Old Tóvó stroked his great-grandson’s hand. He could tell him one thing: If the Hestmen decided to drain that pond someday, they would find a mass grave of newborns swaddled in lined shawls. Of course, Pisan would have to answer for her deed on the Last Day. But so would the island’s lechers. And the Devil give them what they deserved!
In Saga Hestoyar, Pastor Viderø writes: A multitude of tears have been shed here on Hestoy, but God transforms them to the most beautiful rainbow.
Pisan was never able to see the pastor’s rainbow. Or rather, one might say that, with a freshly knitted shawl and her feet encased in leather shoes and clogs and with a bundle beneath her arm, she fled the rainbow over the fjord.
For many years, Pisan earned a living working on different farms throughout Sydstremoy, and then she moved into a garret near Sjarpholið in Tórshavn, where she, among other things, spread fish to dry on Rundingen and helped in houses where women were giving birth. And what she could not settle with money, she settled with her flesh.
One of her long-time suitors and friends was Old Tóvó, and when she grew old, he pitied her and took her into the Geil house. And it was there she was taken by measles.
The cart arrived for Pisan on the Eve of Pentecost. Little Tóvó was sick with the measles just then and did not fully comprehend what was happening. He saw only Pisan’s bluish face as they lifted her into the coffin.
Here it should be added that Old Tóvó became a widower in 1822. Ebba, his wife, hailed from Venzilsstova in Kaldbak, and they had two children. Their daughter, Gudrun, was usually called Gudda. At 11 years of age, she became maid to Argir hospital’s tenant farmer. Later, in 1820, Claus Manicus was appointed Landkirurg, and in the years he worked on the Faroes, Gudda served as his maid. When the Manicuses left the country in 1828, they invited Gudda to come with them to Denmark. She served as their maid for 13 years, and died unexpectedly at the age of 49.
Old Tóvó’s son was also named Tóvó. The younger Tóvó and his wife, Annelin, lived in the Geil house. Annelin was pregnant when her husband sank with the Royndin Fríða. She gave birth to their daughter, Betta, in 1810. Shortly thereafter, Annelin married Finnur á Kirkju, a farmer from Kirkja north on Fugloy, and she left Betta, to be fostered by her first husband’s mother and father in Tórshavn.
Sorrow and Rhyme
SIXTEEN DAYS LATER the cart again stopped outside the Geil house. To Tóvó’s mind, it was as if a stick had been stuck between the spokes of both wheels, and when he later thought back, it was as if the cart had stood there his whole childhood, digging and hewing itself deeper and deeper toward his soul’s very bottom.
Nils Tvibur and a man with a mask set the empty coffin on the floor. The mask tapered into a beak that held a mixture of dried moss, caraway, and horseradish. The smell supposedly prevented contagion.
The Geil house had become quite nice. The floorboards were new. Martimann had laid at least half the floor and installed the stove before he contracted the measles. The disease’s progression had been as expected. His eyes and cheeks had swelled up and for a week he had suffered a high fever. When he was feeling better, however, and his cough was somewhat improved, he thought there was no harm in occasionally nailing down a floorboard. There was no one else to do it, and he could not make himself ask Old Tóvó. The old man had enjoyed an excellent reputation during his years as a shoemaker, but as a carpenter he was not worth much. As a result, Martimann got out of bed; progress was made with every board he nailed fast. He saved the widest boards for the area around the door; these were up to eleven inches in breadth. The boards had been sawed from a piece of driftwood his father had given him, and on a sunny day last summer they had dragged the tree trunk to Tórshavn and got it up into the boathouse’s loft to dry.
It was that ill-fated, short trip down to the boathouse to retrieve the boards that proved too much. Martimann grew damp and cold, and when he lay back down in bed, he fell victim to all the complications Old Tóvó had been constantly warning him against, and which strong Martimann simply could not imagine.
