Gentænkningen af en længselsfuld drøm om øen

: En økokritisk analyse af den litterære bearbejdning af turismens fremstilling af Færøerne

Abstract

In 2013 the Faroese tourist office Visit Faroe Islands launched a promotional campaign describing the island destination as untouched, unspoiled and unbelievable. A well-known island description, also echoing the phrase: ”No man is an island” by English poet John Donne (1572-1631). However, many island nations are much less isolated than these tourist slogans might claim. The Faroe Islands have experienced a significant growth in numbers of visitors in the years following the promotional campaign release. In this paper, based on aspects of island studies, primarily on postcolonial theory, tourism studies, geography, ecocritism, and culture theory, I attempt to explain the commercial presentation of the island destination. By focusing on the Faroe Islands and bringing in contemporary literature that depicts the islands as a country that is neither untouched nor unspoiled, I engage in an ecocritical analysis of the colonial and continental gaze on the island.

Written descriptions of the Faroe Islands have historically been defined by an outsider perspective. A growing fishing industry and autonomy throughout the 20th century represent a shift when Danish-Faroese authors such as William Heinesen (1900-1991) and Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen (1900-1938) describe the Faroe Islands as simultaneously distant as well as modern and centrally located relative to the outside world. This paper argues that the contemporary works, Bølger over det høje græs (2020) by Rúni Weihe (1985) and Ø (2016) by Siri Ranva Hjelm Jacobsen (1980) illustrate the arrival of a new and growing industry that changes the imagination of the island society once more: the tourism industry. Through the narrator’s consciousness of the island gaze due to the visible tourism in the Faroes, these contemporary works showcase a technical and scientific approach to the depiction of the island and hereby expose that in fact no island is an island; meaning that the island is a social construction.

Date of Award	20 Jun 2021
Original language	Danish
Supervisor	Agus Djaja Soewarta (Supervisor)