Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1978, Page 27

Sniolvs kvæði
35
tions reflect the traditions of their respective islands. It was
P. Hentze’s copyist, Johannes Clemensen, who actually re-
corded the ballads in Hentze’s collection; and it is not until
he himself became interested in collecting on his own account
that we get not only ballad texts but additional information
about the name of the singer in each case and the place and
date of the recording. Later, V. U. Hammershaimb in his col-
lection from 1847 and 1848 and Jakob Jakobsen in 1904 fol-
lowed suit in recording the names and home villages of the
singers in addition to the texts that were sung. Unfortunately,
other collectors from the mid and late nineteenth century
failed to emulate Clemensen, Hammershaimb, and Jakobsen
and have left us ballad books filled with texts gleaned from
anonymous singers in unnamed places.
But even the records left by Clemensen, Hammershaimb,
and Jakobsen give us a very incomplete picture of the nature
of the tradition in the areas in which they were collecting.
It seems fairly clear that as a rule even the most meticulous
collectors recorded a ballad only once, possibly because they
were more interested in the scope of their collections than in
keeping an inventory of the ballads sung in any given ballad
community. For example, if a collector recorded a ballad from
one singer, he then »had« the ballad, so to speak, and did not
continue to collect the same ballad from other singers or in
other villages, no matter how often he might hear it. Thus,
using the collections assembled by a mere fourteen or fifteen
collectors in different parts of the Faroes over a span of
approximately 120 years, we may tally where and how many
times a given ballad has been recorded, and we will still have
only an extremely rough idea about the spread of that ballad.
Nevertheless, patterns occasionally seem to emerge from the
extant data that suggest a more complete picture of the tradi-
tion. The case in point is the long ballad cycle Sniolvs kvæfii
(FK 91), which in its longest form consists of some nine sub-
ballads or tættir together with some four other ballads that
are closely related to it. Sniolvs kvæði has had a somewhat