"But I love you Faroes, you loser" A cultural analysis of space, affect, commodities and island representations

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"But I love you Faroes, you loser"

A cultural analysis of space, affect, commodities

and island representations

Guðrun í Jákupsstovu (11381604) | MA Thesis Comparative Cultural Analysis 14 June 2019 | University of Amsterdam | Supervisor: Dr. Kasia Mika

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Introduction

Growing up in the Faroe Islands, I always felt like a normal kid, living in what was regarded as a normal, developed, western country. It was not until I grew older, moved abroad and went traveling that I started getting the questions of how isolated it must have been to grow up in an island society like the Faroes. I realized that this was a recurring question I encountered when I met new people from other countries. This immediate question about isolation was strange to me, because I had never felt like my life in the Faroe Islands had been isolated. It made me think about the idea of isolation, and what it meant at its core in relation to the current globalized society we live in today, and why this seemed to be an idea that was reserved for island societies. This thesis contains an analysis of two categories of objects: three selected poems from the collection Layovers (2011), by Faroese poet, Vónbjørt Vang, and two tourist videos from the campaign, "Unspoiled, Unexplored, Unbelievable", launched by the Faroese national tourist agency, Visit Faroe Islands, in 2012 ("Hagtøl og kanningar", visitfaroeislands.com).

The objects open up three main inquiries: First, one that centers around the idea of islands and their place in the world through the binary notions of isolation and connectivity. Second, by how they individually discuss Faroese natural and national romantic imagery, they open up questions about affective attachments to a lived and embodied environment. And third, by referencing Faroese industry and commodities, the objects further invite an inquiry into Faroese participation in global market economies. This thesis will intervene in the way islands are represented through a spatial inquiry into the depiction of islands in the objects this thesis analyzes. By focusing on affective attachments towards Elspeth Probyn's concept of "oceanic habitus", this thesis will delve into how human-oceanic entanglements are represented in these objects and further study how this correlates with the previous chapter that analyzed the ontology of islands and place in the world. Finally, the thesis will analyze the objects' discussions of Faroese

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commodities, natural resources and how this is correlates with a discussion of modernity and global economies.

The objects are three selected poems and two tourist videos. The videos are part of a marketing campaign created by Visit Faroe Islands and targeted for an international audience. The poems are part of the poetry collection, Layovers, (2011), by the Faroese poet, Vónbjørt Vang, and are written in Faroese language. These objects might not seem like an immediate match, but they overlap in important ways, which brings out interesting questions when they are compared against one another. First of all, they all feature the Faroe Islands as a location and setting. The poems, "Everything is moving," and, "The words are washed away again," provide the view of the Faroe Islands as the beach, where waves continuously wash over, leaving small changes behind with every break of the wave. This continuous wash of the wave indicates a dynamic space that is in constant motion. As an opposite, the videos, with their "un"-slogans and drone footage of mountains and cliffs seen from above, indicate the opposite of motion, but rather enhance a view of the Faroe Islands - and islands as a whole - as isolated and stagnant. These two opposing vantage points - dynamic and stagnant - will be the base of where the first chapter of this thesis will depart. By analyzing the poems and videos through a spatial analysis of islands and archipelagos; asking: through these objects, how are islands, and the Faroe Islands in particular, depicted in their ontology, and what do the different objects add to our understanding of this question? These questions are what chapter 1 will center on.

The second thing the objects have in common, is that they all rely on referencing natural imagery and resources, such as mountains, cliffs, ocean, fish and fishery. However, the way in which they depict this imagery varies significantly. To expose these contrasting depictions, chapter 2 will analyze the poem, "Another departure" in dialogue with the two videos by VFI. This will lay the base for chapter 2 which will focus on affective attachments. I will build on Elspeth Probyn's concept of 'oceanic habitus', which expands on Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus. "Habitus" is

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the lived and embodied environment by individuals and collectives that is something that one is (Bourdieu, 73). Probyn's addition to the concept - oceanic habitus - allows us to think of cultures and collectives of people who live in close proximity to the ocean and are connected by a boundedness to the ocean and what the ocean provides (Probyn 291). By building on the concept of oceanic habitus, this chapter analyzes how the objects discuss attachment to Faroese oceanic habitus. The speaker of the poem, "Another departure", is debating conflicting feelings of belonging towards the home, and her attachment to the traditions and practices which the home embodies (Vang, 2011). These attachments include a sense of solidarity to a tradition of poetry that celebrates life on sea and romantic praise of natural landscapes. In the videos, the classic themes of life on sea and the romantic imagery of landscape is also depicted, but in a much less conflicted way than the speaker from the poem, "Another departure". By analyzing the discrepancy between how these two affective attachments are discussed, these ideas will be the base for chapter 2, which will discuss subjects like human-oceanic entanglements and (extending on Probyn's ideas), simplified relations to ocean, fish and, by extension, fishery.

These entanglements are constructed by complex webs that are influenced by social, cultural and economic factors. With this in mind, I will discuss what the two objects' manifestation of affective oceanic attachment make us individually understand about these entanglements. In order to do this, the spatial notion of smallness, stagnancy and remoteness of islands will be considered, because this plays an important role in how island communities picture themselves as affective agents in a global connected system.

Third, the objects all discuss Faroese commodities and, by extension, their belonging to related industries. In particular, the objects illustrate how commodities are implicated in industries and global market economies. When comparing the objects' representation of commodities, it carves out a space for viewing commodities as implicated in the Faroese fishery industry, but also, in a less obvious way, Faroese tourism. The objects here bring in two different

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entry points into the same discussion. The scene of the elderly fisherman in the video gives the impression that the fisherman is the representative for Faroese fishing industry. Nearly a century ago, individual fishermen were indeed the backbone of Faroese economy. However, large-scale fishery companies with industrial trawlers have since effectively dominated the Faroese fishing industry. By showing Faroese fishery, through the fisherman, VFI portrays an image of Faroese fishery as small-scale, and rather insignificant in the grand scheme of industrial fishing. But the mood surrounding the depiction of the fisherman, further enhances a feel of nostalgia. The fact that the videos are part of a tourist campaign, and their nostalgic portrayal of the fisherman opens up questions of the what the idea of the fisherman represents, and furthermore, what industries this fisherman is implicated in. In comparison to the nostalgic imagery of the fisherman in the video, the poem illustrates a significantly different depiction of Faroese entanglements with industry. By referencing plastic, airplanes and cars, the poem opens up a space where Faroese natural commodities and drivers of modernity co-exist, but also, clash.

Situating the project in its fields

The case this thesis is making, is that island societies are not isolated, stagnant places that are disconnected from problematics and changes that affect larger, mainland countries. A strong tradition of representations of islands suggests that, but I will argue that this is misleading. In order to up the ante on what consequences this misleading spatial notion brings, I argue that affective attachments to resources and environments are affected by this and can lead to a lessened and simplified understanding of island societies as equal participants in global problematics like climate change. I will now turn to outlining the chapters of the thesis more thoroughly, along with the fields of research that this project will intervene in.