His intestines felt like they had a life of their own and were writhing like worms in his gut. Sometimes they squirmed up into his throat and made him vomit, or retreated down to his rectum, spraying filth onto the blanket Old Tóvó had placed beneath him.
Old Tóvó tried to coax him to eat. Boiled milk was somewhat satisfying and was good for combating diarrhea. However, the mites that lived on skerpikjøt—well-aged, wind-dried mutton, a specialty of the Faroe Islands—were said to be even better at stopping diarrhea. The only problem was they had no dried mutton. Out in the storehouse were some dried fish, and also a barrel of salted pilot-whale meat.
Martimann had been the anchor of the Geil house ever since he and Betta had married. For many summers he sailed with the Scottish sloop Glen Rose, and much of that income went to renovating the dilapidated house. He laid new birch bark on the roof and asked Ludda-Kristjan to build a double window, which he himself installed. The house sat on rocky ground, and Martimann built a chimney in the northwest corner. He covered a small piece of ground in front of the chimney with stones, and that is where he placed the new stove. The smoking parlor was converted to a kitchen, and the daylight streaming through the new double window quite literally heralded brighter days.
Once the floor was finished, the plan was to install a kitchen table where Betta could sort clothes and attend to other household tasks. Martimann was a driven man, and during the years he lived in the Geil house, they wanted for nothing.
By the end of this year, however, the coffers had run dry, and Old Tóvó could hardly go to Landkirurg Regenburg or to Doctor Napoleon empty-handed and ask them to look at Martimann.
Nonetheless, Old Tóvó did speak to Napoleon, and the doctor told him that good care was all that could be done for the disease’s complications. “I know what I’m talking about,” Napoleon said. “Good wishes and devoted care, there’s not much more in our power.”
Old Tóvó did not expect an educated man like Napoleon to hold home remedies in high esteem, and so he did not dare ask the doctor for any skerpikjøt mites.
Indeed, he felt his only choice was to do what Tórshavnars did when the German privateer, “Baron von Hompesch,” plundered Tórshavn’s trade coffers in 1808: go out begging.
The Húsagarður farmer had meat, of course, but Old Tóvó didn’t have the courage to go knocking on a Sunman’s door.
However, Old Tóvó quenched his shame and made the trip to the Quillinsgarður house where the former Amtmand’s wife, Anna Sofie von Løbner, lived. He told her his errand while standing in the doorway, and for a moment, while she tapped her knuckles with her fingers, she looked at him in surprise.
Old Tóvó could well remember when Anna Sofie had been one of the Húsagarður farmer’s milkmaids. Her father was a cooper, so she was known as Anna Sofía hjá Bøkjaranum, or the Cooper’s Anna Sofie. She was a shapely woman, and thanks to her round figure, she was asked to play one of the maids in Holberg’s comedy The Lying-in Room.
Letters, however, were not Anna Sofia’s strong suit; she needed someone else to read aloud her lines so that she could memorize them. And that other person turned out to be no less than Commandant Emilius von Løbner. He was patient and kind and read well, and he never failed to light a fire in the Bilegger stove so that the room where they sat was cozy. Sometimes these readings lasted well past midnight, and during their breaks Løbner would offer the budding actress sweet wine and even sweeter words. And she let herself be enticed by his mature charms, became giddy, inviting, and compliant.
“Just call me Emilius,” he said, placing a candy on her moist, pink tongue. She let him bathe her with expensive soap, and he told her this was how aristocrats enjoyed themselves in the King’s city. He placed the dish of warm water on the table, kneaded soap into the wet washcloth, and received permission to wash her face and neck and along her hairline. Nor did she protest when he untied her blouse, washed her beneath the arm
s, and carefully dried the sweat off her heavy bosom. She enjoyed this intriguing midnight game, allowing him suckle her breasts and making no objection when he loosened her skirt. He said “hopsasa,” and she lifted her rump while he spread a towel on the chair to keep the plush dry. The towel was so large that he also folded it over her pubis, so that she would not feel too exposed. While he washed her toes, one after the other, he caressed and patted her thighs, which he called love’s white columns. And just like the Bilegger stove, Anna Sofie purred with contentment.
