Jóannes Patursson

Jóannes Patursson (May 6, 1866 – August 2, 1946) was a Faroese nationalist leader and poet.

He was the great-grandson of the Faroese national hero Nólsoyar Páll. His brother Sverri Patursson was an important writer and his sister Susanna Helena Patursson the first feminist of the Faroe Islands.

Jóannes was born in 1866 as the eldest son of a wealthy farmer in Kirkjubøur. The so-called King's Farm of Kirkjubøur dates back to the 11th century, was the seat of the Faroese bishop until the 1536 Reformation and became — and still remains today — the greatest Royal Danish fief of the Faroese when King Christian III of Denmark confiscated the clerical properties. Jóannes Patursson was to become one of the greatest Faroese of his time.

On the traditional farmstead he grew up in an environment where Faroese folklore was especially cultivated. Here people had gathered for centuries for the daily Kvøldseta, the evening get-together, where old tales would be told, Faroese ballads would be sung and the Faroese dance was popular. All this happened at a time when the Faroese language was only just being committed to writing due to this oral tradition.

Jóannes was sent to Norway for an apprenticeship in farming. There he came across the Norwegian national movement that was fighting to prevent the Norwegian language from being assimilated by Danish.

At home in Tórshavn, the Faroese capital near the Patursson farm, Danish was at the time the overwhelmingly dominant language. Still it was a time of national awakening. Already in 1856 the Danish trading monopoly had been lifted from the Faroe Islands and the islanders were experiencing a fast development from a medieval agricultural society to a modern nation of fishermen.

...
Wikipedia