“Angelica?” the farmer repeated dubiously. “You must be joking.”
“No, my good man,” Napoleon replied. “The Crusaders ate Angelica archangelica when they fought against the heathens in Jerusalem, and it was the Archangel Gabriel himself who, lantern in hand, guided the wounded knights to the plant.”
When the farmer realized that angelica figured in sacred stories, and that it was respectably baptized in Latin, he gave up protesting. He was not convinced, however, but scratched his beard and mumbled: “Hmm, I see, I see.”
And Napoleon knew what lay behind the words: “Hmm, I see, I see.” He glanced at the farmer and felt sympathy for his distrust. The man was a product of what had enabled the Faroese people to survive for nearly a thousand years in these northern latitudes, and part of his spiritual burden was doubting everything he heard and also most of what he saw.
Napoleon, however, could not very well tell him that there was no medical cure for the measles. It would be like denying his own profession. It would partially decimate the status medical science had finagled itself over the last centuries. Yet that was the bitter truth. Once the disease had taken hold, there was nothing to do. The incubation period was typically two weeks, sometimes shorter and sometimes longer, and then came the fever and the coughing and the outbreak over the whole body. However, if the patient was in tolerable health, he could usually overcome the measles. Good care was the most important thing, and so a bit of Angelica archangelica, dipped in cream and sprinkled with sugar, was nice on the tongue.
The corner of Pløyen’s mouth twitched. He reminded the doctors of the high mortality rate in Tórshavn alone, and the fact that the epidemic was not diminishing. True, Dean Andreas had various remedies squirreled away in his rectory down in Leirar, but fighting the measles required more than Hoffmann’s drops and old Faroese home remedies, not to mention the witchcraft practiced by that quack, Pól á Miðgerði, south in Akrar. Their twelve-hundred fellow citizens living on Suðuroy both wanted and needed a doctor’s skilled hand and wise council.
Pløyen showed Doctor Napoleon a letter that Dean Andreas had written concerning the situation down south, and while Napoleon perused the text, Pløyen remarked that his office was prepared to pay him 50 rigsdaler a month. Rather sarcastically, the Amtmand added that even though the Suðuroyars had sold most of their horses to the British coal mines, some four-footed beast could be found to carry the doctor between towns. Otherwise, the island was over-flowing with boats, eighteen hundred or so, according to Løbner’s tables.
Pløyen talked as if Napoleon had already agreed to the request, and he reminded the doctor of the numerous relatives he had on Suðuroy with whom he could stay. The Amtmand was irritated that Napoleon had even paused to consider.
“Tell me, is 50 rigsdaler a month not sufficient, when your countrymen are, quite literally, in mortal peril?”
“The people here in Tórshavn and Streymoy are also my countrymen,” Napoleon replied. “I also have to think about my clients here in town and can’t simply from one day to the next shut my door and sing, like Dean Hans: To the world, farewell.”
“Regenburg can take care of your patients,” Pløyen said.
Doctor Napoleon brushed a piece of lint from his arm and turned to Regenburg.
“I suggest, sir, that you travel to Suðuroy. You are the Landkirurg, after all, and Suðuroy falls under the your jurisdiction. In the meantime, I can attend to the patients in the north fjords and otherwise cover whatever medical duties arise here.”
A heavy silence descended on the room.
Deep down Pløyen was forced to admit that Napoleon’s counter proposal came as no surprise. Napoleon Nolsøe was an enigma. His attitude toward civil authorities, a class, moreover, of which he was a part, could be utterly juvenile. He continued to be infatuated with student life in Copenhagen, and had assumed the roll of a kind of rebellious grand seigneur who mocked authority while also trying to cultivate it in the stubborn Faroese soil.
And Napoleon also knew full well that Regenburg despised travel. It was no secret that you could hardly get him out of town, and that he especially hated long boat trips. Napoleon had obviously realized that the Landkirurg was the driving force behind the Suðuroy proposal. Nonetheless, given the current state of things, Pløyen still could not understand Napoleon’s pig-headedness.
