Хьелль Аскильдсен - The Dark Blue Winter Overcoat and Other Stories from the North

‘Beautiful, faceted, haunting stories… Dorthe Nors is fantastic!’

‘Darkly funny and incisive’

‘A strange, haunting, and utterly original exploration of displacement and desire… a marvel, a remarkable achievement’

‘Ferociously noir… If Chandler and Hammett had truly walked on the wild side, it would read like Clinch ’

‘Lindgren recounts the commotions of the grand theatres of war alongside the domestic dramas playing out in her life. Her empathy for and insight into the horrors of war is striking’

‘Funny and wistful… very moving, layered and optimistic’

‘Wonderfully knotty… a very grown-up fantasy masquerading as quirky fable. Unexpected, thrilling and absurd’

Pushkin Press

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First published in 2017

Introduction © Sjón and Ted Hodgkinson 2017

Published in partnership with Southbank Centre as part of Nordic Matters. With support from the Nordic Council of Ministers and NordLit

ISBN-13: 978–1–78227–383–7

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The English-language version of Høeg’s novel would later be published under the title The History of Danish Dreams .

Postmaster J.L. Rybert came to the Faroes, as the author says, to take up a temporary position at the Governor’s office. This was in 1879, the same year that Jens Davidsen retired. H.C. St Finsen was Governor at the time.

The author is correct in stating that Rybert studied law, but he did not study economics, and he had recently taken the first part of his exams when he came here. He was supposed to fill in a clerical position until the autumn, when he had a passage reserved back to Denmark on the state-owned steamer Diana . But he ended up staying on at the Governor’s office until 1901, when he was appointed as postmaster.

There are no sources to confirm that Rybert fought in the war in 1865, and this would hardly have been possible, as he was twenty-five when he came to the Faroes and could not have been more than eleven years old in 1865. He was said to have an effeminate demeanour and always dressed as if he was on his way to a social festivity. He was also known to be long-winded, short-tempered and high-handed. The people of Tórshavn called him “Queen Arsehole”.

Rybert married, as the author says, and his wife was quite rightly from Elduvík, but her name was not Thalia and she never worked for Knút Hermansen, nor was she a slattern as Thalia is depicted in the story. Rybert’s wife was Marin Kristina Frederiksen. She was the seventh daughter of the farmer Fríðrik á Flatumørk, who died in 1889. She did keep house for Rybert for many years but they were both well advanced in age when they married, which was, according to the church records for South Streymoy, in the summer of 1917, and therefore they had no children together.

The reader should be extremely careful not to take anything the author says about the head teacher too seriously. It is at best unreliable and at worst malicious fantasy.

First, his name was Kristin, not Mats Kristian. He took his diploma at the Faroese Teacher’s College in 1915. That same year he married Elisabeth Magdalene Huber. She was the daughter of the postal assistant J.M. Huber, who came to the Faroes in 1909, and not postmaster Rybert, as the author maintains. This assistant Huber was said to have been a small, frail man easily given to chills. The people of Tórshavn called him “Draughty”.

Kristin Hermansen was a temperate man, scrupulous and efficient in his work, see Føroysk Lærarafólk (Bókadeild Føroya Lærarafelag, 1995, p. 57). After qualifying as a teacher, he was appointed to a position in Tvøroyri where he became head teacher in 1921. In 1933 he returned to Tórshavn and worked at the Intermediary School until he retired in 1965.

Kristin Hermansen began early on to make a name for himself in the cultural life of the Faroes. While he was in Tvøroyri, he founded the Tvøroyri Theatrical Society and was its chairman until he moved back north. During his years in Tvøroyri, he also published a collection of poems, Yrkingar (1923), and produced the weekly paper Tímin .

Above all else he was known for the provocative articles he published about Charles Darwin and evolutionary theory in the journal Varðin (see no. 2, pp. 29–31; no. 5, pp. 53–5; and no. 9, pp. 81–3). He left behind various unpublished short stories and plays, and also tried his hand as a translator. Among this work was a translation of The Pelican by August Strindberg, which the Tvøroyri Theatrical Society staged in the winter of 1925 and Tímin published the same year.

In the literary history Úr bókmentasøgu okkara , published by Varðin in 1935 (p. 151), the late Professor Christian Matras briefly discusses Hermansen’s translations, but has not a single word to say about his poems, plays or articles. Of his translation of The Pelican , Christian Matras says that while bearing the marks of a rare enthusiasm, the divergence between interest and competence is unfortunately often very great. The translator is no great stylist, writes the Professor, and his translation never manages to capture the vitality and intensity that gives Strindberg’s text its brilliance.

Today, few would deny that Kristin Hermansen is one of the foremost Faroese literary figures of the last century (see also the article by Steinfinnur Miðgerð in the weekend supplement to Dimmalætting , 23 September 1997).

Kristin Hermansen was, as the author mentions, also involved in politics. He was a candidate for the Unionist Party in Tvøroyri in the 1920s and later for the socialists in Tórshavn. That was in the 1930s. He was never elected. He did take up a seat in parliament for one term, however, when D.N. Jacobsen became a government minister after the 1953 election. Kristin Hermansen died in 1975, aged ninety-seven years old.