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Island studies and the spatial turn

For a long time, islands have long been regarded as insular, isolated spaces, removed from development and industrial modernity (DeLoughrey 21, Pugh 9, Baldacchino, "The Lure of the Island", 56). This notion has grown into a tradition of literature and popular culture, where islands are typically depicted as desolated, isolated remote places, cut off from the developed civilization of "the mainland". Examples of this is the poem No man is an island by John Donne (Donne, [1624], 2001), the novels, Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe ((Defoe, [1719], 2013), and reality programs like Castaway and Survivor (Baldacchino, "Objects of Representation", 248; DeLoughrey 21), where the island provides the backcloth for the ultimate journey of adventure and discovery (Pugh 9). The notion depicted of islands in all these objects are either that islands are isolated, thus disconnected from a whole (being the mainland) and therefore limited in some way. Or, their isolation represents a state of wilderness, where primal, Darwinian laws are rules of survival, or their geographical peculiarities, such as being surrounded by ocean, make them ideal locations for ideas and fantasies to be projected onto (Baldacchino, "Objects of representation", 248).

All these representations depict islands as static places, cut off from change and development. This notion has bred its way into destination marketing, where islands (particularly tropical ones) have been marketed as the ultimate escape from the busy complications and stress of city, or mainland life (DeLoughrey, 22), and as promises of escape from responsibility and accountability (Hasseler 21). In the videos by Visit Faroe Islands (VFI), this idea of "escape" is clearly a selling point; emphasized with the uses of "un"-words as slogans, such as; "untouched by time", and "unspoiled beauty"

But what happens when these notions of escapism, wildness, and isolation become tropes that are recognized when thinking of islands? How are islands seen in the grand scheme of the world, and what are the consequences? The spatial turn in terms of islands and archipelagos

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offers a rethinking of this problematic. By rejecting the ingrown notion of stagnancy surrounding islands, scholars are arguing that islands are rather supposed to be seen as highly dynamic spaces, that are connected by systems of archipelagos (DeLoughrey 23). The spatial turn in thinking of archipelagos is a turn away from the notions of stagnancy, remoteness and isolation, but rather thinking of islands and island movements in more fluid, liquid terms, where the world increasingly is seen as archipelagic systems, rather than isolated islands. DeLoughrey discusses Kamau Brathwaites' notion on tidalectics (DeLoughrey 42), which indicates a system of connections where tides, currents and streams are modes of change, where each wave brings something new with it, and takes something else as it leaves again. This line of thinking corresponds with Brian Larkin's ideas on infrastructure. The ocean is not seen as a barrier, the thing that keeps islands apart from mainland and surrounds them in their isolation. Rather, the ocean is seen as "route, pathway, history and cultural text" (DeLoughrey 44) and an infrastructure that connects the Faroe Islands to the rest of the world (Larkin 329).

My research will situate itself within these ideas of the spatial turn and depart and build on these ideas by introducing Zygmunt Bauman's ideas of liquid times and discuss these along with the notions of the spatial turn. I will argue that in order to depart from the ideas of islands as stagnant concepts, we need to rethink the spatial notion that now is juxtaposed between island vs mainland and rather adopt the notions of liquid times to rethink relations between island vs mainland as fluid and dynamic connections of a globalized world.

Affect studies

This chapter will focus on Elspeth Probyn's concept of oceanic habitus, and especially in terms of how affective relations impact and change perceptions on such oceanic habitus. Both objects analyzed in this thesis showcase and discuss the Faroe Islands. Being an island country, and thus surrounded by water; ocean, fish and fishery play a significant role in the shaping of the collective,

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and thus everything related to fishery and ocean holds high affective value in Faroese history, culture and arts. As earlier mentioned, Elspeth Probyn coins the term "oceanic habitus" from Pierre Bourdieu's notion of "habitus", referring to an environment that is lived in, in which animals and organisms are consumed as an embodiment of the cultural and the social (Probyn, p. 291). This concept provides a way of thinking of cultures and societies living in close proximity with the ocean and will thus be a basic concept this thesis will stick to throughout its analysis.

The objects both makes extensive use of Faroese oceanic imagery. Not only oceanic, but also natural Faroese imagery, such as green mountains, sheep, water, rivers and lakes. In her article, Sara Ahmed discusses the word "emotion" and how it indicates something that moves or is in motion. Emotion, Ahmed argues, is often understood as something that comes from within a body and moves outward, but by thinking of it as "something that moves", it rather indicates a movement between and among bodies, and thus, emotion is something that comes from without and among and moves inward (Ahmed, p. 29). Andrea Nightingale adds to Ahmed's idea of how emotions emerge and argues that "emotions are relational products that flow within interactions to produce particular kinds of socionatures. This opens up conceptual space to think about the importance of emotion in embodied and ever-dynamic relationships with the nonhuman world" (Nightingale, p. 2363). This chapter will thus argue, that the natural imagery of ocean, nature, sheep and fish are these so-called relational products that Nightingale refers to and also "sticky objects" as Ahmed would call them. "Sticky objects" are the type of objects that have affective value in a collective and which embody within them a mutual idea of what the collective is (Ahmed, 29). Its history, its present and its future. However, Probyn argues against perceiving habitus as "a static, muddled black box" (Probyn 36), because habitus is not a one-size fits all concept, which every member of a collective necessarily feels the same way about at all times. Although habitus can be regarded as a reference point of where personal identity emerges, personal experiences and political realities also influence individuals' relations to their habitus. This distinction is

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important, because this is what the objects of analysis individually bring to light. Different perspectives, opinions and relations towards a Faroese oceanic habitus.

Commodities and global economies

Seeing that one part of the objects this thesis analyzes are tourist videos, industry is vital to discuss in this thesis. As earlier mentioned, both objects discuss fish and fishery as part of habitus; but what does it really mean when a tourist video shows us the image of "the lone fisherman" who goes out in the early morning light to fish? Where is the large-scale trawler that does the really heavy fishing which the Faroese industry relies on? Philip Steinberg discusses the notion of picturing nostalgic imagery of maritime tropes (such as the fisherman), where he laments it when these become "an object of tourism" (Steinberg 406). It is evident that the videos by Visit Faroe Islands rely on depicting a history of fishery to sell the fascination of islands that chapter 1 outlines. However, the fisherman is not only representing the fishery industry, but also the tourism industry. As Anthony Carrigan argues with the character of Hector from Derek Walcott's epic poem Omeros (Walcott, [1990], 2014), Hector, a former fisherman, had to change professions and become a taxi-driver when tourism started growing in St Lucia (Carrigan, 156). Thus, Hector and the fisherman in the videos both become implicated in the tourist industry, whether directly, like Hector, or indirectly, like the fisherman.

The poems, "Another departure" reference industry, but in a different way than the videos. By referencing, plastic, cars and airplanes, the poem's invite an analysis of plastic as what Boetzkes and Pendakis (2) refer to as "a vision of eternity", and thus the plastic boxes bring in questions of Faroese economy as connected to global market economies. Through vehicles like airplanes and cars, the poem illustrates what Graeme MacDonald refers to as a "dependency on energy" (MacDonald 12), which further enhances the poem's depiction of Faroese natural commodities,

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like fish, ocean and sheep, and their entanglements and connections to global market economies, forces and systems.