“Just sigh,” he whispered. There was no harm in sighing aloud when you were enjoying yourself.
By the time the comedy was performed in Fogedstova during September 1813, Anna Sofie was pregnant. The couple married in January 1814, the same day Frederik VI signed his name to the document dividing Norway from Denmark. In April, Anne Sofie delivered a stillborn male child. Three years later she was pregnant again. She gave birth to Ludvig, named after his Danish grandfather, and in 1825 she gave birth to Henrietta Elisabeth, named for both her Danish and Faroese grandmothers.
Why Løbner left the Faroes the same year that his daughter was born remains uncertain. By then he was in his sixties and his health was poor. In particular his sight was failing, and he often said that his eyes could not tolerate the raw Faroese climate.
There were also some complaints about how he conducted his office, but precisely how serious these complaints were remains unclear. In the second volume of Tórshavn’s History, Jens Pauli Nolsøe and Kári Jespersen attempt to shed some light on the man: To his credit, he compiled Løbner’s Tables in 1813. They provide a valuable description of Faroese society and are actually the only precise record we have of economic conditions in Faroese rural society. For Tórshavn it was important that [Løbner] allowed Álaker field to be added to the city in 1807, which nearly doubled the area then belonging to Tórshavn.
Much of Løbner’s life remains in the dark, however, and it is perhaps for this reason that a number of Løbner’s descendants have tried to envelop the man in mystery. Among other things, it has been suggested that the insane monarch Christian VII was his father. In that case, Løbner’s mother became pregnant when Christian was still a prince. Løbner was born in 1766, the same year that Christian VII was crowned king, and it is conceivable that the prince visited his relatives at Augustenborg Palace the preceding year. Løbner’s father, Jakob Ludvig, was a chamber lackey at Augustenborg.
There is also a lack of information concerning what Løbner did during his final years after he returned to his homeland. There is some indication, however, that he lived with Caroline Wroblewsky, who for several years ran a private school in Copenhagen. Wroblewsky adopted a young girl, Emilie Christine, and in 1858 she took over her foster mother’s school. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Danish Women states, among other things, that: In 1850 [Emilie Christine] changed her name to Løbner after her adoptive father, the former prefect of the Faroe Islands, Emilius Marius Løbner, who died the previous year.
What is certain, however, is that Løbner spent a quarter of a century on the Faroes, and that he was around 60 when he departed. One reason for this lengthy sojourn was the major changes introduced by the Napoleonic Wars. Denmark, namely, had not fought a war since the Great Northern War ended in 1720, and in the extended stretch of time that followed—which historians term the Florissante Period—Copenhagen transformed itself into a European trading capital. During and despite the various wars plaguing Europe, the Danes sailed the seas under a flag of neutrality, an extremely profitable undertaking for both ships and maritime trading companies. The Danish-Norwegian trading fleet was the second largest in Europe, and aside from overseeing Danish colonial interests, the fleet sailed the globe, exporting and importing wares.
The Florissante Period ended in 1807. Fearing what might happen if the Danish fleet fell into Emperor Napoleon’s hands, the British attacked. 30,000 soldiers were put ashore at Vedbæk north of Copenhagen, and a mighty armada besieged the capital. From September 2-6, Copenhagen was bombed and burned, and the British seized the entire Danish navy and every transport ship they could find.
However, it was not just Danish economic development that was stalled. All of Europe suffered a period of stagnation that lasted until around 1830.
When Løbner returned to Copenhagen, he was well past his prime, and in that respect he was no different than his homeland. Denmark had been transformed to a half-blind geographical bagatelle located on the Øresund. The Swedish had taken Norway, and even though Frederik VI’s jurisdiction still included a region extending south toward Eideren, people were already clamoring for both Schleswig and Holstein to join the new German Confederation. As such, it remained a question of time how long Jutland could call itself a Danish peninsula.
