Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1964, Page 162

170
Norn in Shetland
Shetlanders were proud to meet him. It was a two=way
traffic. He could tell them the meanings of their places,
words they used daily (and no part of all the world was
so intensively named as Shetland), but did not know the
meaning of. They could give him their age*old words,
whose meanings they knew welhenough, fondly imagining
that they, in their Scots context, were a Norse language,
their Norn. They might, and probably did in Lerwick
especially, convey them to him by trying to “knap”, that
is, to speak English. It is a tribute to Jakobsen’s very great
ability as a linguist that his command of English, no very
useful preparation for knowledge of such a highlyddiomatic
and phonetically and linguistically varied mixture of Scots
and Norse as is found in the various islands of Shetland,
enabled him to produce works of such great and lasting
value.
It must have been labour under difficulty, which only
exceptional enthusiasm could surmount. Shetland weather
and Shetland roads of the time were no better than Faroese.
To accommodate a guest must have been a matter of tre=
pidation for some of those who made him welcome, fear
that they could not cater for the stranger in a way that he
might expect to be provided for, not lack of hospitality.
On his part, the continual travel back and forth, the lack
of privacy for taking notes and consolidating daily work,
the monotony of ceaseless and often fruitless interview,
must have demanded an iron constitution and limitless
patience. But such was his gift of making friends that,
although his stay in any one part of Shetland was neces*
sarily short, the men of my father’s generation regarded
Jakob Jakobsen, as they affectionately called him (giving
him his full name instead of the mere surname or the more
distant Mr. Jakobsen) as one of themselves, a man good
to meet and stimulating to know.
Even if one were competent to do, there is no need to
rehearse to Faroese readers the qualifications and ability of