Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2006, Side 99

BYGDADVØL - HVÍ LINGFÓLK BÚSETAST í FØROYSKUM BYGDUM
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duction to the Faroese village whicli turns
'nto a discussion of the village as a concept.
Thereafter I present four central discus-
stons of my thesis. These discussions are:
1 ■ “Identity and the obligation to move back
home” which discusses the changes of the
“home” and the change in the relationship
towards the “place” of dwelling.
2- “Dwelling myths” which điscusses the
iinportance of a discursive production of
the place of dwelling in order to (re)pro-
duce the place of dwelling.
2- “Imagination on the future dwelling”
which discusses how dwelling-practices
become both segregated through space
and globalized through mobility.
4- “Traffic and mobility, distance and prox-
irnity” which discusses a range of effects
that traffic and moblity pose on to the re-
lationship bctween distance and proxim-
ity.
^he article ends with a conclusion that in-
cludes some views on the threats and op-
Portunities that modemity and mobility pose
to “village-dwelling”.
1 he village - reality and concept
Thc village” has for a long time been one
°f the ground-pillars of the Faroese society,
c°nstituting the bulk of the social and eco-
n°mic structures of the country, as opposed
to niany other industrialized countries tliat
exPerienced a massive urbanization of the
s°ciety.
In the Faroes, the development of in-
^Ustrial capitalism has been based only par-
t'ally on emerging urban areas, as the vil-
ges - in large - have managed to enter the
industrial age through an economic mixture
of agriculture, fisheries and - later - com-
munity-supported físhing-industiy. This has
- in turn - meant that the vast majority of
the traditional Faroese villages (“markatals-
bygdir”) have sustained a relative autonomy
from the centres, which has again sustained
the reasons for living in these villages. Even
some of the newer villages (“niðurse-
tubygdir”) have achieved a status as pro-
duction-entities during the 20th centuiy, and
especially the village of Skopun on the
northern tip of Sandoy, is signifícant on this
account (Finnsson, 2005: 85). Most other
newer villages have been subordinated to
some larger settlement.
“The village” - both the traditional and
the newly settled villages - has been under-
stood largely as a community, or what soci-
ologists use to term “Gemeinschaft’’ (Hov-
gaard, 2001: 78-79). This means tliat “the
village” is frequently seen as the scenery of
reciprocal social relations constituting the
life in the villages and the production of
these villages. This does by no means give
justice to the complexity of the traditional
village that many historians and anthropol-
ogists have pointed out during the last many
decades. (Very differing aspects of the
Faroese villages are discussed in Joensen,
1987; Andreassen, 1992; Bærenholdt, 1991;
1993: 143-54; Haldrup and Hoydal, 1993;
Haldrup, 1996; Finnsson, 2005; Finnsson
and Kristiansen, 2006). This is the reason
why I consequently put the concept of “the
village” in quotation marks.
Perhaps we ought to talk about “the vil-
lage” in two ways: on the one hand “the-
village-as-it-really-is” and on the other hand