Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1987, Page 28

32
SANDOYARBÓK
numbered by the men by three to one; and
the ballads they sang, by ten to one. How-
ever, women may well have been more fre-
quent performers of ballads than the
»Sandoyarbók« register might seem to in-
dicate. What we know about late nine-
teenth-century ballad tradition suggests
that women were the premier performers
of the shorter and more melodic Danish
chivalric ballads, which had long been pop-
ular in the Faroe Islands. The collector,
however, was not interested in recording
these.
When informants’ names in the »Sand-
oyarbók« register are checked against the
1801 census listing of domiciles and against
a map showing the old farms and resi-
dences in the rather sprawling village of
Sandur, an interesting socio-geographic
pattern emerges. Whereas Clemensen’s in-
formants with close ties to the royal lease-
holders of Sandur came from virtually
every part of town, the state of affairs was
very different for his informants who were
more ordinary villagers and women - near-
ly all of these were Clemensen’s relatives
and close neighbors.
Informants closely related to royal ten-
ants came from all over Sandur. In the
neighborhood á Reyni, close to the collec-
tor’s home at í Króki, lived J. Michael
Widerøe Mikkelsen, the younger brother
of the royal tenant at undir Skarði. Just to
the north at undir Brekkuni was the resi-
dence of Jens Jensen, a cousin of the lease-
holder at undir Skarði and stepson of the
one at á Klettum. At í Koytu lived Hans Jo-
hannessen, the cousin of the wealthy lease-
holder at Miðstova í Trøðum and Clemen-
sen’s best informant. The least of Sandur’s
leaseholders, Erik Hansen, resided at
Grúkhelli in the neighborhood undir Reyn-
um, and further north at á Klettum resided
Mikkel Thomassen, the son of a leasehold-
er on Skúgvoy and the brother-in-law of
two of Sandur’s leaseholders. On the other
side of the village, at í Trøðum, lived
Simon Danielsen and his uncle Joen Mort-
ensen, the royal tenant at Miðstova, as well
as Sheriff Johan Michael Hentze of Uttasta-
stova.
Women and members of households in
Sandur with no close ties to royal tenants
were much more likely to have served as
informants for Clemensen if they were re-
lated to him or lived near him - at á Reyni
or a Heyggi, for example, than if they came
from further away at á Klettum, í Todnesi,
í Trøðum, or á Sondum. Indeed, the most
intensive collecting in this group was done
in Clemensen’s own home, where he ob-
tained a total of ten ballads from three fam-
ily members - his brother, Ole; his mother,
Sigge Johannesdatter; and his sister-in-law,
Susanna Olesdatter. From his immediate
neighbors at á Skeljalaðnum - his second
cousin Elsebet Joensdatter and her hus-
band, Joen Jakobsen - he collected three
ballads and one anomalous text (a list of
cultivated acreage in the northern islands).
Close by, at á Uttara Heyggi, Clemensen re-
corded a ballad from Joen Joensen, the
father of a childhood playmate who had
died of the catarrhal fever that raged
through Sandur during the winter of 1817-
1818. A few minutes’ walk further down
the road had lived another of Clemensen’s
childhood friends, his first cousin Jakob
Joensen of uttan fyri Á, who had also died
of the fever during that dismal winter: the