Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1978, Page 25

Sniolvs kvæði
The Growth of a Ballad Cycle
Patricia Conroy
It is generally assumed that the Faroese heroic ballad tradi-
tion (comprising the first 113 ballads in Føroya kvæði) was
past its creative period by the time the first major collector,
Tens Christian Svabo, recorded fifty-two ballads in 1781 —
1782. In the preface to this manuscript he reported that, as
far as he knew, no one had ever written ballads down before,
except for the twelve sample texts sent in 1639 to Professor
Ole Worm, which were no longer extant. Since they had been
preserved for generations only in the memories of men, rea-
soned Svabo, some of them must have been forgotten and the
texts of those that survived must be in at state of disrepair.1
From Svabo’s description it is clear that he did not believe
Faroese ballad tradition in his day to be vigorous and growing,
but rather shrinking and on the road to oblivion.
Most scholars feel that Faroese ballad tradition had its hey-
day in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and reflects the
intermixing of native Nordic and northern German narrative
traditions that took place at that time in urban trading centers
throughout Scandinavia. However, many who have studied
the corpus of native heroic ballads have remarked — but only
in passing — that a number of them appear to be of more recent
composition.2 In the absence of any discussion we are left to as-
sume that these younger ballads were composed some time after
the first period of creativity in the fourteenth and fifteenth