Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1970, Page 10

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The English Letters of Pastor Schrøter
the foundations of those studies which you have yourself
carried forward with such distinction. But in Faroese historical
studies, too, pastor Schrøter has much to tell us. For he was a
man of all-inclusive interests, was always keen to establish
contact with foreigners, and he kept up a vast correspondence.
Indeed, he may well have been one of the main channels
through which new ideas flowed into Faroe during that great
age of change, the early nineteenth century.
For twenty years, Schrøter regularly exchanged letters with
an English baronet, Sir Walter Trevelyan (1797—1879). The
two first met in the summer of 1821 when, as a companion
of the celebrated Danish geologist Dr. Johan Georg Forch-
hammer, Trevelyan spent four months in the Faroe Islands.
The travellers spent two weeks on Suðuroy, during which
time Trevelyan came to know the pastor well, since they
twice travelled the length of SuSuroy together — southwards
over the mountains, and making their return by boat along
the east coast. They obviously became very friendly, for
Trevelyan made a water-colour sketch of the pastor in the
back of his Faroe journal.1
However, the first of the large bundle of letters, written
in English, from Schrøter to Trevelyan, now preserved in the
British Museum2, shows that for ten years after Trevelyan’s
departure from Faroe, the two had exchanged no word. It
was after Trevelyan had made a present of books to the Faroe
Islands Library, then recently established, that the two began
to correspond. From June 1831 until Schrøter’s death, they
were constantly writing to one another, and from the old
priest’s letters to his English friend there emerges a very lively
picture of the Faroe Islands in their first great age of economic
and constitutional advance.
In view of Schrøter’s notorious flights of fancy over the
traditional history of the Faroe Islands, one may fairly ask
what reliance may be placed on his letters as a source for the
history of his own times. My judgement is that Schrøter’s
unreliability is strictly confined to his folk-lore, and that on