Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1975, Page 41

How old is the Faroese grannastevnaf
49
erences to the grannastevna from 1836 until the reguiar records
begin in the spring of 1843.
The grannastevna is not mentioned by Tarnovius (1669),
Debes (1673) or Landt (1800). In Svabo’s Indberetninger the
word appears only in his transcription of Sandóens Vedtægt.
The word is not used in the text of any printed law known to
me from before 1857, nor in any printed draft of a law from
before 1844. The earliest written use of the word known to
me, with certain exceptions I shall refer to later, dates from
August 1836.4
The two most telling silences of all, in my opinion, are those
of Svabo, who does not include the word in his dictionary,
and that of landfúti J. A. Lunddahl, in Nogle bemærkninger
om de færóske landboforhold. The latter work was written in
1843, but only printed, and then in an unrevised form, in 1851.
Lunddahl often mentions the joint decisions that have to be
taken in a Faroese village, but never once does the word
grannastevna appear, and neither is there any apparent refe-
rence to the meeting itself. Of the manuscript sources which
fail to mention the grannastevna I will instance amtmand
Lobner’s Instrux for Sysselmændene paa Færóerne, dated 1
April 1816, which refers to such land tenure legislation as the
Forordning af 2. April 1698 om Faar og Qvæg, the Reskript
af 19. August 1757 om Kending-Sóid and the Reskript af 11.
Maj 1775 angaaende Rosse-Brug paa Færóe, but makes no
reference whatever to the grannastevnaJ’
It is difficult to assert absolutely that regular grannastevnur
were not being held before 1836, and indeed there are some
— though very few — instances of the use of the word in a
Faroese context in documents as early as 1708. It seems to me,
however, that the use of the word is probably due to officials
with experience of the Danish grannastevna. Consideration of
these rare instances will illustrate the difference between these
early meetings and the grannastevna as we know it after 1840.
The first reference known to me is that in Sandóens Vedtægt
already referred to, which must assuredly have arisen from the