Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2005, Qupperneq 411
Bevussrfmur and Bevusar tættir
401
saga Snæfellsåss, which he cites in connection with the Faroese Seyda
rima (FK 87). As it happens, Bårdar saga was included in one of the
two collections published in Iceland by Bjom logmadur Markusson in
the middle of the eighteenth century, and there is definite proof that this
collection was read in the Faroe Islands.8 Schrøter’s impersonal formu-
lation (disse troes komme ...) may therefore mask a combination of tra-
ditional and leamed opinion.
V. U. Hammershaimb seems at all events to have been repeating a
well established local belief when he wrote as follows in the introduc-
tion to his Færøsk Anthologv.
As to the origin and age of these folksongs, the ballads themselves very of-
ten begin with a stanza stating that the subject to be sung about came to the
islands from Iceland [...]. This might imply with some likelihood that there
in times past were Icelandic saga-books that were used here to produce bal-
lads for ordinary public entertainment.9
That the ballads ‘very often’ (meget ofte) begin by mentioning Iceland
is in faet an exaggeration,10 for the lines quoted at the beginning of this
article occur only in one traditional text (FK 28) and one ballad pastiche
“J.H. Schrøters visefortegnelse,” UNIFOL. Årsberetning 1991-1992. Folklore på Færøerne
(Copenhagen 1993), 199-207, here 203-04 with n. 15; fxrst published with some silent
changes and omissions in H. C. Lyngbye (ed.), Færøiske Qvæder om Sigurd Fofnersbane
og hans Æt (Randers 1822), introduction by P. E. Muller, 6-20.
8 The collections of Bjom Markusson are Nockrer Marg-Frooder Søgu-Pætter Islendinga
(in quarto format) and Agiætar Fornmanna Søgur (in octavo format; both Holar 1756).
The latter contains Kjalnesinga saga, Kroka-Refs saga, and three other sagas to which
there are no parallels in Faroese tradition; the former contains not only Bårdar saga but
also Jøkuls Jrattr Buasonar and Grettis saga Asmundarsonar, which provided material for
ballad pastiches written in the early nineteenth century by the Icelandophile Jacob Nolsøe
(FK 74 Jøkils kvædi) and the farmer-poet Jens Christian Djurhuus (FK 222 Grettirs
kvædi). For Jacob Nolsøe and his friendship with the Icelandic immigrant Effersøe, see p.
407 below. In Joannes Patursson (ed.), Kvædabåk V (1945; Torshavn 21984), 225 it is
stated that FK 74 was composed in collaboration with one or two other men from Jacob
Nolsøe’s birthplace.
9 My translation from V. U. Hammershaimb (ed.), Færøsk Anthologi I (Copenhagen
1891), xlvii.
10 Anticipated by Th. Wisén (n. 38 below, xxxi) and often repeated, e.g. by Knut Liestøl,
“Færøyske visor,” Nordisk Kultur IX, A. Folkevisor, B. Folksågner ochfolksagor (Stock-
holm etc. 1931), 78-83, here 82, and the present writer in “Aspects of the Faroese Tradi-
tional Ballad in the Nineteenth Century,” ARV. Scandinavian Yearbook of Folklore 48
(1993 for 1992), 247-59, here 254. Note the corrective comment by Mortan Nolsøe in
“Noen betraktninger om forholdet mellom ballade og sagaforelegg,” SUMLEN. Årsbok
forvis- ochfolkmusikforskning 1976, 11-19, here 12-13.