Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1987, Page 27

SANDOYARBÓK
31
to onlyone-half mørk of land located on the
other side of the island, making him by far
the least of Sandur’s royal tenants.” His
equivocal status is reflected in a satirical
ballad which refers to him as the »Royal
Leaseholder« while calling the wealthy
Joen Mortensen of í Trøðum just plain
»Farmer«.12
The remaining six of Clemensen’s in-
formants designated in the »Sandoyarbók«
register as residents of Sandur were in fact
out-of-towners who had come as adults to
Sandur as either servants or spouses. All
three of Clemensen's male out-of-towners
arrived in Sandur as servants. A close look
at their backgrounds reveals, however,
that at least two of these informants, who
ostensibly represent Sandur’s lowest class,
had close ties to royal tenant households.
Mikkel Thomassen (three ballads) was one
of the many children of the royal leasehold-
er of i Stórustovu on the island of Skúgvoy;
Thomassen had first come to Sandur as a
young boy to work for his older sister
Malene, the widow of two of the village’s
royal leaseholders (those of undir Skarði
and á Klettum), and later established his
own household. On the other hand,
Morten Olesen (two ballads sung as one),
originally of Tórshavn, spent his whole life
as a servant working in royal farmer house-
holds: the 1801 census shows him in the
employ of Ole Johannessen, a royal farmer
in the village of Dalur; and some time be-
fore 1816 he came to Sandur to work for
Hans Eriksen, the royal farmer of Grúk-
helli.u
It is indeed interesting to note that all
four of Clemensen’s female informants
from Sandur were out-of-towners who had
come to Sandur as young adults, either as
wives or servants: Sigge Johannesdatter,
from Vestmannahavn on Streymoy; Su-
sanna Olesdatter, from neighboring Dalur;
Elsebet Joensdatter, from the nearby vil-
lage of Skarvanes; and Birgitte Anders-
datter, from Strendur on Eysturoy. How-
ever, the fact that Clemensen failed to col-
lect any texts from women who had grown
up in Sandur does not necessarily mean
that these women did not know any. After
all, they had heard their familys’ ballads
again and again in the household kvøldseta,
just as their brothers had done. Although
the women of Sandur doubtless knew the
heroic ballads customarily sung in their
homes, it was eviently their male relatives
who fell heir to the in-village performance
rights to these texts. Thus, the women had
to be content with either passively listening
or, at best, singing along. But the situation
seems to have been different for the out-of-
towners. Even though these women had
probably also been passive participants in
the ballad tradition of their native villages,
they were free in Sandur, where they had
no male relatives preempting them, to be-
come the active performers of at least those
of their heroic ballads that were not known
in their new home.
The social background of the women
who sang for Clemensen was the same as
that of the men: three of four were the
daughters of royal leaseholders. (The
fourth was Clemensen’s sister-in-law.) The
repertoires of the women, however, were
much more limited than those of the men:
Elsebet Joensdatter provided Clemensen
with as many as three ballads, whereas the
others supplied him with just one apiece.
On the whole, the women from Sandur list-
ed in the »Sandoyarbók« register are out-