22 Faroes – Barbara – Jørgen-Franz Jacobsen (Score 7.80)

The story opens in a Faroes gale, with roaring winds and pounding seas. A sighting has been made of the “Fortuna”, a ship from Copenhagen bringing much needed stores. It’s November 1750 something.

The action is in the Royal Stores Warehouse in Torshavn where a motley bunch of men are gathered, chewing the cud about the news and other things. The store clerk has provoked animosity between two of the men, deliberately, which leads to great hilarity for the others but no more than repeated verbal violence between the victims.

The door opens, letting in the gale. The eponymous Barbara, daughter of the deceased Judge Stenderup and his widow Magdalena. Barbara is obviously popular and well-liked by the men, who enjoy the banter (about the silk ribbons expected on the Fortuna) between her and her cousin Gabriel the store clerk. We learn that Gabriel has designs on marrying the twice-widowed Barbara and is hatching a plan to stop her marrying the priest expected on the “Fortuna”. Her two dead husbands were also priests.

It seems that the people are superstitious. There is talk of “Master Naaber of the Lofts”, with his pointy hat and yellow eyes, who wanders between all of the lofts in the town. There are “The seven members of the council” who sit at a long table writing letters. They have been seen, but no-one knows where the table is.

There is a conclave in the Pastor’s house at which a number of the senior members of the community are present to meet the new priest, Pastor Paul Aggerson. One is an old widow, Arngard. Her purpose in life seems to be to bad mouth Barbara, She obviously hates her and is out to make trouble for her. She effectively says, in the old way of speaking, that “she is no better than she should be”, meaning that she is of doubtful morality. Barbara’s fault, according to this harridan, seems to be that she is friendly with men who are not her husband, and we feel that there is nothing more than that innocent behaviour. She is, in fact, friendly towards everyone.

Barbara and her friend Suzanne come in. She is hoping to find a letter from the Fortuna to her, but no! The new Pastor seems taken by her.

After Pastor Wenzel has amazed his congregation by preaching the most powerful sermon they have ever heard, about the snares of the world, the congregation leaves. They all go home and are enjoying dinner when the alarm sounds as a large ship is seen approaching. No Danish ships are expected so it must be the enemy. Then another is seen. Panic ensues and people start to take their prize possessions and their flocks and food stores into the mountains.

It turns out to be three French warships returning from the American wars, and driven off course. There is no enmity between Denmark (and therefore The Faroes) and France. The vessels merely want to re-water. The officers and captains come ashore. There is great feasting, with dancing and other festivities. We see in great detail how Jealousy and Envy are fearsome demons.

On page 105 there is an expression which I have otherwise heard only in my native West of Scotland, “dead serious” (pronounced “deed serious” there. It derives ultimately from “indeed serious” but is now confused with the word “deid” which is the local pronunciation of “dead”.

On page 112 there is the story of Pastor Rasmus Ganting who went into a green mound where the “Earth people” live. That reminds me of the story of the real Reverend Robert Kirk of the Church of Scotland in Aberfoyle who wrote “The secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies” and claimed that it was based on what he learned while staying with the Little People. He wrote it in 1691 and seems to have disappeared, mysteriously, shortly after.

He appeared to people and talked to them about how to return him to the world of mortals. However, the people failed to bring him back, and he disappeared forever.

Pastor Paul becomes infatuated with Barbara, but I won’t tell you anything about the succeeding events so as not to spoil the story for you any more than I already have.

Suffice to say that I really enjoyed this story of a much maligned woman who was ahead of her time. I scored it at 8.5. I would suggest to any readers that you should make a list of the main characters and their relationships right from the start.