Grund 3
This is an exceptional work by the late Steinbjørn B. Jacoben on the village of Sandvík. It is not the professional historian writing, but rather a man who grew up in the village and whose roots dig deep into its soil, a man who confesses his love for his home. He tells stories about people and events. He knew these people, tilled the land and went fishing with them, sitting under their every word. These words took hold in him and matured with the years until he, a grown man, put them on paper. As always, Jacobsen’s words live, dance lightly across the page.
The book is first and foremost a village chronicle but it is also a portrait of a particular epoch of Faroese history. In addition to what is expected in a village chronicle, short sequences of events are included, little stories about events that manage not to thread anyone on the feet but nevertheless make the book human, diverse and colourful.
Perhaps the book is proof that, where the human will is present nothing is impossible.
The path grows kinder for the eager.
A person’s will is their heaven.
In 1810 the priest Schrøter is able to acquire a large patch of land in Hvalvík, which is renamed Sandvík in 1913, and in 1816 he convinces two young couples in the bay.
They were visionaries, the people who founded this settlements, just as the generations who follow them possessed the tenacity necessary for life to flourish by the bay.