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Chapter I

The Space of Islands and the Infrastructure of Ocean

Ask a person to describe an island and, most likely, words like: "remote", "isolated", "small" and "beach" will be used. There is nothing particularly strange about that. Because islands have a long history of being depicted as exactly that: strange, small, wild, isolated places. Cut off from modernity, and connections to mainland development, like in John Donne´s poem, No man is an island (Donne, [1624], 2001). Or mysterious places of wonder, exploration, and adventure, like Robinson Crusoe (Defoe, [1719], 2013), or, Gulliver´s Travels (Swift, [1726], 1995). This historical representation of islands has persisted into contemporary times and has proven to be a successful selling point for destination marketing of (particularly tropical) islands. As Godfrey Baldacchino, and Tom Baum note; islands fascinate. One reason for this is their clear physical limits, the ease of which they can be climbed, hiked and gazed upon from above as whole and finite entities, from where the scenery can be "taken in" and ideas and fantasies projected onto (Baldacchino 247). The second reason for the fascination of islands is the feeling of physical separation that visiting an island provides, particularly through having to cross oceans to reach them (Baum 21).

As these representations of islands illustrate, islands can be argued to be the Foucauldian idea of a heterotopia (Foucault 4). A world within a world. What seems to be the primary reason that islands are depicted this way - isolated, remote and cut off - is the ocean. What grounds islands in their isolation from the rest of the world, is the fact that islands, by definition, are surrounded by ocean. The basic notion is that oceans are seen as a barrier - as something that keeps islands apart from the mainland - and not as something that, on the contrary, connects.

This chapter will contain an analysis of two categories of objects, which both discuss islands through questions of their space in the world and their connection to the ocean that surrounds them. The first cateogory of the objects are poems from the poetry collection, Layovers

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(2011), by Faroese poet, Vónbjørt Vang. The second category are two tourist videos, created by the Faroese national tourist agency, Visit Faroe Islands, for their campaign, "Unspoiled, Unexplored, Unbelievable", which was launched in 2012 ("Hagtøl og kanningar", visitfaroeislands.com). The poems and videos all, in their own way, feature the Faroe Islands as subject matter. The difference is how they present it. The videos are tourist videos and their goal are to increase revenue and make potential tourists book tickets to the Faroe Islands. For the videos, there is something at stake in terms of how they depict the destination. The poems, on the other hand, do not have to satisfy a target audience in the same way as the videos, and thus, they are freer to be critical and contemplative in their spatial depiction of the Faroe Islands and the surrounding ocean.

The heterotopian "best of both worlds"

The tourist videos both largely feature scenery of Faroese nature, such as mountains, cliffs, and waterfalls. Both videos are scattered with slogans that refer back to the overarching campaign the videos are part of, such as; "untamed nature", "untouched by time", and, "unlike anything" ("Unspoiled" 1:14; 1:43; 2:42). The nature footage seems to be largely filmed by a drone, which provides aerial views, where the mountaintops are seen from above and where the cliffs, with the crashing ocean beneath, are seen from the area surrounding the islands; outside looking in ("VFI winter" 00:35; "Unspoiled" 01:44). The nature is shown as impressive, clean and abundant, and, mostly, rather empty. The emptiness and cleanliness of the nature, along with the slogans, provoke a feeling of isolation and detachment from an outer world which corresponds with the earlier discussed historical depictions of islands as remote, wild and mysterious places.

There are two videos, one summer, and one winter, the former being released in summer 2013, the latter in winter 2014. The summer video is bright, cheerful and has a somewhat upbeat tempo, which is delivered by the soundtrack, "Far Away", by Faroese singer, Eivør Pálsdóttir. The

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winter video, in contrast, is slower, darker and has an eerie, calming feel to it. The soundtrack for the winter video is the song "Going Home", provided by another Faroese singer, Marius Ziska. Both song titles indicate place in some way and give a feeling of not being in that place; either being far away from it or going to it. "Far Away" can either be understood as the Faroe Islands being far away from the rest of the world. Or, if you are in the Faroe Islands, you are far away from everything else ("Unspoiled"). Moreover, the winter video, with the song, "Going Home", by Ziska, focuses on the warm and cozy feelings of a home, where life is uncomplicated and good; "I'm going home, I'm leaving all my sorrows behind", Ziska sings ("VFI winter"). The song indicates a move from one place to "home", which in this video can be assumed to be the Faroe Islands. The song thus indicates time spent abroad in a bigger, urban, and more complicated place.

According to the video, The Faroe Islands, in comparison to these larger, complicated areas, are simple and safe. This notion of simplicity, Russell King explains, correlates with the idea that "the smallness of islands denotes insignificance" (King 55). As pointed out, the videos rely on a similar idea as King talks about; the idea of remoteness that provokes a sense of exclusivity and escapism, as the songs literally say; "far away", and, "leaving all my sorrows behind", and the taglines that steadily go through both videos, saying things like "life uncomplicated", "untouched by time" and "unspoiled beauty". These taglines and the songs do not explicitly say that life in the Faroe Islands is insignificant, but that life there is simple compared to larger countries on the mainland, and as King further explains it; "there are no 'big questions' on small islands" (King 55). Elizabeth DeLoughrey argues, that this depiction of islands relegates islands as "museums" for tourism (DeLoughrey 24) and compares them to Foucault's concept on heterotopias - the island as a utopian space of alterity (Foucault 4). Different, in the sense that they provide the imagery of a place of natural beauty, that has not (yet, at least) been corrupted or polluted by industry or globalization.

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However, although the videos clearly emphasize the difference between the islands in terms of purity and natural, unspoiled beauty, they simultaneously leave no room for doubting the high level of development of the country. This the videos do by showing footage of people and urban Faroese life, which aim to show strong contrast to the empty, untouched scenery of the nature. There are scenes of a newlywed couple coming out of a church, the man wearing the traditional Faroese clothes, the woman wearing a bridal gown ("Unspoiled" 00:47), scenes from the wedding show traditional Faroese chain dancing ("Unspoiled" 02:05). In contrast to these depictions of traditional rituals, people are also seen standing on a rooftop terrace sipping cocktails, providing an undeniably urban and cosmopolitan feel ("Unspoiled" 02:20). Similarly, this contrast is seen in scenes of people hiking in the mountains, wearing modern hiking gear and clothing. The people's interaction in the mountains both contrasts nature and gives the feel of "being at one" with nature, by showing the people drinking water straight from rivers and dressing out of their modern gear to bathe in a secluded lake.

This shift between modernity vs traditional is constant throughout both videos. It is evident that the videos aim to show its audience a country with strong traditions, culture and a slow way of life that is in harmony with nature. However, leaving no room for doubt about the modernity of the country. The videos show resources such as fish and sheep, but it only shows fishery on a scale of the individual. For example, the lone fisherman sitting in the early morning light baiting his hooks before going out fishing ("Unspoiled" 00:01). The video shows the romantic image of fishery, not the large-scale fishing industry, which is the dominant reality in the Faroe Islands. Showing the image of large-scale fishery would shift the focus away from the tale of the "uncomplicated place” and would shatter the fantasy narrative that has been created, and the tradition which it relies on. This way, the viewer is left with a certain feeling that this country is something entirely different and unlike other places. A pocket of the world, unaffected by messy industry and pollution, but, at the same time, is highly developed and modern.

