Culture Of The Faroe Islands
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Culture Of The Faroe Islands
The culture of the Faroe Islands has its roots in the Nordic culture. The Faroe Islands were long isolated from the main cultural phases and movements that swept across parts of Europe. This means that they have maintained a great part of their traditional culture. The language spoken is Faroese. It is one of three insular Scandinavian languages descended from the Old Norse language spoken in Scandinavia in the Viking Age, the others being Icelandic and the extinct Norn, which is thought to have been mutually intelligible with Faroese. Until the 15th century, Faroese had a similar orthography to Icelandic and Norwegian, but after the Reformation in 1538, the ruling Danes outlawed its use in schools, churches and official documents. This maintained a rich spoken tradition, but for 300 years the language was not written down. This means that all poems and stories were handed down orally. These works were split into the following divisions: ''sagnir'' (historical), ''ævintyr'' (st ...
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Tórshavn
Tórshavn (; lit. "Thor's harbour"), usually locally referred to as simply ''Havn'', is the capital and largest city of the Faroe Islands. It is located in the southern part on the east coast of Streymoy. To the northwest of the city lies the mountain Húsareyn, and to the southwest, the Kirkjubøreyn. They are separated by the Sandá River. The city itself has a population of 13,957 (2022), and the greater urban area has a population of 21,078, including the suburbs of Hoyvik and Argir. The Norse (Scandinavians) established their parliament on the Tinganes peninsula in AD 850. Tórshavn thus became the capital of the Faroe Islands and has remained so ever since. Early on, Tórshavn became the centre of the islands' trade monopoly, thereby being the only legal place for the islanders to sell and buy goods. In 1856, the trade monopoly was abolished and the islands were left open to free trade. History Early history It is not known whether the site of Tórshavn was of ...
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Fiddle
A fiddle is a bowed string musical instrument, most often a violin. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including classical music. Although in many cases violins and fiddles are essentially synonymous, the style of the music played may determine specific construction differences between fiddles and classical violins. For example, fiddles may optionally be set up with a bridge with a flatter arch to reduce the range of bow-arm motion needed for techniques such as the double shuffle, a form of bariolage involving rapid alternation between pairs of adjacent strings. To produce a "brighter" tone than the deep tones of gut or synthetic core strings, fiddlers often use steel strings. The fiddle is part of many traditional (folk) styles, which are typically aural traditions—taught " by ear" rather than via written music. Fiddling is the act of playing the fiddle, and fiddlers are musicians that play it. Among musical styles, fiddling tends to p ...
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The Nordic Council's Literature Prize
The Nordic Council Literature Prize is awarded for a work of literature written in one of the languages of the Nordic countries, that meets "high literary and artistic standards". Established in 1962, the prize is awarded every year, and is worth 350,000 Danish kroner (2008). Eligible works are typically novels, plays, collections of poetry, short stories or essays, or other works that were published for the first time during the last four years, or in the case of works written in Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish, within the last two years. The prize is one of the most prestigious awards that Nordic authors can win. The winner is chosen by an adjudication committee appointed by the Nordic Council. The committee consists of ten members, two each from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. The committee members are generally experts in their own country's literature, as well as their neighbouring countries. In addition to the regular members, additional members may be added to ...
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Rói Patursson
Rói Reynagarð Patursson (born 21 September 1947) is a Faroese writer and philosopher. He was also the director of the Folk High School of the Faroes. He was born in Tórshavn, Faroe Islands. After attending the St. Frans School in Tórshavn and secondary school, Patursson went abroad from 1964 to 1965, afterwards taking various jobs in Tórshavn and Copenhagen. In 1968 he traveled across Europe, and afterwards he attended a Gymnasium until 1969. From 1970 to 1985 he lived in Copenhagen, and in 1973 he married. He and his wife had a daughter in 1974, and a second daughter in 1981. In 1976 he began the study of philosophy at the University of Copenhagen, and received a Masters in 1985. Having returned to the Faroes in 1985, he taught night school and at the University of the Faroe Islands, and made transmissions for Útvarp Føroya (Radio of the Faroes). In 1987 he received the post as docent at the ''Skrivekunst Akademiet'' in Bergen, Norway. Since 1988, he has led the Folk H ...
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Hans Andreas Djurhuus
Hans Andrias Djurhuus (20 October 1883 – 6 May 1951) was a Faroese poet and teacher. Hans Andrias Djurhuus was one of the most productive Faroese poets. He is well known for his national poems and for his children's songs, but he also wrote psalms, short stories, plays, fairytales and one novel. Biography Djurhuus was born and died in Tórshavn. His brother Janus Djurhuus, who was two years older, is also one of the well-known poets of the Faroe Islands. He also had an older sister called Armgarð Maria Djurhuus, which was born in 1880. She died at a young age of 39 years old. They were born and raised in a house in the old part of Tórshavn, which is called Áarstova, down in the eastern harbour; only the brothers are often referred to as the Áarstovu Brothers (''Áarstovubrøðurnir'') and not their sister. The brother's great grandfather was Jens Christian Djurhuus (1773–1853), who was the first to write poems in the Faroese language. After finishing school Hans Andre ...
