 preparations for independence had long since begun emerging. In fact, such preparations can be traced to the early nineteenth century if the beginning of the restoration of the language is taken as the starting point. In the late eighteenth century, a Faroese student, Jens Chr. Svabo, transcribed some of the ballads that were sung and danced and took them with him to Copenhagen, where he started his studies in economics in 1765. He sold some copies of the ballads and continued to collect and copy ballads when he returned to the Faroes. Svabo also prepared the first manuscript for a dictionary in order to retain evidence of the Faroese language, which he sincerely thought would die out because, in his opinion, it was degenerated. He even went so far as to suggest that the Faroese should switch to Danish. (1) Early in the nineteenth century, Danish scholars became interested in these texts, and in 1822 the first book with texts in Faroese was published. Entitled Foroiske Qvoder om Sigurd Fofnersbane og hans AEt [Faroese Ballads about Sigurd Fafnersbane and His Family], it had been collected and translated into Danish by the pastor Hans Christian Lyngbye. This collection of oral poetry opened many eyes for the peculiarities of the Faroese language and culture among scholars and the Faroese themselves. More ballads as well as other oral genres continued to be collected. In 1846, V.U. Hammershaimb worked out a Faroese orthography that replaced the various spellings used by people who had previously written ballad texts.
In this short outline of the development of the national movement, another important event should be mentioned: the gathering of some Faroese students in Copenhagen in 1876 to celebrate the beginning of the Lent, (2) and for this special occasion, they had written poems depicting the Faroe Islands. This occasion was the first...
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