Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2005, Page 419

Bevussrfmur and Bevusar tættir
409
could have reached the Faroes in written form at any time up to the be-
ginning of the seventeenth century. During the social and economic
stagnation of the next two centuries the conditions for the reception of
Icelandic literature in the Faroes were unfavourable, and the path was
clear for an influx of Danish material (especially ballads of chivalry).30
Only in the nineteenth century was it possible for Faroese poets again to
quarry Icelandic literature for ballad themes, and the pastiches they pro-
duced at that time had to compete for attention on the dance floor with
indigenous satirical ballads (so-called tættir) and Street ballads from
Copenhagen.31 The opening stanza of Trøllini i Hornalondum conjures
up a picture of Faroese-Icelandic cultural interaction that can be limited
for present purposes to the late Middle Ages and the first hundred years
or so after the Reformation.
The role played by the written word in a predominantly oral culture
is the subject of a vast theoretical literature that it would be impossible
to deal with here. I shall accordingly confine myself to reviewing a few
comments on the concrete situation in which late medieval poets func-
tioned. Einar 01. Sveinsson allows for the possibility that some ballads
were composed with a manuscript source lying open on the table, but he
also emphasises that the number of manuscripts that ever found their
way to the Faroes must have been very small, and that poets could
equally well have acquired their material by listening to sagas being
read aloud.32 Another Icelandic literary historian and folklorist, Davi'5
Erlingsson, discussing the composition and transmission of rimur -
most of which, like Sjurdar kvædi and a number of other Faroese heroic
ballads, are lengthy poems in self-contained sections or cantos - envis-
ages that the poet, whether deriving his subject-matter from reading or
recollection, versified it canto by canto and wrote down the product (or
had it written down for him) in corresponding instalments; in connec-
tion with performances he might then have consulted the written text as
30 It should be noted that the proportion of Danish ballads in the Faroese corpus (p. 402
above) would have been considerably increased had the fifth series included poems actu-
ally recited or sung in Danish. Such poems are scattered, inconveniently from the point of
view of Faroese ballad research, through the volumes of Danmarks gamle Folkeviser. See
e.g. FK VII 82-83 for the Danish material recorded or acquired by Hammershaimb in
1847-48.
31 Cf. Michael Chesnutt (as n. 10), here 255-57 with references.
32 Einar 6l. Sveinsson, “Um Ormar hinn unga, kappann Illhuga, bækur og dansa,” in
Nordæla. Afmæliskvedja til [...] SigurdarNordals (Reykjavik 1956), 55-74, here 64.