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Janus Djurhuus
Jens Hendrik Oliver Djurhuus, called Janus Djurhuus, (26 February 1881, Tórshavn – 1 September 1948, Tórshavn) was the first modern Faroese poet. He and his younger brother Hans Andreas Djurhuus, also a poet, are called the ''Áarstova'' brothers after the house where they grew up. Life and work Djurhuus's parents were Óla Jákup Djurhuus (1832–1909) and Else Marie ''née'' Poulsen, from Hósvík (1847–1897). He was a great-grandson of Jens Christian Djurhuus. Djurhuus said that his "poetic baptism" came in school, when he heard Jákup Dahl (later a provost and Bible translator and author of the first school grammar of the Faroese language) declaim Jóannes Patursson's ''Nú er tann stundin komin til handa'' (Now is the hour come for acting), the anthem of the Christmas Meeting of 1888 which began the rise of Faroese nationalism.John Frederick West, ''Faroe: The Emergence of a Nation'', London: Hurst, 1972, p. 235 Djurhuus trained as a lawyer. After passing ...
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Jóanes Nielsen
Jóanes Nielsen (born April 5, 1953 in Tórshavn) is a Faroese author and poet of the 1980s generation. Nielsen has written short stories, plays and novels. He has published seven collections of poetry, and was nominated for the Nordic Council's Literature Prize for the fourth time with his latest collection of poems, entitled ''Brúgvar av svongum orðum'' (Bridges of Hungry Words). One of his main influences is the writer William Heinesen, who features in some of his poems. As a writer Nielsen is mainly associated with a political and often existential message. He has been nominated for the Nordic Council's Literature Prize five times: 1988, 1994, 1999, 2004 and 2012. In December 2012 the international publication house Random House made a contract with Nielsen to publish his novel ''Brahmadellarnir'', which was first to be published in German. The Random House contract was regarded as an historic event for Faroese literature, because no other Faroese author's work had until th ...
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Heðin Brú
Heðin Brú (pronounced ; August 17, 1901, Skálavík – May 18, 1987, Tórshavn) was the pen-name of Hans Jacob Jacobsen, a Faroese novelist and translator. Heðin Brú is considered to be the most important Faroese writer of his generation and is known for his fresh and ironic style. His novel, ''Feðgar á ferð'' (''The Old Man and His Sons''), was chosen as the ''Book of the twentieth century'' by the Faroese. Life and Works Like many of his countrymen, Jacobsen worked as a fisherman in his early years. After two seasons, he left to study agriculture in Denmark. When he returned to the Faroes, he worked as an agricultural advisor—a job that took him to all parts of the country. The contacts he made with ordinary village people he met during this time had a lasting effect on his writing. In 1930, his first novel, ''Lognbrá'', which tells the story of a young man growing up in a Faroese village, was published. In 1935 there appeared its sequel, ''Fastatøkur'', ...
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William Heinesen
Andreas William Heinesen (15 January 1900 – 12 March 1991) was a poet, novel writer, short story writer, children's book writer, composer and painter from the Faroe Islands. His writing The Faroese capital Tórshavn is always the centre of Heinesen's writing and he is famous for having once called Tórshavn "The Navel of the World". His writing focuses on contrasts between darkness and light, between destruction and creativity. Then following is the existential struggle of man to take sides. This is not always easy, however, and the lines between good and bad are not always clearly defined. Heinesen was captivated by the mysterious part of life, calling himself religious in the broadest sense of the word. His life could be described as a struggle against defeatism with one oft-quoted aphorism of his is that "life is not despair, and death shall not rule". Publications As he was born and raised before the Faroese language was taught in the schools, he wrote mainly in Danis ...
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Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen
Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen  (November 29, 1900 – March 24, 1938) was a Faroese writer. He has a distinct place in Scandinavian literature, as he is the only Faroese writer to achieve international best-seller status. This status derives from his sole novel, ''Barbara: Roman'' (1939; translated, 1948 and 1993), which has the added cachet of being one of the few Scandinavian novels to be translated twice into English within the space of fifty years. The novel was translated into five other languages shortly after the first edition in the Danish language. It was also adapted as a motion picture directed by Nils Malmros in 1997 (see ''Barbara''). These facts, together with Jacobsen's essays, a study of the Faroe Islands published in the guise of a travel guide, and a volume of his letters, are sufficient to suggest that had he lived longer, he would have been one of the outstanding literary figures in Scandinavia in the twentieth century. He was one of five Faroese writers, ...
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Danish Language
Danish (; , ) is a North Germanic language spoken by about six million people, principally in and around Denmark. Communities of Danish speakers are also found in Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and the northern German region of Southern Schleswig, where it has minority language status. Minor Danish-speaking communities are also found in Norway, Sweden, the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina. Along with the other North Germanic languages, Danish is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples who lived in Scandinavia during the Viking Era. Danish, together with Swedish, derives from the ''East Norse'' dialect group, while the Middle Norwegian language (before the influence of Danish) and Norwegian Bokmål are classified as ''West Norse'' along with Faroese and Icelandic. A more recent classification based on mutual intelligibility separates modern spoken Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish as "mainland (or ''continental'') Scandinavian", while I ...
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Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their Viking expansion, overseas settlements and chronologically coincides with the Viking Age, the Christianization of Scandinavia and the consolidation of Scandinavian kingdoms from about the 7th to the 15th centuries. The Proto-Norse language developed into Old Norse by the 8th century, and Old Norse began to develop into the modern North Germanic languages in the mid-to-late 14th century, ending the language phase known as Old Norse. These dates, however, are not absolute, since written Old Norse is found well into the 15th century. Old Norse was divided into three dialects: Old West Norse, ''Old West Norse'' or ''Old West Nordic'' (often referred to as ''Old Norse''), Old East Norse, ''Old East Norse'' or ''Old East Nordic'', and ''Ol ...
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