Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2006, Page 113

BYGDADVØL - HVÍ UNGFÓLK BÚSETAST í FØROYSKUM BYGDUM
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ls segregated into several life-styles, e.g. a
rural life-style. Dwelling practices then be-
come an aesthetic choice and are no longer
un effect of existential necessity.
Quite a lot of the features of “the village”
have totally changed their functional rele-
vance. It is no longer necessary to live in
the proximity of everyday functions as the
'ncreasing mobility has made it possible to
extend the everyday-locale. But this also
■neans that less-mobile people living in a vil-
tage become dependent on their mobile rel-
ntives or friends. Furthermore mobility
cnuses a functional segregation of the dif-
ferent villages, some villages hereby be-
coming “sleeping-villages”.
These are all effects of mobility and
Wodemity. The technologies of modernity
allow an ever growing degree of mobility
which “shortens distances”, thercby creat-
lng new everyday spaces and therefore also
new everyday places.
ln a strange way, therefore, “the Faroese
village’ ” is becoming an optional dwelling-
community, and is no longer a community
°f destiny. What is interesting to state is that
even if young settlers today are function-
ally independent of their extended family (or
at !east would be able to become independ-
Cnb if they really wanted to), the extended
hamily is still a quality that is lucrative. Even
though there are surely many young people
that “move away”, there are also young peo-
Ple who simply want to stay, even if they
are tvorking in some other town or even in
s°me other region. It isn’t possible to state
exhaustively why this is the case, but my
einpirical material suggest that the reason
ls aesthetic or that it simply is “funny” (I
have explained the complexity of this word
earlier in this article) to be together with the
people one knows and is comfortable with.
In other words, what matters is that one can
“feel” comfortable and self-affírmed by the
village-dwelling.
“The village” is not a necessity, but a pos-
sibility. But this does not mean that the vil-
lage is only aesthetic and not practical. In
the beginning of this article I stated a range
of aspects that make settlement in a Faroese
village on the mainland a very practical phe-
nomenon, such as cheap housing- and plot-
prizes, the proximity of the extended fam-
ily etc. Without these practical aspects, the
village would probably not be chosen in
favour of the town to the same significant
degree as it is being chosen today. The fact
is - to a certain degree - that the villages
are a valid alternative to the town, but for
how long they will sustain the population is
hard to say. One thing is for sure: the vil-
lage is no longer a phenomenon that can be
understood as a separate production entity.
Definitely not. Even though this is still a
common perception of “the Faroese vil-
lage”, any such understanding becoms more
and more absurd as time passes by. It is nec-
essary to understand the villages’ functional
integration to the surrounding regions, and
it will also be necessary to develop munic-
ipal policies that acknowledge the new role
of “the village”. The work that needs to be
done is both complicated and even para-
doxical, as people are imagining their set-
tlement in the villages according to the ter-
ritorial qualities of the villages, but are at the
same time determined by the phenomena of
modernity and mobility. Therefore politi-