Yet the Faroese cathedral was never completed, and to this day it was still half-finished. The work stopped because Suðuroyars boycotted the construction. They had nothing against the Church, the priesthood, or all the sacred finery—they just did not want to foot the bill. As a result, they took their weapons out, sharpened them, and under the leadership of Hergeir, the heathen Akraberg farmer, the Suðuroyars launched the one and only civil war in Faroese history.
Damned yokels, Napoleon thought. The Akraberg farmer managed to kill the bishop. Construction was halted, and since that time the cathedral has stood empty, a monument to the miserly and barbaric Suðuroy soul.
Of course, a Faroese architectural exception was the Látra building up north in Eiði. Naturally, it took the farmer and his farmhands quite a while to collect all the stones. But the outcome was truly beautiful, the joints between every single stone perfectly cut. The Látra building was famous throughout the country, and when Crown Prince Frederik visited the Faroes, he stayed with the Látra farmer.
Napoleon gripped his head when he thought about the prince’s visit. His Majesty had made himself a laughingstock. When he was on Vágar, he ordered that the hundred-fifty-fathom-high basalt spire, the Trøllkonufingur, or the Witch’s Finger, be renamed the King’s Scepter. The Vágamenn could only say yes. The King’s Scepter, however, was never anything but a joke. When it came to naming, the prince had better luck on Nólsoy. When he was Uppi í Skip, or up in the ship (a place on the mountain where the locals once hid from pirates), His Majesty had the untimely, but natural urge to relieve himself. He had quite a few Nólsoyar royalists in tow, and these quickly surrounded the hard-pressed prince. So honored were the people of Nólsoy by this event that they built a four-meter-high cairn over the royal shit pile and dubbed the mound King’s Heap.
Doctor Napoleon told Dahlerup this story one evening when the Amtmand had stopped by for a visit, and the Amtmand was loudly amused. Dahlerup did not enjoy the popularity of his predecessor, Pløyen—quite the opposite. He made little effort to win people’s favor, and that in itself smacked of contempt.
Still, he and Napoleon got along well enough. Besides both playing Ombre at The Club, Dahlerup dropped by Nólsoyarstova from time to time, often with a flask of cognac in his coat pocket.
It was Dahlerup who brought the first hares to the Faroes, and on that festive August day, when the hares were set to be released, Napoleon was among those who helped take the cage up Kirkjubøreyn.
Dahlerup’s maid had packed a basket with food and wine, and before the cage was opened, the group expressed well wishes for the animals that had been captured on Kragerø in southern Norway, and that must now survive and, hopefully, multiply on Kirkjubøreyn.
Dahlerup himself opened the cage door, but the hares did not budge. He made whistling noises and said both fitse fitse and diddle diddle, but they ignored him.
Napoleon won some laughter when he suggested Dahlerup sing some verses from Grindavísan, Pløyen’s pilot-whale ballad, as that would undoubtedly send the hares fleeing.
The treeless mountain steppes probably seemed strange and perhaps also frightening to the hares, and at least the cage provided shelter and food. There were three pairs, and since Dahlerup did not know any other appealing sounds, all he could do was lift one end of the cage in the air and tip the hares carefully onto the grass.
Yet even with the dry heather beneath their hind legs, they did not scamper off. Instead, they remained sitting erect, and the last that Napoleon saw when the group headed home with the cage was twelve small ears trying to catch wind of any welcome sound.
One of Dahlerup’s winter hobbies was making starling houses. The houses were attached to man-high poles in the gardens surrounding Quillinsgarður. The round roofs were covered with copper plates, which he cut and nailed fast to the small rafters, and in the middle of each roof was a flagpole sporting the Danish flag. The walls were made of selvage about a span long, and each house was smartly divided into four living compartments. The entrances were right beneath the eaves, and every opening was surrounded by a decorative frame.
According to Frú Løbner, who fed the starlings, the bird families were thriving within their Carl Emil pavilions, as she termed the starling houses with a sweet smile.
The doctor and the Amtmand were on such good footing that Napoleon felt comfortable telling Dahlerup about his nickname.
“Out with it, out with it,” said Dahlerup.
