Fróðskaparrit - 01.07.2004, Page 8

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TO FISH OR NOT TO FISH. THE MEANING OF FISH AND FISHERIES
AMONG YOUNG PEOPLE IN THE FAROE ISLANDS
work and leisure among youth from: all
Faroe Islands, Tórshavn, and southern
Suðuroy (Southem Island). A brief discus-
sion and analysis of possible consequences
of the new priorities of young people on the
future fishing industry foliows at the end.
This article is based on a paper presented at
the Nordic conference ‘Recruitment of
highly educated labour in the fisheries’ in
Tórshavn, December 3-5 2003. Organised
by the Centre for Local and Regional De-
velopment.
Consequences of the crisis
Young people in the Faroe Islands differ in
many respects from the older generations,
not only due to the fact that they are
‘young’ and hence opposed to many values
associated with the parents, but as much be-
cause of the radical changes that the
Faroese society has undergone since the
mid-80s. The youth of the third millennium
grew up during and after the severe eco-
nomic crisis of the early 90s. They are the
‘post-crisis youth’ or ‘millennium genera-
tion’, not familiar with the society of their
parents’ adolescence (Gaini, 2003b). The
chaotic years of the early 90s, when the
economic system collapsed and more than
ten percent of the population emigrated to
Denmark and other countries, affected
most Faroese families drastically, altering
living conditions for the worse (Jespersen,
1994; Arge, 2000). Therefore, today’s
youth is not only a product of the flourish-
ing post-crisis era, but indeed also marked
by the harsh years of the depression during
their early childhood. During the crisis
many children moved lo their grand-par-
ents or other relatives in small villages as
the parents became jobless and were forced
to sell the family’s house; others moved to
Denmark with their parents, some of these
families returned to the Faroe Islands later,
but most of these are still living in exile
(Arge, 2000). In short, the economic crisis
— which indeed was a social and political
crisis too — marks an important societal
shift, as the Faroe Islands ‘before the crisis’
and ‘after the crisis’ are two different his-
torical eras with quite different political
and economic structures, as well as youth
cultures. The last decade or so has been
characterised by an impressive recovery of
the national economy, the massive entry of
communication and information technolo-
gies, and a general opening towards global-
isation and post-industrial society with all
its characteristics (Apostle et al. 2002;
Hovgaard and Gaini, 2003). The contrasts
between the epoques can be represented in
simple pairs of traits (Table 1).
This is a rough simplification of a com-
plex social reality, but it emphasises the
role of the crisis in the shift of the 90s in
the Faroe Islands. Obviously, the ‘before
the crisis’ era is also limited backward in
time: when traditional or premodern soci-
ety ended. Modernisation and industrialisa-
tion came very late to the North Atlantic re-
gion, never really eradicating tradilional
culture, hence the ‘early modernity’ and
‘late-traditional’ labels on the society be-
fore the 90s (Gaini, 2003a). Modern
Faroese history is characterised by big
changes and developments within a short
span of time, making it difficult to delimit
events and periods in clear-cut chronologi-