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By doing this, VFI ultimately depicts the Faroe Islands as a heterotopian space - utopian in its depiction, but yet a real destination. A place which has the best of both worlds; A simple, untouched island country, which simultaneously enjoys the benefits of being highly developed, but lacks the messy infrastructural middleman that has to continuously maintain that level of development. This "best of both worlds" depiction, cannot hold true for how Faroese society in reality works. From this highly selective depiction, we can thus establish that Visit Faroe Islands is relying on these types of representation, in order to effectively sell the Faroe Islands as a tourist destination. The videos thus work as a continuation of the cultural tradition of depicting islands as remote, isolated places of fantasy, fascination, and desire. By providing the imagery of the shorelines and by showing "the whole picture" of the islands, their entire geographical area, their literal limitations; a feeling of isolation and detachment is emphasized, rather than one of connection. Extending on Baum, by emphasizing the feeling of detachment, the videos invoke a fascination (Baum 21). It is also from this aerial perspective that the fascination can further cater to liberal ideas of self-realization, as Baldacchino notes; the finitude of islands provides a backdrop for ideas, dreams and fantasies to be projected onto, as, "islands, it seems, can stand for anything desired" (Baldacchino 248).

It can thus be established that VFI depicts a highly selective image of the spatiality of the Faroe Islands. As Baum and Baldacchino note, specific geographic features of islands - their smallness, their easily observed finitude - has proven to be an effective tool for marketing islands as ideal holiday destinations away from complicated, messy city- or mainland life. Thus, there is an incentive for Visit Faroe Islands to depict the Faroe Islands in this way. Although possibly effective as part of tourist campaigns, these depictions continue a tradition of representing the spatiality of islands as remote, isolated and stagnant entities, who, guarded by their surrounding ocean, exist outside systems of connection to an outside world. The benefit of this outside existence is that it further enhances the view of islands as unaffected by global, environmental

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problems, for instance. Moreover, it also enhances a view of islands as agents without impact on their environmental surroundings. The poems, by Vónbjørt Vang, however, offer a contrasting view on this depiction. I will now turn to analyze the poems presentations pf islands in relation to the surrounding ocean and analyze this through notions of infrastructure and space.

The ocean as road or barrier

The poems from the collection Layovers (2011) are called "Everything is moving", and "The words are washed away again". Both poems (like the majority of the poems from the collection) take place in a liminal space of transition. Moving from one state to another. The name Layovers also references this liminal state, and particularly the state of flying in an airplane (the Faroese word "Millumlendingar" literally means "intermediate landings", thus this word cannot be used for a stopover by means of other transport like cars, buses, or ships. It always relates to an airplane). I will thus refer to the poetry collection as Layovers.

The poems, "Everything is moving" and "The words" are the first and last poems of the collection. They introduce and conclude the collection of poems. The poems are similar, almost identical in their themes, descriptions, and structure. They both focus on a depiction of constant motion, which brings with it changes. The descriptions are conceptual, there is no "I", no way of knowing who or what the poem's speaker is. The ongoing movement is visualized in a variety of ways through the poems, but mainly through symbols of ocean and things related to ocean, like waves, seaweed, foam, whale-song, etc. "The wave washes in over the beach/leaves patterns in the sand" (Vang, 5,6). "The foam can be read/the seaweed can be read" (Vang, 8, 9). There are also symbols from more everyday situations; "like the coffee dregs in the mug this morning/the patterns tried to say something (Vang, "Everything is moving", 11, 12). The poems are dynamic and forceful, this, primarily, visualized through waves. Waves that wash in over a beach. Once the wave covers the beach, meanings are hidden. When the wave retracts, meanings that were hidden

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can be read, analyzed, understood; spoken through their formations as patterns in the sand, as foam left behind from the waves and the seaweed that is hidden underneath the waves. For a moment "everything" can be read and understood, until the wave washes over once more. The poems do not make explicit what is being meant by "meanings that can be read", but it is clear that the waves are a type of exchange - something is being brought with each wash of the wave, and something else brought back, each time the wave retracts. In order to think of this exchange, the ocean can be thought of as a system of infrastructure. As this chapter previously noted, ocean has been depicted as what surrounds islands and keeps them bounded in their isolation. This way of thinking promotes a way of thinking of ocean as a barrier to connections and exchange. However, as these poems show, each wave is an exchange. Thus, the poems allow us to think of ocean as a connector, rather than a barrier. Brian Larkin notes that infrastructures are built networks of which goods, ideas and people can be transferred and exchanged across space (328). The ocean, however, is not a manmade, built network. But people have learned to navigate it, have established routes and an understanding of the ocean, in order to use it as infrastructure. The archipelagic turn is here productive to discuss along with the notion of ocean as infrastructure. Pugh argues that the history of looking at island societies as detached entities is unproductive. By rather looking at islands as archipelagic systems of connection, room is made for understanding "fluid cultural processes" (Pugh 11) that are exchanged between inhabited areas around the world all the time. The poems depict an ontology of the ocean as an infrastructure of exchanges, which through its form, allows a reader to picture the ocean, not as a barrier, but as a road and connector, which opens conceptual space for thinking of islands as connected entities of the world, connected by the ocean, and its currents and streams (Larkin 329; DeLoughrey 44). This depiction further allows a thinking of islands in their temporality through their connections to the ocean.

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David Farrell Krell discusses the notion of temporality, as it takes two different forms. As Krell notes from Heidegger's Being and Time; there is "ecstatic temporality", which refers to temporality that passes noticed by, like a whirlwind, where each wind meets the other and changes loudly, noticeably. (Krell 255). Then there is the slower, more unnoticeable notion of temporality which Krell refers to as "stalactitic temporality". Time that goes by unnoticed, but yet is constantly in motion, changing. He uses the image of the stalactite that drips in caves, where each drop builds up a stalagmite (Krell 256). The stalactitic temporality goes by unnoticed, is slow and hidden, but every drop brings with it change. Just like every wave in Vang's poems changes patterns and brings with it new meanings. In terms of understanding the poems, "Everything is moving" and "The words", along with the notions of islands as connected or separated by ocean, Krell's ideas on stalactitic temporality are helpful. Waves washing in over the beach come from ocean that flows with streams and currents throughout the entire world. The ocean is often seen as a barrier, what keeps islands isolated from continents. But in this poem, oceans are modes of connections. With each current and every wave, something is brought from one place to another, disrupting the old and changing into something new. This way, the poems' themes emphasize a view of islands as connected pieces of a system, that are equally affected by the change that is brought by the waves that are washed over the beach.