Even though nicknames might seem unrefined, if not outright vulgar, they were actually keys to the countless doorways leading into Faroese self-esteem, or one might also say: into the lack of that very self-esteem.
“Yes, yes,” Dahlerup said, narrowing his eyes. “Get to the point.”
“I’ll put it this way,” said Napoleon. “I feel sorry for those without a nickname. They’ve been weighed and came up short. On every scale, the political, the scientific, and the cultural. They’re like dust swept away by the wind.”
“Now you’re just annoying me,” said Dahlerup. “Out with it.”
Napoleon said people called the Amtmand Pinn í lorti—Stick-up-the-Shit.
Dahlerup could not believe his ears. He was offended, as Napoleon immediately saw. To blunt the Amtmand’s anger, he rattled off a list of old, familiar nicknames: Kriss the shoemaker was called: Come Again Next Thursday. Then there was: The Brahmadells, Mouse Ass, Muhammad, the Goat—the latter being his own father. Then there were Murlamurla, Herring Head, Yellowish.
Dahlerup interrupted him, curious to know what Napoleon’s nickname was.
Napoleon smiled. As far as he knew, he had no nickname, but he did not want to admit that. Out of sheer compassion for Dahlerup, he made up a nickname. He said that, as the Goat’s son, his nickname was already predetermined: Pinkubukkur, or Goatlet.
Stick-up-the-Shit, though? No, it wasn’t possible, Dahlerup kept repeating. In a depressed voice, he asked if something were maybe wrong with the stiff-legged way he walked? He made several passes back and forth across the kitchen floor and inspected his legs.
Abruptly, he stopped and stared at Napoleon. “It’s those Faroese nationalists. They’re the ones behind that nickname. The way I walk is the way I walk, and they can call me whatever the fuck they want. But no one calls Mother Denmark a shit!”
Heh, laughed Napoleon. He loved conspiracies, he said. They were “sleepwalkers along steep cliff faces” and also “the soul’s inscrutable arithmetic.”
But Dahlerup did not share his amusement. Indeed, to the contrary, a set of odd traits began to emerge. Some were dictated by wounded nationalist feelings, while others had their origin in what Napoleon termed the Amtmand’s physiological constitution. He rapidly blinked his eyes, bit his upper lip, and repeatedly stamped the floor with his heel. He refilled their glasses and reproached Napoleon for transforming serious subjects into laughing matters.
“Not at all,” Napoleon answered. Danish officials were simply not accustomed to the fact that a native could prove their equal. Indeed, he would venture to say that it actually wounded a Danish official’s self-esteem to realize a native was not only his equal, but even his intellectual superior.
“Take my father,” said Napoleon. “A brilliant mind, the brightest in the entire country. The man is an exceptional poet, plays violin, and speaks and writes both English and German. As a supervisor, he could’ve worked in Bergen or Hamburg as well as in Copenhagen. Yet the man has become a diabolical grouch who carries one of the most ridiculous nicknames in town. And why is that? Because it’s unbearable, almost a nightmare to be the only Faroese among Danish officials. In addition, he’s self-taught, he’s scrapped together all his knowledge himself, while his Danish colleagues are academic, well-structured officials.”
“What, are you trying to make me cry or something?” Dahlerup shouted.
“I’m trying to tell you that my father reeks of an inferiority complex.”
“Nonsense!” Dahlerup replied. “Your father is
a proud man and he knows his own worth.”
“I know that my father is a proud man, but being Faroese means standing lower on the cultural ladder. And the king still hasn’t found it worth his while to name him a Knight of Dannebrog.”
Napoleon laughed, but his heart was not in it.
They emptied their glasses and Dahlerup said it was high time they took themselves across the river and home.
The Doctor’s House in Tvøroyri
DOCTOR NAPOLEON AND Tóvó stood at the front starboard shroud as the crew aboard the Glamour reefed the mainsail. The foam spray from the bow receded to nothing, and they dropped anchor thirty fathoms from land. The anchor flukes caught on a seaweed-covered knoll, and the Glamour slowly turned behind the line.
“There’s our new home,” Napoleon said, pointing toward the new Doctor’s House. Construction was nearly finished—all that it lacked was turf on the birch-bark roof.
