Farøiska sagoberattare

Abstract

In this article the author gives us examples from an investigation of Faroese folktale-tellers, mainly of those people who were the informants of the Faroese philologist Dr. Jakob Jakobsen. His folktale material, collected in the last decade of the I9th century, kept in Landsbókasavn in Tórshavn and for the most part published in sFæroske Folkesagn og Æventyr« 1898—1901, is the basis of a comparative investigation of the Faroese folktales, in which that examination of person and milieu is a complementary part. By means of excursions and questionnaires the author has completed Dr. Jakobsens' collection and taken up biographical information about folktale-tellers.

The greater part of Dr. Jakobsens's tellers have been women, many of them unmarried servants. To a large extent also later records have had female informants. The oldest teller of the material collected up til now, Johanne Joensdatter from Kvívík, Streymoy, was born in 1790 and died in 1869 at Sorvágur, Vágar. Nevertheless, the greatest number of folktales has been told by a man, J. H. Matras, born in 1823 at Viðareiði, Viðoy, and dead in 1901 at Kirkja, Fugloy. The tellers inquired for do not seem to have had a very close contact
with literature — apart from the Bible, the hymn-book and the book of homilies.

During the 19th century the school attendance was imperfect. Generally the children w'ere taught by their parents at least to be able to read. The written language and the church language of the Faroe Isles at that time was Danish. Not until the letter part of the 19th century the Faroese spoken language started to be used as written language and in 1938 as school language.

The biographical statements show that the persons inpuired for and their nearest relatives backwards in time have lived rather isolated, many of them have hardly ever left their native places. Certainly a change of dwelling place has been made in not a few cases, especially on the mothers' side, but that has taken place within a relatively limited area. Marriages to foreigners do not seem to have been common among these people for the three generations that have been inquired for.

The article ends with an appeal to people who know Faroese folktales and folktale-tellers from old and recent time to send in complementary and corrective informations to the author via Føroya Fornminnissavn in Tórshavn.