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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... Zachariasen 1961:325). As the system developed, the bailiff would come out to the Faroes with the first trading vessel in the spring. In the fall he returned to the continent. During the winter he was represented by a “winter-bailiff ...
... (Zachariasen 1961:11). Except in implying allegiance to Christian III, it is not clear just what this means; indeed in general “we know very little of how the process of spreading the Reformation among Faroese went on” (Degn 1933:70). An ...
... Zachariasen 1961:320). When Danish was established as the liturgical language in the Faroes and Norway in 1607, no attempt was made to produce a vernacular Bible. (The first satisfactory Danish Bible dates from 1550.) This was not so ...
... Zachariasen 1961:13). Danish likewise became the language of Faroese law. The earliest extant records of the Løgting's deliberations, from 1615, are written in Danish, and the Seyðabraev itself was translated into Danish in 1637. As the ...
... Zachariasen 1961:87). Yet these pursuits alone could not sustain the population. Imports were needed, especially of grain and of timber for building houses and boats. The internal economy was thus supplemented by an export economy. The ...
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 |