Regenburg knew essentially nothing about the Faroe Islands when he assumed the office of Landkirurg two years ago. He knew that the hospital had been built in 1828, and he knew what his salary would be, but not much more than that. In his ignorance he thought that sick patients could simply be brought to the city, or that he could travel to sick patients along relatively safe roads, if not by wagon then certainly on horseback. Yet that the mountains could be so precipitous, and that some roads considered passable were in fact narrow sheep paths along vertical cliff faces—that he had not suspected. Had he known the truth about traveling the Faroes, he never would have sought the post.
The shortest way to get between towns was by boat, and if the weather was good in the summer, a boat trip could be nice. But summers were short, the routes across the sound and the fjord were perilous, and there were no piers. Even the trip to Suðuroy seldom took less than ten hours. Regenburg loathed these long journeys, and simply the thought of being away from his family for one or two months, or however long his medical duties would require it, filled him with anxiety.
Pløyen walked over to the cupboard, poured himself a glass of brandy, and drained it. He tried to control his dislike for this upstart shopkeep. Who the devil did he think he was? How could a doctor treat the Hippocratic Oath so irresponsibly? And he had let this arrogant man snip his hemorrhoids! At the thought, Pløyen’s anus contracted, and he pointed at Doctor Napoleon with the empty glass in his hand.
“It’s vile to refuse to help your countrymen, now that death literally stands at the door. It’s vile. Do you hear me? V-i-l-e! There’s no other word for your refusal!”
“This isn’t a trial,” Napoleon answered icily. “However, I will state that on April 17th, when the honorable Landkirurg here thought measles was rheumatic fever, I had already reached the correct diagnosis, or in any case, I was certain it could not be rheumatic fever. I also advised you both we should think about isolating the city. Truly, I did. But you told me to calm down. The country’s highest authorities said calm down!”
Napoleon also reminded them that the people of Víkar had gone ahead and isolated their town. The town gates were shut to all travelers, both those coming from north and south, and no one in a boat made landfall either, and the result was a measles-free town.
For his part, all Pløyen did was prattle about miasmatic diseases. His problem was a bad conscience. Eight years ago measles had been crossed off the list of dangerous contagions. It happened while David Vithusen was Landkirurg. And the decision was understandable, at least if one lived in Copenhagen. It was royal decree that declared the disease killing off the Faroese people to be innocuous. Indeed, in Denmark and further south on the mainland, people had also developed resistance to the various contagions the spring typically brought with it. However, the Faroe Islands were not Denmark. Conditions in the two places were not the same. Yet that was exactly the point that various officials apparently failed to grasp.
“In terms of consequences,” Napoleon said, “it is my belief that a lack of courage from your side and all the miasmatic nonsense on the part of Landkirurg Regenburg bears the brunt of the responsibility for the fact that measles now flies on wings.”
Pløyen had already opened the door and bade Doctor Napoleon farewell.
The Lapsed Prayer
TÓVÓ WALKED SLOWLY across the sand. His shoe prints followed him. A few steps to the right, then an arc to avoid some seaweed, then a few slow steps left, none of them more than a span apart.
In his pocket was a paper bag containing the small opium vial for his mother. His left hand held the orange and his right a piece of suga
r candy that the doctor had kindly given him for free. Tóvó felt happy. The lumpy brown candy tasted good, and it was delightful to slide his tongue across it. Yet he was crying, too, and that is what confused him. How could someone be both happy and tearful? You could not be both sad and happy. That made no sense. Perhaps it was like when you both pooped and peed. And piss was also a kind of tears, a little yellow stream you could aim at a spiderweb or at the head of some stupid chicken trying to pull a worm up from the dirt.
And he had also learned two new words that day: opium drops and orange. The orange looked like the sun, it was gold and round. The skin was uneven and rather like whale-skin blubber, but the odor was different, sweet and mild, just like the old evenings at the Geil house when Mama baked bread in the embers and everyone was happy. That was before they got the horrible lion-footed stove. He hoped that one morning the stove would work itself free from the chimney, walk outside, and never come back.
And the sun had been shining all morning. The smell of dried seaweed rose from the hot rocks, it hung like an invisible fog around the Bird Tax Bridge and drifted all the way down to their boathouse. Tóvó sat at the boathouse door and longed for his father. He missed him so terribly it made his chest hurt and his head pound.
