Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1987, Page 29

SANDOYARBÓK
33
collector posthumously attributed his text
of »Trøllini í Homalondum« (CCF 28) to
this cousin.14
It is unlikely to be a coincidence that
nearly all the »ordinary« male and female
contributors to »Sandoyarbók« should be
precisely those with close ties to the collec-
tor.15 It is much more likely that the dissim-
ilar collecting patterns among the elite and
non-elite of Sandur reflect the two diffe-
rent types of performance situation in Far-
oese tradition and Clemensen’s use of them
in gathering texts for his »Sandoyarbók«.
The relatively wide distribution of his sing-
ers with royal-tenant connections would
seem to indicate that his knowledge of their
repertoires stemmed from the public
dances, which drew performers from all
over the village. On the other hand, the
more restricted distribution of those of his
male informants whose background was
more humble or who were female suggests
that his acquaintance with the repertoires
of these people was gained mainly in the
more private kvøldseta, specifically in his
own home and the homes of close neigh-
bors, where he was a habitual and informal
visitor. It was here, for example, that
women, who had little to gain by asserting
themselves in a dance tradition dominated
by men, might freely perform the heroic
ballads they knew. However, to the men of
crofter and freeholder households the vil-
lage dance offered an opportunity to win
status among their fellow villagers, and
they had thus every reason to seek to excel
there. The fact that Clemensen’s know-
ledge of their repertoires nonetheless
seems to have been of the local kvøldseta
variety rather than village-wide may bear
witness to the general lack of success of
these men in the dance ring in competition
against royal tenants and their brothers and
cousins.
It is clear that Clemensen did his worst
collecting among women and the common-
folk of Sandur who had no close ties to
him. His biggest lapse in this regard was
probably his failure to collect any texts
whatsoever from the Reverend Dean
Hentze’s household at í Todnesi. Perhaps
Clemensen assumed that he would find few
Faroese ballads in the parlor of the Danish
minister. His mistake was, however, that
he overlooked the servants’ quarters,
which commonly housed no fewer than
twelve people - an everchanging assort-
ment of able-bodied servants from all over
the islands and of older parishioners who
could no longer support themselves.16 De-
spite Clemensen’s oversight, it is possible
that some of the ballads once heard in
these quarters may have been preserved in
the extensive repertoire of the minister’s
eldest son, Johan Michael Hentze. It would
be ill-advised, however, to suppose that all
of Hentze’s repertoire stemmed from his
childhood experience of the kvøldseta at í
Todnesi. It is obvious, for example, that his
text of »Risin av Leittrabergi« (CCF 11),
reported to Clemensen in 1825, was learn-
ed from H.C. Lyngbye’s Færøiske Qvæder
om Sigurd Fofnersbane og hans Æt
(1822).17
More difficult to understand was Clem-
ensen’s failure to obtain any ballads what-
soever from his close neighbors at Pállins-
hús á Heyggi. The family living there until
1822 is reported to have had in its possessi-
on the long cycle »ílints tættir«, which it
sold to the royal farmer at á Trøð in Skála-
vík for a slaughtered lamb. Even though