Venceslaus Ulricus Hammershaimb (1819–1909) is remembered as the founding father of the Faroese nation. He came from an elite Faroese family: his father had been the last to hold the ancient function of bailiff on the Faroe Islands. After Denmark had dissembled the Løgting (local Faroese governing assembly) in 1816, the family’s standing declined, to young Hammershaimb’s chagrin. He studied theology, and became a Lutheran minister, but saw Nordic philology as his true vocation. Influenced by Rasmus Rask’s work on Icelandic and Faroese, Hammershaimb established a modern Faroese orthography on the model of Icelandic. In this he was aided by the leader of the 19th-century Icelandic national movement, Jón Sigurðsson.
From the mid-1840s onwards, Hammershaimb started to publish articles on the oral literature he had been collecting; these appeared in leading Danish journals like Annaler for nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie (“Annals for Nordic antiquity and history”, 1836-63) and Antiquarisk Tidsskrift (“Antiquarian journal”, 1842-64), 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). In 1884 he also published a new translation, in his own orthography, of the medieval Faroe Saga, to replace an earlier edition published in 1832 by C.C. Rafn with the help of Rask. 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.
Hammershaimb himself also romanticized and idealized the Faroe Islands and the life, customs, cultural richness, and closeness to nature of the common people. The pastoral, and rural nostalgia, are prevailing topics. But he had a practical eye for powerful connections – as with Rask and Jón Sigurðsson. He could draw on important networks in his orthographic conflict with his erstwhile student Jakobsen, the first Faroese to gain a doctoral degree in Nordic philology (on a dissertation about the Norn language in the Shetlands).
Hammershaimb is remembered and commemorated extensively. Most Faroese writers from around the turn of the last century wrote poems in his honour, many while Hammershaimb was still alive. In 1919 a first statue was erected in his hometown, Sandavágur; another followed in 1948, in the capital Tórshavn; nor was that the last.
