The Faroe Islands: Interpretations of HistoryUniversity Press of Kentucky, 2014. júl. 15. - 280 oldal Stranded in a stormy corner of the North Atlantic midway between Norway and Iceland, the Faroe Islands are part of "the unknown Western Europe"—a region of recent economic development and subnational peoples facing uncertain futures. This book tells the remarkable story of the Faroes' cultural survival since their Viking settlement in the early ninth century. At first an unruly little republic, the islands soon became tributary to Norway, dwindled into a Danish-Norwegian mercantilist fiefdom, and in 1816 were made a Danish province. Today, however, they are an internally self-governing Danish dependency, with a prosperous export fishery and a rich intellectual life carried out in the local language, Faroese. Jonathan Wylie, an anthropologist who has done extensive field work in the Faroes, creates here a vivid picture of everyday life and affairs of state over the centuries, using sources ranging from folkloric texts to parliamentary minutes and from census data to travelers' tales. He argues that the Faroes' long economic stagnation preserved an archaic way of life that was seriously threatened by their economic renaissance in the nineteenth century, especially as this was accompanied by a closer political incorporation into Denmark. The Faroese accommodated increasingly profound social change by selectively restating their literary and historical heritage. Their success depended on domesticating a Danish ideology glorifying "folkish" ways and so claiming a nationality separate from Denmark's. The book concludes by comparing the Faroes' nationality-without-nationhood to the contrasting situations of their closest neighbors, Iceland and Shetland. The Faroe Islands is an important contribution to Scandinavian as well as regional and ethnic studies and to the growing literature combining the insights and techniques of anthropology and history. Engagingly written and richly illustrated, it will also appeal to scholars in other fields and to anyone intrigued by the lands and peoples of the North. |
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... Seyðabraev, or “Sheep-Letter,” followed in 1298." The Seyðabraev codified earlier Faroese land laws, which the crown thus recognized as acceptable local variations from continental practices. It is still the basis of Faroese land laws ...
... Seyðabraev had “established certain requirements for a man if he was to be able to marry and set up his own house”: none could do so without being able to support at least three cows.” In effect, the poor were forbidden to marry. Some ...
... Seyðabraev itself was translated into Danish in 1637. As the Faroes' ecclesiastical link with Bergen was broken in about 1620, so their trading link was broken in 1619. The crown had begun to oversee the Faroe trade in the late ...
... Seyðabraev that leases were technically held only from year to year, but by custom they were probably held for much longer periods, perhaps for life. After the Reformation, the king's chief representative in the islands, the bailiff ...
... Seyðabraev of 1298, and the ecclesiastical law known as the Stóridómur, which in 1584 had been confirmed by the Løgting at the king's request. In 1604 Christian IV promulgated a modified version of King Magnus's laws. It is not clear ...
Tartalomjegyzék
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Toward a National Culture in an Odd Danish Province | 65 |
Specters and Illusions | 173 |
Governance and Governors | 199 |
Notes | 205 |
References | 231 |
Index | 249 |