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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... traditional anthropological concepts. . . . Nor is the traditional anthropological technique of participant observer alone any longer sufficient. . . . Consequently many [anthropologists] have sought refuge in villages, which they ...
... traditional stamping grounds (nations, ideologies, public figures, affairs of state, literary cultures, historiography itself), historians have returned the compliment by invading “our” territory of small communities, parochial affairs ...
... traditional economy's ability to support the population. In Chapter 5 the scene shifts to Denmark, with which the Faroes became more closely integrated between 1814 and 1851. Here I consider the application to the Faroes of National ...
... traditional connection with the British Isles, and led her into the Scandinavian unions of the later middle ages” (Helle 1968:113). In 1299 the capital and royal chancellery were moved from Bergen to Oslo. Less than a century later, by ...
... traditional reckoning. Land may be either infield (bour) or outfield (hagi). The village is clustered in the infield, which is divided into plots and used for crops, hay, and winter grazing. A stone wall surrounds the infield. The ...
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 |