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BEINTA OG PEDER ARRHEBOE: A CASE-STUDY IN
FAROESE ORAL TRADITION
By JOHN F. WEST
T HE nature and the reliability of the oral traditions crystallised
in historical legends have long been the subject of both speculation
and learned research amongst scholars. For ancient legends,
there is seldom any historical or archaeological evidence from
which we may form a judgement how far they transmit a true
account of past events. It is useful, therefore, to consider comparatively
recent oral traditions for which materials do exist. The oral
traditions of the Faroe Islands constitute an excellent body of
legend for this purpose. Some of the best Faroese stories purport
to relate events of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries,
and were first recorded in writing at the very end of the nineteenth
century. Here we will concentrate on the most saga-like story in
the Faroese corpus, Beinta og Peder Arrheboe, as published by
Jakob Jakobsen in 1898-1901 (I use the second edition, Jakobsen
1961-4, 166-80, 502-8; see the bibliographical list). The principal
events on which this story is based lie between 1714 and 1726.
The oral transmission of stories within a community is not a
purely historical or artistic activity. It is true that before radio and
television, story-telling in such isolated communities as those of
Iceland and the Faroe Islands had great importance as entertainment.
But stories may also have practical functions in the
transmission of important skills, in the division of resources
between man and man, and not least in the preservation of the
ethical standards of the community, for instance standards of
resourcefulness, wisdom, courage and fair dealing.
Faroese stories used to be transmitted principally in the kveldseta
or working evening (Hammershaimb 1891, I 389-91), an
institution comparable with the Hebridean ceilidh (Barding 1977).
A kveldseta was an informal, sociable gathering at which those
present would card, spin and knit wool, while entertaining themselves
with songs and stories. The Faroese kveldseta is now quite
extinct, and I doubt whether one worthy of the name has been
held within the past fifty years. However, some transmission of
oral tradition still takes place in the villages of the Faroe Islands,
particularly in those villages lacking road links to urban centres,