Zygmunt Bauman's theories on liquid modernity and liquid times become relevant when discussing the poem's depiction of movement and change. Liquid times, or liquid modernity, is the state when conventional borders, lives, structures and narratives dwindle and lose their authority as rules to abide to. Bauman's concept on liquid times indicate increased flexibility and change in people's lives, but also increased uncertainty and ambiguity. The structures (normative, societal, global) that once provided safety and answers do, according to Bauman, no longer hold in liquid times (Bauman, 5). In the poems, this ambiguity is clearly felt. The poems are situated in the ambiguous, uncertain, liminal space. They are brimming with the constant flux of waves

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washing over the beach and retracting again. Providing new meanings and answers, only to muddle them once more. With waves constantly dwindling the structures that they briefly created; what is left is a yearning for answers. "The foam can be read/the seaweed can be read/becomes understandable/like the coffee dregs in the mug this morning/the patterns tried to say something (Vang, 8-12). These lines show that beyond merely establishing the flux of motion and change, the poem's speaker wants more; it wants answers and "meaning". It is not clarified what is meant by meaning, but it can be interpreted as meaning on a conceptual, spiritual level (meaning of existence, meanings of universality, for example). The change that the waves bring with them leaves meanings in the sand that can be read. This search for meaning, discernibility, is like a Sisyphean battle throughout the poem, as soon as "it" (the meaning) seems to be understood, the wave washes everything away again, and the search can be started once again. Krell discusses this moment, the moment when we think we realize "it" - meaning - as "the pricking of time" (Krell, 274). The pricking of time is what jolts us out of our "dispersed and distracted everydayness" (Krell, 274), what makes us realize and - briefly - confront the finitude of life as we know it (Krell, 275). Bauman's notes that liquid times affect and increase this search and need for meaning and structures (Bauman, 80), but the basic principle of the concept of liquid times is that the ground we stand on and the structures we used to rely on are not stable anymore.

In terms of understanding islands and their space in these poems, I argue that the motion (visualized through liquidity; oceans, waves, foam), the dynamics, in these poems offer an alternate way of understanding islands as not merely lone entities, but rather dynamic, connected pieces of a whole that is ever-changing and in flux. This does not mean a definite answer to anything, but rather proposes a view of islands as much more fluid concepts, that are affected and connected through dynamic relations between themselves and the rest of the world. Thus, the constant, stalactitic temporality and ontology that is depicted of the ocean through the symbol of the waves, stands as an argument of what connectivity is by itself, and what it potentially can be,

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given the benefit of curiosity and through a rethinking of normative definitions of the concept of connectivity.

The oceanic ontology in this depiction, thus offers a reading of the ocean as an infrastructural system. In terms of understanding ocean as an infrastructure, Larkin argues that infrastructures represent expressions for cultures and people as "way of life" and mentality (Larkin, 331). Similarly, DeLoughrey notes the particular importance of ocean to island societies, as what surrounds the island, ocean is the connector, pathway, cultural text and archive of island societies (DeLoughrey, "The Litany of Islands" 44; DeLoughrey, "The Future of Environmental Humanities", 8:11). Thus, the ocean embodies the ultimate infrastructure of island societies, a form of life, which can be further expressed as Lauren Berlant's notion of the commons, where the ocean works as the infrastructure island societies rely on to connect themselves to the world, and which represents the form of life of island societies (Berlant 393; 401).

The objects both bring forth a spatial depiction of the Faroe Islands, and discuss their place, belonging and connection to the world, particularly through the country´s connection to the surrounding ocean. A long history of cultural depictions of islands has emphasized an idea of islands as remote, isolated places of stagnancy, unaffected by outside development, whether good (modern and developed) or bad (messy, polluting industry). The videos by Visit Faroe Islands rely on this idea of islands, in order to effectively brand the Faroe Islands as a tourist destination. The videos rely on a fascination of islands, which caters especially to the feelings of detachment and to liberal ideas of self-realization and exploration, where islands represent "anything desired" (Baldacchino, 248; Baum, 21). However, by carefully selecting the imagery to show the unspoiled natural state of the country and simultaneously modern, urban settings, the videos seem to insist on depicting a heterotopian ideal of "the best of both worlds", which lacks the messy industrial middleman which is essential in order to uphold the level of development. By providing aerial drone footage, which emphasizes the geographical limits and limitations of the country, Visit

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Faroe Islands, enhances the dominant view of islands as detached places, unaffected by global problems and also unrelated in contributing to these problems.

The poems, by representing liminal space of the beach where waves wash over, offer a contrasting view of the space of islands and their relation to the ocean. By depicting the ocean as a mode of connection, islands are rethought in their spatiality, as connected to the world by means of the ocean as infrastructure. With the continuous wash of the waves, the poems depict a "stalactitic temporality" (Krell, 2019), which emphasizes an ongoing flux of exchanges and connection. The ocean in its ontology thus represents island societies' connection to an outside world (DeLoughrey 44), but also a connection to the ocean in itself as infrastructure and form of island life (Larkin, 331; Berlant 401). By comparing these objects against each other, what emerges is, that tourist industries depend on the idea of the "remote and isolated island", in order to sustain the tourist fascination. However, if islands are to be taken seriously as agents that affect - and are affected by - the global world, the poems allow us to think with islands and ocean as agents dependent on one another for global exchange and connection.

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Chapter II

Affective Attachments

The objects of this thesis all discuss imagery of Faroese natural surroundings, nature and animals. In the videos, sheep are roaming the green mountains, a large, impressive halibut is pulled out of the ocean, and people are hiking in the mountains and drinking water straight from rivers ("Unspoiled", 0:58; "VFI winter, 0:50-1:00). In the poem, "Another departure" by Vang, a sheep has been killed by a car and fishermen have drowned. Moreover, there is a clearly felt resistance and mockery of how the poem's speaker discusses traditional Faroese poetry, "of the good-old kind, that rhymes" and features "sunset on capes" (Vang, "Another departure", 7, 19, 20, 22-23).

The two categories of objects have that in common, that they both discuss the lived and embodied environment of the Faroe Islands. The difference, however, is how they discuss them. What feelings are connected to the Faroese natural and nonhuman environment. VFI's depiction of the environment is affectionate and appreciative. For example, the cheer of joint excitement when the group of friends fish the halibut out of the ocean, or how the women hiking in the mountains are gazing over the scenery, smiling satisfied and slightly out of breath after having reached the top ("VFI winter" 0:50-1:00). The poem, on the hand, shows strong emotions of ambivalence and frustration towards the same tropes of Faroese environment. The sheep that has been killed by a car in the poem, for example, stands in stark contrast to the freely roaming sheep on the green mountainsides in the videos ("Unspoiled", 1:08). This is also seen through the mountains' demands of the poem's speaker to continue a literary tradition of poetry writing, which praises natural imagery and traditional livelihoods, such as fishery. "I'm suffocating, but I love you Faroes you loser, I keep coming back to you, as with a dismal lover, I can't get myself to break up with" (Vang, "Another departure", 25-29). These lines thoroughly illustrate the speaker's conflicted and frustrated feelings of belonging and attachment to the Faroe Islands and its natural environment.