A smile tugged at Frú Løbner’s lips and for a short moment she resembled her strange nickname: Sildahøvdið, or Herring Head.
“I recognize you,” she said, placing a hand on Old Tóvó’s arm. “You’re Tórálvur í Geil.”
She gestured to the door and told him to follow her. On the far side of the path was the Amtmand’s yard, and within it stood the storehouse. She kept the padlock key on a cord around her neck, and when she opened the door, Old Tóvó put his hand to his heart. What a beautiful sight! Several handsome barrels of salted meat stood on the floor. Besides whale meat and blubber, she also had lamb and brined guillemots. A trough held some lightly salted mutton wrapped in white cloth, and on the shelves were several jars in which Frú Løbner had preserved berries and rhubarbs and also mussels. Particularly inviting was the smell of two smoked pork sides. Some smoked trout were also hanging there.
The best smell of all, though, came from the dried mutton. Frú Løbner inspected the legs and found one that was sufficiently hairy. She untied the knot, wrapped the greenish leg in a cloth, and told him not to say another word about it. She also gave him a jar of rhubarb jam, saying that it would undoubtedly do Betta some good.
That evening the Geil household had bread and skerpikjøt to eat. No one, though, had much of an appetite. Martimann was unable to eat anything solid, only managing a couple of spoonfuls of warm milk. He was so weak that Old Tóvó had to press the scraped-off mites against his molars, and Martimann tried his best to take some strength from the Løbner storehouse’s gift. His cough was somewhat diminished, the sound emerging from his throat now was more like a weak wheeze.
While Old Tóvó sat and watched over Martimann, he did as he had so often done before and hummed his homemade verses. He did not know if Martimann heard him, but little Tóvó lay perfectly still on his bed and listened.
Great-grandfather sat there rocking with his arms crossed over his chest. And it was difficult for him, especially when he recited the old Catholic lays against syftilsi, the illnesses produced by witchcraft. However, he also sang about Grandma Pisan, and then his voice grew small and meek.
March, the mild month, has two hands
searches in the raven’s nest.
Pisanhead from Hestoy came
pisanhead from Hestoy went.
Behind an old man sits.
Tread hard, grip fast
magic days seven.
Noves buba turra
persia gif dissia
nissia gif dissia.
Searches memory with two hands.
Tread hard, grip fast
ravens shriek in the fells.
Little pisan went.
Behind an old man sits.
The Christmas sun, the bell ore,
rings in a sea-washed heart.
The Sweet One in a manger
the manger in a stable
the stable of stone
the stone of earth.
Mother and father and whale oil
grandma and grandpa and tanned-leather shoelaces.
The shuttle sings in the loom
the shuttle sings in the loom.
Fish swim in tears
tears salty as the sea
/> the sea deep as sorrow.
Oh, you Sweet One
grant us winter cod
oh, you Sweet One
spare my tears for Martimann.
January, the peeking month, its mild sun
timid heavenly eye.
Holy Birgitta feeds gentle doves
they fly over gleaming ridges.
The days in blood
the blood in eggs.
Delights curse the harrow
Delights curse the plough.
January’s mild sun
dries the dew on the cheek.
The Master Barber
THE CART ARRIVED for Martimann on St. Botolph’s Day. The effect of the disease on his face and throat had been so severe that the soft and blood-rich parts had turned dark blue and black in places. The white of his eyes were bloodshot, and his right eye had nearly popped out of his skull. Now that he was dead, his eyes were somewhat sunken, but his Adam’s apple was still rigid, and his mouth was slightly open, as if he were going to speak.
Betta sat at his side and stroked his face. Occasionally, she cried and shook his shoulders.
As soon as they had set the coffin on the ground, Nils Tvibur sensed that they might have some trouble here. He cleared his throat and said rather awkwardly that it was against the Landkirurg’s directive to frequent death’s domain himself.
The Brahmadells Page 3