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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1 - 5 találat összesen 27 találatból.
... hired hands. At the Reformation, perhaps a third of the Faroes' land was freehold. Freeholdings might be bought and sold and—most important—had to be divided among their owners' heirs. Freeholdings were thus small and scattered, and “it ...
... hired hand. But figures like him must also have been common in fact, as they saw to it that even a Danish priest's estate was run by tried and true methods. On this occasion, Oli protested that keeping the ram would make the cows short ...
... hired hands. Secular law, the Seyðabraev and its descendants, insured a low birth rate by setting “requirements for a man who wished to marry and set up his own household. The average age at marriage was apparently quite high” (Guttesen ...
... hired hands, peril at sea, elvish huldufólk, and brilliantly conceived details, at once homely and heroic. Outside the Wall Seventeenth-Century Society in Legend Especially in the 40 NORSE SETTLEMENT TO DANISH MONOPOLY.
... hired hands would gather in the kitchen to card, spin, knit, and do other indoor chores. These evening gatherings, called kvaldsetur, were economically productive occasions; as Lucas Debes remarked, Faroese “are not accustomed to pass ...
Tartalomjegyzék
1 | |
7 | |
Toward a National Culture in an Odd Danish Province | 65 |
Specters and Illusions | 173 |
Governance and Governors | 199 |
Notes | 205 |
References | 231 |
Index | 249 |