o
a ship and conveyed it to Sweden."]

PART II

BALLADS

BALLADS

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

I. The ballads of the Faroe Islands aroused the interest of Ole Worm
as early as 1639; but the five ballads which he took down are no
longer extant, and we know of them only from a reference by Peder
Syv[1] towards the close of the seventeenth century. In 1673 Lucas
Debes[2] wrote a description of the islands which contained an account
of their dances and songs; but unfortunately he did not transcribe any
of the ballads. Indeed the balladry and songs attracted little general
attention till the close of the eighteenth century, when Jens Kristjan
Svabo devoted himself to a careful study of the language and a
collection of the ballads of his native Islands.

In 1781-2, during a visit to the Faroes, Svabo turned his attention
especially to Faroese folk-songs and made a ms. collection of
fifty-two ballads, which were purchased by the Crown Prince and
presented to the Royal Library at Copenhagen. It is interesting to
note that Svabo, like his contemporary Bishop Percy[3], thought it
necessary to apologise in his preface for making the collection, and
humbly claims for it an interest merely antiquarian. It is clear,
however from his tone throughout the Preface, that Svabo had a far
more scholarly appreciation of the value of his material than had
Percy. Indeed it would be difficult to overestimate the debt which all
succeeding students of Faroese ballads owe to him. Disappointed in his
hopes of public recognition of his work done for the Civil Service,
he retired to the Islands, where, in solitude and poverty, he devoted
himself, till his death in 1829, to the collection and transcription
of ballad material. His personal help and example inspired other
Faroe-islanders to make collections for themselves, some of which,
notably Klemmentsen's _Sandoyjarbok_, are among our best authorities
for the ballads today. His own ballad collection, still in ms. in the
Royal Library at Copenhagen, has never been published; but Schroter,
Lyngbye and Hammershaimb all owed their incentive and inspiration to
his work. To study the history of Faroese ballad collections without
realising the force of Svabo's personality is to leave Hamlet out of
the play.

In 1817 the Danish botanist, Hans Kristjan Lyngbye visited the Faroes,
where he became acquainted with "the learned Svabo" as he calls him,
and also with Johan Henrik Schroter, a