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The Ring of Dancers - Images of Faroese Culture (Hardcover)
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The Ring of Dancers - Images of Faroese Culture (Hardcover)
Series: Anniversary Collection
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Scattered in the North Atlantic, 300 miles off Iceland and 400
miles off Norway, lies the Faroe Islands archipelago. Despite
centuries of foreign control, the Faroese have preserved their own
distinctive identity. At present an internally self-governing
dependency of Denmark, the Faroese have kept their culture alive in
part by elaborating certain elements of that culture as badges of
self-consciousness. The Ring of Dancers is composed a series of
studies of aspects of Faroese life, language, and folk ways. A
recurrent theme is the continuing reformulation of Faroese culture
since the islands' Viking settlement in the ninth century. The
Faroes are introduced as the Faroese themselves conceive them-as
islands both joined and separated by the waterways around about
them. The archipelago visualized in terms of such waterways as
fjords, the points of the compass, "home" villages, and natural and
political districts. The authors also discuss Faroese society as
the Faroese conceived it around 1890, by an analysis of a folktale
popular at the time about the Ashlad. Placed in its social context,
the tale appears as a kind of folk editorial on changing values and
changing times. Perhaps the most important symbol of Faroese
identity is the Faroese language. Although it was not made a
written language until the 1840s, and was not widely written or
read until the 1890s, Faroese has replaced Danish as the islands'
official language. In gaining its formal register, it has come to
express a modern sense of what it means to be Faroese. The most
spectacular Faroese custom, the grindadrap-the slaughter of schools
of pilot whales and the celebration that follows the catch-typifies
the continuity of the Faroes' anciently rooted identity. The image
of the dansiringur, the "ring" of dancers singing ballads of wars
and loves of heroic times-lingers throughout the book. The
dansiringur, the authors contend, represents the Faroese adaptation
of large forms to a land of closely known neighbors and landscapes,
the complex inward turnings of Faroese culture, its tortuous sense
of wholeness. The book ends by recounting interviews in Torshavn,
the Faroese capital, with an artist, a journalist, a politician,
and others. The Ring of Dancers vividly portrays the Faroese and
makes clear why they are actively involved in preserving their
culture as well as shaping it for the future.
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