Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2006, Page 53

EINAFERÐ VÓRU MENN
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when he bought it less than a year ago. Áki has
a girlfriend in another village, but they seldom
drive together in his Toyota. He visits her
regularly, but she is in her friends’ car when she
goes out. She, aged 18, is a student at upper
seondary school in Eysturoy. She wants to
continue her studies in Denmark next year. She
is ‘tired’ of her small community. She thinks that
the challenges and opportunities are too few in
her local community. There are too few choices
regarding lifestyle and working career. Áki tries
to make her change her mind. He thinks that
she is just trying to be like ‘a foreigner’ and that
she should be happy to have what she already
has - including him!
During the last years the cowboys have lost
ground in Torshavn as the rough sexist físh-
erman style has lost recognition and by a
growing number of young people is being
associated with derogatory hillbilly and
caveman stereotypes. The new times have
changed the cultural trends in the Faroe Is-
lands; personal life ambitions and educa-
tional and working career have increased
considerably in value and relevancy re-
garding young men’s identity fonnation and
cultural capital. The fishing industry, still
economically rewarding, is today associated
with boring and dirty work without any in-
teresting challenges by most teenagers. Hard
physical work is not as attractive and inter-
esting as it was earlier, as young people pre-
fer creative mind work and modern social
(leisure) lives that fishermen partly are ex-
cluded from. Labour and leisure have got a
new meaning.
Urban (European) youth
Urban youth, the second category of mas-
culinity, maybe less than two thousand peo-
ple in total, embraces a broad and variegated
assembly of young Faroese men. The
boundary between cowboys and urban
youths is indeed not unambiguous, as many
people are positioned in a grey area associ-
ated to both main categories in question. The
concept ‘urban’ is here to be carefully in-
terpreted with reservation, as urban youth
also is to be found in towns and villages, at
the same time as many young men living in
the urban environment - Tórshavn - do not
belong to this category. Urban refers in my
text to specific styles and values that might
be defined as urban in character. Also, urban
refers partly to global urban youth culture
influence, but this is also, as 1 will explain,
a rough simplification of a complex issue.
Urban youth is the Atlantic cowboys’ main
opponent and the groups clash in many dis-
cussions on manliness and masculine styles.
Urban youth is always up-to-date re-
garding popular culture movements and
styles in fashion, keeping up with the times.
Young urban men, even those living in srnall
villages, associate their lifestyles to West-
ern big city life. They are quite individual-
ized and untraditional regarding behaviour
and style, but don’t feel less anchored in
Faroese culture than the cowboys or any-
one else. Most young urban men spend
rnuch money on hair-dressing, trendy
clothes and expensive furniture for their
room or apartment. Many also practice ad-
vanced lifestyle management avoiding the
risk of undesirable incongruence in taste and
stylc, hence demonstrating control, freedom
and creativity according to thc standards of
urban lifestyle magazines (Benwell, 2003).
Fitness and attractive physical appearance