There are 236 Faroese ballads extant, consisting of a total of 70,000 stanzas. The oldest of these are presumably from the 14th century, the youngest from the 20th. In many of their motifs they share a European thematic repertoire; Karlamagnusar Kvæði (“Charlemagne’s ballad”) is about the Battle of Roncesvalles; Regin Smiður, Brynhildartáttur and Høgnatáttur are a Faroese analogue to the Nibelungenlied mentioning King Artala (Attila the Hun).
In 1639 the Danish antiquarian Ole Worm was sent twelve ballads from the Faroe Islands. Many more were collected by J.C. Svabo (1746–1824); they remained unpublished, but the MSS were lodged in the Danish Royal Library. A Faroese ballad was first printed in 1814, by Rasmus Rask.
In 1817 the Danish student of theology and botany Hans Christian Lyngbye visited the Faroe Islands to investigate seaweeds. He met Svabo, from whom he learned some Faroese, which enabled him to write down folk ballads. Lyngbye showed his material to Peter Erasmus Müller, who like him had an interest in ancient Scandinavian literature, and who recognized in Lyngbye’s notes a version of the Völsungasaga in a hitherto unknown oral form. At Müller’s behest, and with the help of Rafn, Lyngbye published the ballads as Færøiske Qvæder om Sigurd Fafnersbane og hans Æt (“Faroese ballads about Sigurd, slayer of Fafner, and his kin”, 1822), aided by a royal grant procured by Müller. This book, the first printed in Faroese, has been highly influential in establishing Faroese letters.
V.U. Hammershaimb started to collect and publish oral literature from 1846 onwards, in leading Danish journals such as Annaler for nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie (“Annals for Nordic antiquity and history”) and the Antiquarisk Tidsskrift (“Antiquarian journal”, published by the Kongelige Nordiske Oldskrift-Selskab, Royal Nordic Society for Ancient Manuscripts).
In 1842, 1847-48, and 1853, he visited the Faroe Islands to study the dialects, and to collect native ballads and folklore, which he published in Færøiske kvæder (“Faroese Ballads”, 1851-55). Hammershaimb’s philological work culminated in the Færøsk Antologi, published in instalments between 1886 and 1891 and in two volumes in 1891. This anthology fulfils in all respects the ideals of Romantically inclined philologists in Scandinavia and beyond, encompassing language, ballads, proverbs, and other cultural fields, all of which, so it was felt, could lead one back to the mainspring and, hence, the core, of a nation’s identity and character.
All over the Faroe Islands ballad-collectors were active; their collections were named after the islands or towns where the ballads were collected. Well known are Sandoyarbók (“The book of Sandoy”, 1821-31, collected by Johannes Clemensen), Fugloyarbók (“The book of Fugloy”, 1854), Kvæðasavn frá Sandvík (“The collection from Sandvík”, 1837), and Koltursbók (“The book of Koltur”, 1887). The folklore scholars who made use of these collections saw the ballads primarily as texts, with little attention to their melodies. Svend Grundtvig and Jørgen Block gathered Faroese folk ballads under the title Føroya kvæði: Corpus Carminum Faroensium (“The ballads of the Faroe Islands”) into their large-scale collection of Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser (“The old ballads of Denmark”, started in 1853), but without the music and melodies.
