Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1964, Qupperneq 7

Dr. Jakob Jakobsen
15
same time was appointed Headmaster of the Burgh School
in Kirkwall. Having so much official work to do in con*
nection with my school duties I had little time for working
on my dialect research, and it was not until 1929 that the
results were published by the Oxford University Press as
The Orkney Norn. That work had already been submitted
for a D. Litt. degree at Edinburgh University in 1926.
After 1909 Jakobsen visited Orkney two or three times,
and on one of these visits he delivered a public lecture in
Kirkwall. It was on that occasion that a learned Kirkwall
lawyer, Mr. Drever (himself a Scandinavian scholar) in
moving a vote of thanks paid Jakobsen a true and memor<
able compliment. Referring to his great work on Shetland
Mr. Drever said: »This is not the work of a fugitive
dilettante; it is unique and everlasting.«
His last visit was in 1914. In the spring of that year he
had had a serious nervous break*down through overwork
and other strain, and was for some time in a nursing=home
in Denmark. One thing however which helped his recovery
was his appointment to a Lectureship in Aberdeen Uni*
versity. There he delivered a series of lectures before coming
up again to Orkney for his last visit.
This was, however, not his last sight of Orkney, for the
following year after visiting Faroe he was returning to
Denmark on board a steamer The Botnia which was in*
tercepted by the British Navy and brought into Kirkwall
Bay for examination. He was not permitted to go ashore,
but an Orkney friend was allowed to go on board and
talk to him.
And then in 1918, before the war ended, to the great
grief of all who knew him and his work, he died at the
relatively early age of 52. The value and importance of that
work it is difficult to over rate — not only for Shetland
but for Scandinavian philology as a whole. Perhaps the
most readily available evidence of that fact may be seen in
that great Norse scholar Alf Torp’s Nynorsk Etymologisk