Tóvó nodded and was pleased to hear Napoleon used the word our.
He was wearing a blue English sweater, which his brother Lýðar had given him, and Great-grandfather had had Kriss the cobbler sew him a pair of wood-soled leather boots, because, as the old man put it, no Brahmadella should leave Tórshavn looking like a ragamuffin.
Napoleon pointed toward the yacht approaching the ship and said that the man at the oars was his cousin, Jóakim. He also said that Jóakim had grown up in Tórshavn and had been confirmed just after the family moved south to Tvøroyri in 1836.
Jóakim, it turns out, was a jack-of-all-trades. He and a man from Froðba had jointly dug out the area for the house, and had laid the foundation over the winter. On St. Gregory’s Day, Ludda-Kristjan and a young journeyman, Obram úr Oyndarfirði, traveled south to begin the construction, and by St. Olav’s the Doctor’s House was finished.
Jóakim rowed the yacht against the ship’s side, placed a foot on the sheer-plank, and swung himself over the railing. His jacket was open; he was a man of medium height, and his brown eyes seemed so hard and cold. As such, it was strange to see a grin playing around his lips, an unruly smile, as if the man at any moment might break into irrepressible laughter. His face reminded Tóvó of the cakes baked by the Trade Monopoly’s new baker: dried plums on top and pudding below, or maybe it was the opposite. In any case, his presence made Tóvó uneasy.
Suddenly, Tóvó longed for home. He turned away from Napoleon and Jóakim, not wanting anyone to see how wretched he felt.
Jóakim tied the yacht fast to a belaying pin and asked about their trip south, and how his uncle was doing. That was a typical question among the Nolsøe clan. Jákup Nolsøe was the family’s patriarch. Not because he was particularly agreeable or accommodating, not at all. He carried the crown because he was powerful, and given that the Faroe Islands was on the brink of significant change, he was a buoy to which both the younger and older generations could cling.
When he retired last year and handed over his keys to the Royal Trade Monopoly’s new director, he had served the enterprise for 56 years, and had been top man since 1831. He knew every room and drawer throughout the Royal Danish Trade Monopoly’s many buildings. He knew the location of every single ware, too, from darning needles to birch bark, from tar to slate pencils and blackboards. He was familiar with every agreement, both oral and written, and he had informants who relayed conversations from the Monopoly’s various branches. In short, it paid to be on good terms with Jákup Nolsøe. When the Monopoly opened a branch in Tvøroyri in 1836, he appointed his brother as envoy, and the branches in Vestmanna and north in Vágur were also filled with his relatives and acquaintances. He seldom overstepped himself, though. No, he was far too clever for that. Whether the Amtmand was named Løbner, Tillisch, Pløyen, or Dahlerup, Jákup Nolsøe was always the same faithful steward of the King’s property. He knew what people across the country owed the Trade Monopoly, and although taking them to court was unusual, the Trade Monopoly calculated their outstanding debts in terms of goods, things like sweaters and trousers, and they went after people mercilessly.
The Royal Danish Trade Monopoly was established in 1709, and Jákup Nolsøe knew everybody who had been with the enterprise since day one, as well as their families. When the stairs beneath his old legs creaked and that surly goat-head emerged in the hatch, every hand was busy.
Unlike his brother Nólsoyar Páll, the trade director was by no means beloved—a fact that did not bother him at all. Popularity was fickle. Respect and dignity, on the other hand, had deeper roots in the human soul.
Medicine chests, apothecaries’ weights, book cases, not to mention the old chaise longue from Pole’s student years in Copenhagen were loaded aboard the yacht. He had also considered bringing his father’s old piano, but he was afraid to do it. The piano was cumbersome and delicate, and barely tolerated a trip to The Club when there was a celebration, so it certainly would not make the trip south across Skopunfjørður and Suðuroyarfjørður. And just think, what if it were lost during the unloading process? Imagining the piano at the bottom of the sea covered in barnacles and whelks made him ill.
Jóakim manned the oars, and while he rowed them toward land he asked who the young man’s family was.