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From these two different depictions of emotional attachment to lived Faroese environment, Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus is productive. "Habitus" refers to an environment that is lived in, in which animals and organisms are consumed as an embodiment of the cultural and the social. "Habitus” is what embodies people and communities as cultural and social beings and becomes real through practices which Bourdieu explains simply as "something that one is" (Bourdieu 73). Extending on Bourdieu, Elspeth Probyn has developed the concept "oceanic habitus" (Probyn 291). Probyn's addition to the concept of habitus - oceanic habitus - provides a way of thinking of cultures and societies that are living in close proximity to the ocean, like island societies. This concept is particularly productive, in terms of how affective relations are depicted in the objects and how this can be seen in relation to the notion of oceanic habitus.

Both objects analyzed in this thesis showcase and discuss the Faroe Islands. Being an island country, and thus surrounded by water; ocean, fish and fishery play a significant role in the shaping of the collective, and thus everything related to fishery and ocean holds high affective value in Faroese history, culture and arts. The concept "oceanic habitus" will thus be a basic concept I will build on in terms of analyzing the objects' portrayal of Faroese environment and affective attachment towards that environment.

Sara Ahmed discusses the word "emotion" and how it indicates something that moves or is in motion. Emotion, Ahmed argues, is often understood as something that comes from within a body and moves outward. But, by thinking of it as "something that moves", it rather indicates a movement between and among bodies, and thus, emotion is something that comes from without and among and moves inward (Ahmed, "Collective Feelings", 29). Andrea Nightingale adds to Ahmed's idea of how emotions emerge and argues that "emotions are relational products that flow within interactions to produce particular kinds of socionatures. This opens up conceptual space to think about the importance of emotion in embodied and ever-dynamic relationships

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with the nonhuman world" (Nightingale, p. 2363). As Nightingale here makes clear, emotions can be seen as products of relations that can be used to understood embodied relationship with nonhuman subjects. In relation, Ahmed's ideas of so-called "sticky objects" Ahmed, "Happy Objects", 29), can be thought of as the things which emotions as relational product center around and which provide a space for collectives to find mutual outlet and recognition of affective attachment. In the videos by VFI and the poems by Vang, I will argue that oceanic and natural imagery and imagery related to fishery and the fisherman are the so-called sticky objects Ahmed discusses.

The analysis of this chapter centers on, what feelings of affect are reflected in the objects' discussion of Faroese nature and lived environment, and how can they be understood in terms of Probyn's concept of "oceanic habitus" and Ahmed's concept of "sticky objects". The depictions by respectively VFI and Vang differ significantly from one another. As chapter 1 argued, VFI's portrayal of the Faroe Islands is in line with a cultural history where island societies are being depicted as remote and isolated. The question for the analysis of the videos will thus center on, how that depiction of the country impacts affective relation to Faroese lived environment. The poem, on the other hand, depicts a more conflicted and dynamic portrayal of the island society's place in the world, and, by extension, habitus and attachment to its nonhuman subjects. The poem thus opens up questions of revision. How can we look at fish, sheep or nature otherwise, and feel exactly the same as we did 100 or maybe only 50 years ago? How do affective relations emerge and, more importantly, change?

Rewriting affective relations

Three poems analyzed in this thesis are “Everything is moving”, “Another departure”, and “The words are washed away again”. “Everything is moving” and “The words” frame the poetry collection, they start the same way and end the same way, both being set in the liminal space of

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the beach, where land meets the ocean. Through this state of liminality, the poem illustrates a highly dynamic space, for example as these lines read: "everything is moving (...) the wave washes in over the beach (...) the foam can be read, the seaweed can be read" (Vang, “Everything is moving”, 1,5,8,9). The other poem, “The words”, also depicts imagery of movement, transition and fluidity from the liminal space of the beach: "the words are washed away again, the sand lays back into folds" (Vang, “The words”, 1,2). The speaker of both these poems is observing how the changes in the poem unfolds and ascertains the developments the waves bring with them in a balanced, reflective and meditate manner. There is no judgment, no personal feelings involved, just calm registration.

The third poem, “Another departure”, distinguishes itself apart from “Everything is moving” and “The words are washed away again”. It is not set on a beach, but in another liminal space; the airplane. The speaker is not balanced, reflecting or meditated as the speaker in the other poems are. Rather, she is consumed with feelings of ambiguity and ambivalence. For example, in the way the speaker discusses Faroese nature and animals, "a sheep hit by a car (...) the mountain scares me, looks at me judgingly" (Vang, "Another departure", 6,16,17). “Another departure” thus illustrates an attachment to Faroese habitus that is ambivalent, negative and subjective. Rather than the speaker of “Everything is moving” and “The words are washed away again”, which instead is meditative and passive in its observations.

The way movement depicted in the three poems, also differ from another. “Everything is moving” and “The words are washed away again” follows a horizontal movement, of waves crashing in over the beach, changing things (sand, seaweed, foam) in its course. In “Another departure” the movement is vertical, the airplane leaves the ground and flies up, "we're getting closer to the sun, but further away from home" (Vang, “Another departure”, 14, 15). The speaker of the poem in “Another departure”, seems to fly away because of stagnant, old-fashioned ideas and relations to the "home". These stagnant ideas are embodied in the symbol of the mountain

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the poem features. The mountain, which has become anthropomorphized in this poem, scares and frustrates the speaker, because of how it demands old-fashioned poems "about sunset on capes, and men who died at sea, and brave heroes" (Vang, "The Mountain, 22-24). This notion of the poem's speaker flying away from the Faroe Islands, and the mountain that embodies old-fashioned ideals begs the question of who this speaker represents. The first lines of the poem say, "Another departure / there was something / hopeful about coming / back to the cliffs / rain January 2008" (Vang, "Another departure", 1-5). These lines seem to indicate that the poem's speaker is leaving the Faroe Islands after having spent time there that did not live up to the hopeful expectations. The speaker also references a specific period of time, the year of 2008, which references the global financial crisis, which also affected the Faroe Islands. Those years in the Faroe Islands were particularly marked by a threat of emigration, where large numbers of young people every year left the country to study abroad (primarily in Denmark). Very few of these young people, and, women, in particular, seemed willing to return (Reistrup, et al, 6). During the time, young Faroese people were feeling disillusioned about their future prospects of setting up a home and meaningful living in the Faroes. The country, the industry and politics were regarded as old-fashioned, exclusive and unwelcoming to fresh ideas and alternative ways of living (Reistrup et al, 7). The essay collection Exit Føroyar (Reistrup et al, 2012), was published in wake of this period of time and were written by a number of young Faroese people living outside of the country, who all expressed feelings of frustration and ambivalence towards the idea of moving back to their home country. The poem thus depicts a zeitgeist in Faroese society that was marked by significant insecurity, frustration and worry for what this decline in population would mean for the future of the Faroe Islands. With this period of time in mind, I will now return to the earlier discussion about the poems' depictions of Faroese lived environment.

