Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2006, Page 107

BYGDADVØL- HVÍ UNGFÓLK BÚSETAST í FØROYSKUM BYGDUM
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the near future. In a Faroese village one will
always be able to know (by gossip) which
People will become one’s neighbours, and
as many of these people may originate from
the same village that they settle in, they will
naturally start to construe myths on their fu-
ture neighbourship when meeting at the su-
Permarked, at the kindergarden (if they al-
ready have children of their own), at birth-
day-parties or in the sports- or knitting-
clubs. It is interesting to see that young peo-
Ple start to engage in symbolic investments
'n their future home; an investment that may
ln turn yield social capital that can become
useful in the future, both for practical rea-
sons but also in order to sustain an ontolog-
lcal security.
Theoretical extract'. The discoursive pro-
duction of dwelling-myths is an important
Pail of the (re)production of the dwelling-
Place. Not only is it a way to rationalize
°ne’s own settlement; it is also an impor-
tant identity-strategy. As mentioned in an
carlier section settlement is an important part
°í the identity-formation. This is not neces-
Sanly something new, but in a mobile age it
becomes an increasingly aesthetic and re-
flcxive practice that is not only mediated
hirough corporeal relations but also through
Tiyths and images that are reflected in e.g.
tllc media.
Iniaginations on the future dwelling
^ne thing is mythologizing a place or a vil-
|agc; another thing is what the concrete
llnaginations on the future dwelling might
be- lt is interesting to observe tbat one of
the core imaginations is that it will become
a good and safe place for the children. At
first this may seem obvious, as one should
asssume that a core element of (future) par-
enthood is taking care of the offspring. Nev-
ertheless, looking at the reasons for this, one
finds out that this seemingly altruistic ra-
tionale on giving the children a good and
safe childhood is actually also an aesthetic
quality of the (future) dwelling. It is not just
the fact that the young settlers will be able
to give their children a good and save child-
hood that matters; it is also the embedding
into an “aesthetic community” that matters,
watching happy, playing children being one
of the important aesthetic moments of a
beautiful evening.
This aesthetic community is a guarantee
that one will not experience social extrava-
ganza that might jeopardize the coherent
mythology of thc place or even become an
everyday-practical burden (dysfunctional
neigbours etc.), i.e. not only an aesthetic
problem, but even a practical probleni. One
often supposes that youth seeks social ex-
travaganza and new social fields that are ex-
citing and potentially emancipatory, but this
is not the case for those who want to live in
the village. For those young people that de-
cide not to move away, settlement in a
Faroese village is in many ways an invest-
ment in the safety of social conformity. Not
because this is existentially necessery, but
because it is “funny”. “Funny” (in vulgar-
Faroese: “skeg”) may seem as a funny word
to use in this context, but this is actually the
term being used to describe the relevance
and signicance of the imagined reciprocal
sociality, that has been ripped off from its
origin of rnutual dependency and distilled
into imagination. This means that the social