Here is where his father made boards from the driftwood. At the gable end of the boathouse was a large door, and while one end of the tree trunk rested on the boathouse floor, the other end was placed on a large sawhorse. Ludda-Kristjan pulled and guided the saw blade up, while his father stood below, his hair and body white from the sawdust. Hour after hour they dragged the blade up and down, and the boards that finally emerged were slightly reddish and smelled nice. Mother had brought everyone hot tea and a snack, and she spit on a rag to wipe the sawdust from her husband’s eyes. Oh! How beautiful she was that day, all her handsome teeth glinting, she was light of foot and happy as a lamb. Mogul also took part in the merriment, he swam several meters after a stick that Great-Grandfather cast out toward Bursatangi. Later as they cut tongues and grooves into the boards, Tóvó and Lýðar collected the shavings into bags, since there was nothing better for lighting a fire.
Tóvó stretched out on his stomach and blew some sand off a flat rock. Then he dribbled some spit onto the surface and used a corner of his sleeve to wipe the stone clean. For a moment he wondered if he should place the sugar candy next to the orange. But the candy tasted so good, and who knew if God even liked rock candy.
He folded his hands and shut his eyes tight.
He had not meant all the awful things he had wished on his father that time Mogul mauled one of Frú Løbner’s stupid hens. Whales could not even bite, and rocks certainly did not rain from the sky. Not in broad daylight. Well, maybe in Denmark, but not in Tórshavn. He had not meant what he had said, and if God wanted the orange, he was welcome to it.
Tóvó sat for a long time with his eyes closed. He clenched his teeth and his head pounded more fiercely than ever. Each time he was about to open them, he made himself count to nineteen. Finally, he could take it no longer. In agony of suspense, he peeked.
The orange was still there.
A Daguerrotype
WHEN AUGUST MANICUS returned from Suðuroy in September, he stopped by the Geil house.
“Perhaps you don’t remember me, sir. I was just a small boy when I left Tórshavn,” he said to Old Tóvó.
“But of course, it’s like you were cut from the same cloth as your father’s. And Claus was kind enough to send me a letter when poor Gudda died. I had Frú Løbner’s Henrietta read the letter to me. I don’t know why, but death seems to love the Geil house.”
August gave him a daguerreotype of Gudda’s grave. He said that his father had had it made and asked August to bring it, along with many greetings, to Old Tóvó.
Gudda was buried in Assistens Kirkegaard in Copenhagen, and on her gravestone was written:
GUDRUN THOROLFSDATTER
FROM TÓRSHAVN
LOVED AND MISSED
PART TWO
Carl Emil and Pole
AROUND ST. GREGORY’S Day in 1851, Amtmand Dahlerup encouraged Napoleon Nolsøe to take the new post of landkirurg on Suðuroy. A doctor’s house was going to be built near the Royal Danish Trade Monopoly branch there, and Dahlerup added that his office also wanted to move the district sheriff’s office from Hvalba to Suðuroy. He said the place would eventually become a new Faroese center, and he had talked to Provost Jørgensen about moving the church from Froðba to Tvøroyri, as the new town was being called.
For his part, Dahlerup liked the name Tvøroyri well enough. He saw why they’d chosen it. A river called the Tvørá ran onto a gravelly beach, an oyri, located fifty fathoms west of the trade buildings. A more attractive name, however, would be to call the place Oyri, or Suðuroyri. North on Eysturoy was a town called Oyri, and on Borðoy was another town of the same name. Havnarfolk, of course, called the Oyri on Borðoy Norðoyri, and that also was a logical and pleasant word combination. Tvøroyri, in contrast, was linguistically inferior. He went so far as to brand the name a contradiction and hoped it would not color the character of the eventual residents.
He himself had planned to honor Countess Danner by naming the new town after her. Perhaps the idea was too daring, though. It would hardly have found fertile soil among the National Liberals in the Danish capital. The countess was an illegitimate child and had been a dancer in the Kongelige Ballet; she was baptized Louisa Rasmussen, and that someone like her, with no family name, had moved into the royal residence—that rubbed many people the wrong way. In the meantime, she was the one who looked after Frederik VII, and she was trusted by His Majesty. And that was worthy of every respect.