The three poems, all rely on imagery that is natural and oceanic and typically Faroese. Ocean, beaches, sand, seaweed, foam, mountains, sheep, fish and fishermen. These are all

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images, symbols and tropes of Probyn's concept of oceanic habitus. The Faroese literary tradition is dominated by poetry, literature, visual art relying on this imagery. Examples of this tradition are the poems, "Tá ið teir sóu landið" (e. "When they saw the country") (Djurhuus, 54), and "Summarkvøld" (e. "Summarnights") (Matras, 495). This type of imagery is an example of the so-called "sticky objects" of Faroese culture. But what does it mean when these sticky objects are portrayed in literature, but not affectionately? In “Another departure”, the poem’s speaker is conveying clearly frustrated feelings towards the affective tropes of the Faroese cultural tradition. Whilst sitting in the airplane, gazing down over the islands and the mountains, the poem’s speaker proclaims it is "suffocating" (Vang, “Another departure”, 25) by the demands of how to feel about "sunset on capes, and men who died at sea".

Thus, I will argue that this imagery is not a sticky object of affect for the poem's speaker anymore. If we think back about the essay collection, Exit Føroyar, it can be argued that the poem's speaker is a sympathizer of those people who moved away from the Faroe Islands and expressed frustration about their love for a country and society which does not accommodate new or alternate ways of thinking and living. Thus, there seems to be a disconnect in the poem's speaker affective relation to its oceanic habitus. However, Probyn notes that habitus is not a static concept, which never changes or evolves. Rather, habitus is affected and changes through new experiences and changing societal situations (Probyn 36). The period surrounding the financial crisis in the Faroe Islands can thus be argued to be a significant period of time, which, through the worrying outlook the country was facing, can have changed relations to affective representations of the Faroese lived environment.

The poem’s speaker argues that it does not want to write poems about brave heroes and fishermen, however, it still mentions them. The poem here both references and rejects the pre-existing Faroese literary tradition. By mentioning fishermen, sunset on capes and mountains the poem reproduces and builds on the existing Faroese poetry tradition, which she wants to separate

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herself from. This can be compared to what Lindsay Palmer refers to as reproduction of transnational narratives which often portray the subject's effort of "writing the self in a way that rewrites dominant histories" (Palmer, 116). Furthermore, Mark Llewellyn and Ann Heilmann note that rewriting and revising histories is an important feminist duty, in order to claim a space in a historical or literary tradition and carve room for other relations and experiences (Heilmann & Llewellyn 142). The poem’s speaker clearly resists the idea of writing poems "of the good old kind" (Vang, "Another departure", 19), thus she tries to break with the tradition. However, the poem still rewrites and adds to the culture, tropes and imagery of the existing tradition of the poem’s speaker's "home". This way, the speaker showcases a revision of an attachment to a habitus. The affective attachment is still there, but its conditions have changed. By featuring the classic tropes of the Faroese literary tradition - the sticky affective objects - but rewriting the tone and the mood, the poem offers a different way to think of and regard these attachments, and by extension, revise them.

By looking at the three poems as connected pieces of each other, it is clear that motion and change is a driving force in all of them. Change in terms of how to look at natural oceanic imagery and resources and how to feel about it - through their affective relations. In “Everything is moving” and “The words are washed away again”, both poems are told by an omnipresent speaker, which sees and observes the natural elements (waves, foam, sand and seaweed) as agents in a story that is in constant development. In “Another departure”, the natural element of the mountain embodies the stagnant and the permanent. Here, the poem’s speaker is an active agent, one who fights the notion of the stagnant, by moving away from it vertically, by going up with the airplane.

All three poems are driven by motion and dynamic flow and rely on the notion of change. Change created either by the natural elements as agents of that change, or of rejecting natural elements for embodying the stagnant and permanent. The poems thus portray Faroese natural

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and oceanic imagery - indeed sticky, affectional objects - but insists on discussing them in renewed context. Revising attachment to an affective habitus, instead of merely accepting it.

A simplified oceanic habitus

The two tourist videos by Visit Faroe Islands, open up questions of attachment to natural resources and tropes representing traditional Faroese way of life. The Faroe Islands, and Faroese social and cultural conditions of life have historically been highly bound to the oceanic habitus, where fish, fishery and fishermen either directly or indirectly affected Faroese way of life. Fishery, being the main industry of the Faroe Islands, is not only income; it is a way of life and a deep-felt connection and pride in living off and with nature. This connection is made clear in the videos by VFI, where imagery of fish, fishery, fishermen, and seafood are a prevalent motif. This imagery caters largely to emotions, for example, the tranquil scene of the elderly fisherman putting bait on his hooks in the soft morning light before sailing out as the day awakes ("Unspoiled", 00:01-0:25). Or, the impressive halibut that gets pulled out of the ocean by a group of friends who cheer in joint excitement ("VFI winter", 00:52). These depictions cater to enforce a very specific emotion, one of affection, nostalgia and of appreciation. Nostalgia, in terms of how the elderly fisherman seemingly in his individual capacity represents the Faroese fishery. Affection when the halibut comes crashing out of the ocean, and appreciation when the lamb is being served and eaten in a local fine-dining restaurant ("Unspoiled," 1:54).

The videos do what effective tourist campaigns are supposed to do. They showcase what the country has to offer, and by means of how they showcase that, invoke a desire for people to go to that country. In other words, emotions play a significant role in what drives these two videos. Although the videos are part of a tourist campaign I want to argue that the emotions aim at two audiences; the potential tourists who hopefully will book flights immediately after watching, and

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the Faroese themselves. I would like to turn my focus on how the videos meet Faroese people in their portrayal of Faroese way of life, how the emotions cater to Faroese oceanic affective habitus.

The videos spend almost equal amounts of footage showing nonhuman subjects as they do human subjects. Nature; mountains, waterfalls, rivers and ocean. Sheep, fish, seafood and birds. Since so much space is given to feature these nonhuman subjects, the videos invite a range of questions and queries about relations and entanglement between the Faroese human and nonhuman subjects. Nightingale argues that in this intersection between the human and nonhuman world, people's identities and subjectivities emerge relationally (Nightingale 2365). In the videos, the nonhuman subjects (mountains, cliffs, rivers, but in particular sheep, fish and seafood) are depicted majestically, and romantically. Relations between the human and the nonhuman in the videos are shown as the humans affectionately consuming the nonhuman; consuming in terms of catching the fish out of the ocean ("VFI winter", 0:52), cutting open the freshly caught mussel from the seabed, ("Unspoiled", 1:32) eating the tasty lamb or the fish as sushi in elegant restaurants ("VFI winter", 1:27). But also, in terms of hiking in the mountains and drinking water straight from the rivers ("Unspoiled, 0:58). The mood is joyful and easy, it shows the human entanglement with the nonhuman as appreciative, but also as natural and matter-of-fact: This is what we do, this is who we are. An oceanic habitus at ease with itself. Thus, the videos depict Faroese subjectivity to directly correlate with how the people's interaction with their nonhuman environments.

