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.
... sheep and very many diverse kinds of sea-birds. I have never found these islands mentioned in the authorities.' This “set of small islands” was surely the Faroes. The “Northman pirates” were Vikings, the Norse warriors, explorers ...
... sheep in the summer.” At Kvívík, where a Viking Age homestead has been excavated, part of their diet “is revealed by finds of the bones of sheep, cows, pigs, seals and pilot whales, guillemots, razor bills, cormorants, sea-gulls, and ...
... 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. Following these ...
... sheep died over the terrible winter of 1632–33. In a raid on Hvalba, on Suðuroy, Barbary pirates carried off thirty people as slaves. Denmark's economy had not recovered from the brief but disastrous involvement in the Thirty Years War ...
... sheep over particular stretches of outfield. Thus they were arguing that the king, an important landowner as well as the Faroes' sovereign, ought to prevent the Scots' criminal trespass, just as his law prohibited trespass on outfields ...
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 |