Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2006, Page 49

EINAFERÐ VÓRU MENN
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sensible, even feminine, without sexist
stereotyped macho values, that are often as-
sociated to fishennen in other European re-
gions (Minervudóttir, 2003). Self-obsessed
people with swollen heads were undesirable
and considered as a threat to the Faroese
farnily and community. Society as a whole
was indeed like a family; there was no place
to hide from social control. Not even trees.
The high status of men mastering mani-
fold practical skills and internalising con-
crete knowledge, learned by training and
work with men in the community and ma-
tured through hard-gained experiences,
made the ‘handyman’ and flexible winners
of hunter society. The ‘book of life’ was
more important for man than intellectual for-
mal education with systematic abstract sci-
entific knowledge accumulation. Man the
hunter lived locally with the functional ‘con-
crete’ science as companion through the
storms of life. Man was fisherman and
farmer at the same time, without the cutting
edges of the division of labour system of
modern industrial states. The survivor,
women and men, had to be highly inde-
pendent and able to take care of most prob-
lems without help from professional spe-
cialists. The handyman is still a very im-
portant model for men and masculinities in
the Faroe Islands. Faroese masculinities
have been characterized by men who break
borders and fix all kinds of practical prob-
lems by test and trial.
Atlantic cowboys
‘ Atlantic cowboys’, a notion borrowed from
Johan von Bonsdorff’s entertaining Swedish
book on the Faroe Islands entitled Atlantens
cowboys (1997), fits vei'y well to the most
powerful group of young men in the Faroe
Islands. The maritime cowboys, a few thou-
sand people, most of them living in villages
and regional towns, have practised their pe-
culiar masculine style for decades and it is
only in the capital Torshavn (approximately
18.000 inhabitants) that the cowboys meet
serious competition from urban youths and
other smaller youth groups, even if they also
hold a relatively strong influence on Tor-
shavn’s youth.
Atlantic cowboys, considered parochial
and ‘bygdasligir’ (derogatory remark on vil-
lage people and lifestyles) by urban youths,
are from families primarily engaged in the
físheries on land and offshore and belong to
what reminds of a Faroese working-class.
No typical industrial working-class exists in
the Faroe Islands and many cowboys have
large personal incomes acquired from
skilled and manual work on industrial
trawlers; even politicians and private com-
pany executives cannot match these im-
pressive revenues. Faroese fish is like the
gold of 19"’ centui-y Klondyke (Alaska) mak-
ing a few very rich while others don’t get
anything out of it. Young Atlantic cowboys
with fast money show high patterns of per-
sonal consumption; most of them đon’t
bother saving money for the future or mak-
ing investments in shares or real property,
because they prefer to use money inunedi-
ately on cool cars, parties, booze, music,
gifts, etcetera in order to impress friends and
have fun. Atlantic cowboys are notorious ac-
tion-seekers that like to show off their spe-
cial variation of extravagance and machismo
in weekends, holidays and any other free