Earlier it was noted how the poems brought a sense of temporality forward by referencing the global financial crisis of 2008, and how this crisis affected Faroese depicted relations towards Faroese oceanic habitus. By introducing temporality, it provided a way to analyze the notion of Faroese oceanic habitus as dynamic and changing. However, as chapter 1 analyzed, the videos build on a long history of cultural depictions of islands as remote, isolated places, where time seemingly stands still. This notion of stagnancy and atemporality in terms of depictions of affective

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attachment is therefore interesting. Probyn refers to Loïc Wacquant notion of habitus as not being a "stagnant black box, that muddles the analysis of social conduct, erases history, and freezes practice in the endless replication of structure" (Probyn 36; Wacquant 193). However, by VFI's depiction of Faroese society as "untouched by time" and "unspoiled nature", it does exactly what Wacquant argues: depicts Faroese habitus as a stagnant concept, which erases impact of history and freezes practices as something that will never be questioned or changed. Thus, the notion of atemporality by extension freezes the image of Faroese subjectivity, as something that always has and always will remain the same. In terms of how this depiction is turned towards its Faroese audience, I argue that it enhances a view Faroese people can hold of themselves as a collective which is ever-appreciating and continuous in how they interact and affect their surrounding environment. This way, VFI's depiction leaves no room for external political, economic or environmental forces to affect the life and relationship that the Faroese have towards their oceanic habitus. Thus, the representations of islands and island life works in both directions. The examples mentioned in chapter 1 about the history of island representations, can create a simplified image of how islands are perceived and understood from an outsider’s perspective. But, the other way around, when VFI approaches a Faroese audience as a collective, as people who hike and enjoy freshly caught fish and seafood and freely roaming sheep (not an industrial trawler or normal office building in sight), the videos produce a simplified relational product loaded with emotion for Faroese people to mirror themselves and their environment in.

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Chapter III

Faroese Commodities and the Global Market

Resources and commodities are heavily shown in the videos by Visit Faroe Islands and discussed in the poems by Vang. The previous chapter analyzed the objects by how they depicted commodities and resources along with the concept of affective attachments towards an oceanic habitus. This chapter will nuance the notions of oceanic habitus to further ask the question: in what ways is said habitus aesthetically depicted, and what do these depictions do to our understanding of the Faroe Islands as part of a global market system? This chapter will thus first look at selected scenes from the videos by Visit Faroe Islands; in particular the scene with the fisherman and the scene with the halibut being pulled out of the ocean. In the poems, similarly, references to sheep and fishery will be analyzed along with the poems' discussion of plastic. In both the videos and the poems, "framed" scenes (where scenery is depicted through a frame like a window of a car or an airplane), are visible, and these will also be taken into the analysis.

These scenes from the videos and discussions from the poems will be analyzed through Micheal Paye's notions on aesthetic registrations of commodities within capitalist systems (Paye 523), Anthony Carrigan's discussion on literary representations of post-colonial tourism (Carrigan 154), and Philip Steinberg's ideas of oceanic space and maritime nostalgia (Steinberg 405). The chapter will specifically focus on the objects' representations of commodities specific to Faroese habitus; that being fish (and by extension fishery and fishermen) and sheep. It will analyze how these commodities emerge from the objects and how their representation can be argued to be layered, and multifaceted and not immediately recognizable, due to their complex entanglement in Faroese culture. This, by extension, also means that they are tightly interwoven into Faroese economy.

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I will begin the chapter by first discussing ideas of territory and landmass. This will allow me to sketch out an overview of Faroese economical history in order to better understand how fish and sheep, in particular, have shaped Faroese society, both economically and culturally.

Liquid land

Throughout the ages and the majority of the 19th

century, the Faroe Islands was an agricultural society, where the Danish kingdom had implemented a royal monopoly on all trade affecting the country. The Faroe Islands thus relied largely on selling wool from Faroese sheep and dried fish to the Danish kingdom in exchange for other goods, such as lumber, salt and iron (Debes 32. However, by 1856, the royal monopoly was abolished, and the Faroe Islands were able to freely pursue trade with other countries. The end of the 19th

century thus marked a shift in Faroese history, where fishery developed drastically in the Faroe Islands. From being constituted of lone fishermen in rowboats, to smack ships with larger fleets that were able to sail further out to sea, for longer periods of time (Joensen 27) Previously to this shift, a Faroese saying went; "ull er Føroya gull" (meaning; "wool is the gold of the Faroes").

In 1901 the Faroe Islands’ oceanic territory covered 3 nautical miles from Faroese shoreline. In 1961 this was extended to 12 nautical miles and in 1977 to 200 nautical miles. Before these expansions, little stood in the way of larger fishing nations (such as the British and Dutch, e.g.), to fish almost directly in the fjords of other, smaller countries, among them the Faroe Islands and Iceland (Kurlansky 148). However, during the second world war, when conventional trade deals between European countries were cut off and the Faroe Islands were occupied by the British, Faroese economy got a substantial boost through providing the British with fish. A similar expansion underwent in the Icelandic society, and thus the years during and after the second world war were marked by significant increase in wealth and prosperity. Kurlansky quotes an Icelander, who was asked how life had been for the Icelandic during the war, of simply answering:

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"we made money" (Kurlansky 155). This was also the case in the Faroe Islands, and the saying thus shifted to "fiskur er Føroya gull" (e. "fish is the gold of the Faroe Islands"). In 1977 the Faroe Islands claimed the 200 nautical miles of territorial waters extending from the Faroese coastline (Samró 188). This was an expansion that did not affect the Faroe Islands alone, but small nations around the globe were becoming increasingly visible in international forums in the postwar years, and the concept of a 200-mile sovereign oceanic zone was endorsed by multiple nations in a 1973 UN Seabed Committee meeting (Kurlansky 166). Thus, throughout the 20th

century Faroese territory grew; from being the remote little drop of islands scattered in the North Atlantic, to be a larger territorial area, not merely made up of landmass, but, in fact, mostly ocean. This territorial expansion has not only meant something for the Faroe Islands in terms of them becoming more independent and defined as a country or territory. It has also had significant impact on what chapter 2 discussed earlier about oceanic habitus. Something that one is. As Rebecca Mead from The New Yorker puts it; "like the human body, the Faroes are mostly water" (Mead, "Koks, the World's Most Remote Foodie Destination). Similarly, Faroese poet and author, Gunnar Hoydal, writes about the Faroes:

"More than any other country, the Faroe Islands is the country of ocean. This one understands when one has been to the massive and calm countries of giants like Norway and Sweden, to the endless forestland of Finland, or the buttery, cheerful lushness of Denmark. Or what about Greenland's majestic introvert calm or the vast ice- and rock deserts of Iceland? These are countries with an inner. Completely different is the case of the Faroe Islands. They face outwards and are so limited in their extent, that there is barely substance for more than what is essential to resist the untiring attack of the surrounding ocean" (Hoydal 143).

As both Mead and Hoydal emphasize, the Faroe Islands' cannot be thought about solely in terms of their landmass. The surrounding ocean has to be considered as part of the country. As the previous chapters discussed, ocean is thus both a connection to the outside world, as well as a space where Faroese cultural heritage, memory and commodities are produced and emerge

"But I love you Faroes, you loser" A cultural analysis of space, affect, commodities and island representations