Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2006, Page 102

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VILLAGE-DWELLING
Faroese villages are in fact much more com-
plex than they may seem at the first glance.
The Faroese villages are not a bunch of
houses “containing” similar people living in
similar houses, as one might at first suppose.
The socially coherent village is history, if it
ever has been a fact. The village is increas-
ingly a part of a larger context, and the in-
creasing mobility in the society (and be-
tween societies) enables the village to ex-
tend its locale.
Following a Castells-inspired terminol-
ogy, the Faroese villages are increasingly
hatched on to the flows of the “Network So-
cieties” (Castells, 2000) which in tum makes
mobility (both corporeal, cyberreal and cog-
nitive) a much more common strategy of
life. From this perspective we also may be
forced to operate with differential life-strate-
gies or “coping-strategies” that go beyond
the common territory-bound coping strate-
gies and create an understanding of the in-
terconnection and interdependence of the
territory and the mobilities in modern soci-
eties. (Bærenholdt and Aarsæther, 2002)
Identity and the the obligation to move
back home
It has been a common proposition that
Faroese youth is very eager to “move back
home” after e.g. studies abroad (Arge, 2000:
37). The problem with this statement is that
“moving away” and “moving back home”
does not in every case oppose each other
semiotically, especially not when we talk
about youth from the rural areas. When peo-
ple move away from a village there are three
possibilities: they may move to another vil-
lage or town in the region; they may move
to a village or town far from home; or they
may even move abroad. In any case, if they
have moved abroad they will have left the
“home-village” and may consider moving
back home. But now home is no longer nec-
essarily the “home-village” but is often con-
sidered as the “home-land” (or even “the na-
tion”). If a young couple starts talking about
“moving back home” - i.e. from abroad -
one can therefore not be sure that they want
to move back to the home-village or the
home-region. Very often they choose to
move back to the capital Tórshavn, that is if
they are able to enter the complicated and
hugely expensive housing market in the cap-
ital.
Nevertheless there are also young peo-
ple that choose to move back to the home-
village. This can be explained both by socio-
functional reasons like the family and the
access to the reciprocal and socially based
housing market that is so common in the
Faroese villages, meaning that phenomena
like relatives, religion etc. play a large role
to one’s housing-chances.
The socially based housing market; i.e-
the fact that that social bonds are crucial it>
order to enter the housing market, are in fact
one of the elements of the popular gover-
nance (in Danish: folkelig forvaltning; in
Faroese: fólkslig fyrisiting) in many Faroese
villages. But another reason is that peoplc
really feel connected to the home-village
through their identity.
In order to be attracted by the identity oi
a place, the place needs not only to have a
recognizablc idcntity; it also needs a posi-
tive identity. Following tliis notion a sus-
tainable identity-formation needs a “real”