Tóvó was kneeling on the bow’s thwart. He heard the question, of course, but did not know if Jóakim was talking to him or to Napoleon. It was also the first time that he had heard anyone asked that question, since in Tórshavn most people knew him. Tóvó glanced back and saw that Jóakim had cocked his head inquiringly, like he was waiting on an answer.
Suddenly, Tóvó’s heart began to pound. What in the world could he say? He could hardly tell Jóakim that Havnarfolk knew his mother by the terrible nickname Crazy Betta. His father had probably been forgotten by everyone; after all, six whole years had passed since he had died. Jóakim, of course, had probably heard of his great-grandfather, Tórálvur í Geil. People who knew anything at all about Tórshavn had usually heard of the Brahmadells. But Jóakim might laugh at him if he introduced himself as Tórálvur í Geil’s great-grandson. He might as well say that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were his ancestors.
Tóvó was agitated, he bit his fingers, and he was eternally grateful to Napoleon when he said that the boy was from the Geil house and that he would be Napoleon’s servant.
“And can your servant not answer for himself?” asked Jóakim.
“Of course,” Napoleon answered. “His time will come.”
The answer unsettled Jóakim somewhat, but he did not ask any more questions.
It took the yacht two trips to fetch all their items, but before Jóakim and three other helpers continued unloading the Glamour, they carried the chaise longue and the heavy book cases down to the Doctor’s House. Napoleon and Tóvó took charge of the rest.
A bucket of Rangabotnur coal stood next to the stove, and Tóvó, who was used to lighting the fire back home, soon had the heat going. Napoleon asked him to also light the stove in the living room.
Tóvó had the attic room in the west gable. Beneath the eaves stood a bed, at the foot of which Ludda-Kristjan or his journeyman had built some shelves.
Tóvó put what clothes he had away. The nicest thing he owned was a linen shirt sewn by his mother. You fastened it with small buttons, even around the wrist, and as something extra special it had a breast pocket.
Tóvó sat on the edge of his bed and pressed his cheek to the shirt, which still smelled like his mother.
He was sorry that he had lied about the Glamour’s departure time. It meant not saying a proper goodbye, and for that he could not forgive himself. He just had not wanted to have his mother standing at the dock and waving. That was the problem right there. Being around people often caused her to lose control, she would start talking nonsense or singing loudly, and many times these displays were strange and even vulgar, and Tóvó could not bear to see the ridicule and even repugnance in strangers’ eyes. He was ashamed of his mother, that was what, and the pain of that fact hounded him all the way south to Tvøroyri.
He placed the shirt on the shelf, and abruptly he longed for the sweetest person he knew, his sister Ebba.
Napoleon, who had often observed the siblings out the window, had told Tóvó before they left that, if he wanted to, he could ask Ebba to come visit him in Tvøroyri next summer.
And those words had gladdened Tóvó. Ebba would have her own pillow, he would see to that. And she would also have her own blanket and mattress to put on the floor. No, he would sleep on the floor, so Ebba could have the bed all to herself.
He remembered the day they had gone out to the harbor at Bursatangi. The sun baked down and he had sat on the hot rocks with his feet in the water. Clear droplets clung to the dark red leaves of the seaweed churning sluggishly on the water’s surface, and the sound and smell of the sea was strangely calming.
Tóvó said that drowning could not be the worst possible death. It was just a little seawater, after all, flowing into your mouth and throat and lungs. After that, everything would get still and cold and you would float silently off into the blue depths.
It frightened Ebba to hear her brother speak like that. She asked if he had ever looked into a seal’s face.
Tóvó said that seals had human eyes.
“That’s right,” said Ebba. “You shouldn’t laugh. Do you know why they have human eyes?”
“Because seals are people who have drowned,” Tóvó said, mimicking her voice.
He had done no more than say the words when he felt a hard slap across his cheek. The blow was so unexpected it silenced him. All he saw was his sister’s back as she ran home crying.
Starfish, Sheep Droppings, and Dead Birds
THEY HAD BEEN in Tvøroyri all of a week when Tóvó asked Napoleon if it would not be a good idea to outfit the Doctor’s House with a tarakøst, a seaweed compost heap, or midden. His voice, as he pronounced the word, sounded manly. He said tara with a rolling r and his chin thrust forward.
The Brahmadells Page 7