Because of this, Dahlerup had entertained the names Dannerbo or Dannerfjord. But he had missed the boat. The hopeless name Tvøroyri had already taken hold.
The fact that such significant plans were in the works was due mainly to the large coal deposits in Oyrnafjall mountain. In his book Færøerne, which Jørgen Landt published in 1810, the author states among other things that: In 1777, the directorship of the mines asked Assessor O. Henkel to examine the coal beds. According to his report, the beds are about 6,000 cubits in length and about 2,000 cubits in average width. The pure coal height is about 2 1/2 cubits. As such, the beds contain 30,000,000 cubits or 240 million cubic feet of coal, which amounts to 48 million barrels, 2 2/3 million loads of black coal, assuming the beds are everywhere as robust.
Assessor Henckel’s analysis was met with great interest. The mining operation stalled, however—and the reason was the Napoleonic Wars. The humiliating Treaty of Kiel in 1814 also decreased Danish enthusiasm for the North Sea, and the Faroes were unable to mine their coal alone.
Dahlerup and his fellow officials, however, knew that industry on the southern mainland was coal-hungry. It was only a matter of time before miners started boring into the mountains above Rangabotnur, and the huge cargo ship riggings would appear in the mouth of Trongisvágsfjørður.
This, in conjunction with the fact that the fjord was the best ship harbor in the isles, was the main reason that the district physician’s office was being relocated to Tvøroyri, and that the sheriff’s residence, along with the rectory, would also soon be built there.
As far as the salary negotiations and other employment conditions, Dahlerup could be quite generous. He asked Napoleon if he would take it upon himself to draw up the plans for the doctor’s house. After all, he would be living and working there—and Pole was not in disagreement.
His dream was to build a stone house, and he explained to Dahlerup that within the Finance Chamber’s archives in Copenhagen was a work that the Miðvágurin J. C. Svabo had written in the 1780s, where, among other things, the author reflected on Faroese building practices: Much, I think, would be obviated on public and private buildings in the Faroes if examples, encouragement, and, in certain terms, mandates existed with respect to learning the art of stonemasonry. True! This building practice would still req
uire quite a bit of wood, but much would be gained through the structure’s permanence.
Although the Faroes did have experienced stonemasons, putting together a capable team would be difficult. The main reason for this was that the men lived scattered across the islands, coupled with the fact that they had to farm their land throughout the spring and summer.
One possibility was to travel to Shetland or Orkney in search of stonemasons. These southern neighbors had been erecting beautiful and remarkable stone buildings for centuries, and simply walking the streets of Kirkwall gave one the feeling of being inside a massive stone edifice.
But all that fuss surrounding wages, back and forth trips, and finding accommodations for the men prompted Napoleon to abandon the idea of a stone house.
Nonetheless, the Faroese love affair with timber buildings was a mystery to Napoleon. It was illogical, or in any case strange, since the country entirely lacked trees—well, apart from the berry bushes and dwarf trees growing in the gardens of various officials. At one point, his father had suggested converting Koltur to a wooded island, and although people found the idea intriguing, so far nothing had come of it. Despite the tree shortage, however, Faroese still insisted on saying that “the sun set behind the trees.” It was undoubtedly the Norwegian settlers who had brought the tree-happy turn of phrase with them. The words harbored an ancient yearning, and Napoleon labeled the expression the ABCs of Norwegian local patriotism.
The Faroese aversion to stonemasonry, however, had another, more traumatic origin. Only once in a thousand years had the Faroese people taken steps to build something remarkable, and that was the Magnus Cathedral in Kirkjubøur. Or course, smaller and larger Magnus churches were scattered across the Nordic countries, the obvious architectural crown being the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim. The people of Orkney also set out to build a cathedral in Kirkwall, and in 1137 the red sandstone building was finished. Napoleon had visited the stunning church twice, and, as far as he knew, there were a good hundred years between the structures in Kirkwall and Kirkjubø.
The Brahmadells Page 6