Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen was born in Tórshavn in the Faroe Islands on November 29th
1900 and grew up in a bilingual family, the mother speaking Faroese and the
father Danish with their children. Nevertheless, Jørgen-Frantz mainly came to use
Danish in public, for in his efforts to promote the right to existence of the
Faroese language and culture, he considered it to be his special task to act as
the communicator and intermediary between the Faroe Islands and Denmark.
Among other things, Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen put forward his views in a series of
articles in the newspaper Politiken, which were published in book form
1943 under the title of Nordiske Kroniker, also in the tourist guide Færøerne. 1927 had seen the publication
of the book entitled Danmark og Færøerne (Denmark and the Faroe
Islands). In Natur og Folk (The Faroe Islands.
Countryside and People) from 1935/36, he likewise examines Faroese-Danish
relationships in both historical and contemporary lights, thereby uniting his
journalistic and historical interests with his commitment to a political cause.
By training, Jacobsen was a historian. However, just as tuberculosis time after
time limited his ability to express his political views and fully develop his
journalistic talents, so the disease completely prevented him from fulfilling
an academic study of the Greenlandic trade monopoly which he started in April
1934, for in July that year he had to be admitted to Vejlefjord Sanatorium. It
was during this period in hospital that Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen started what was
to become his life’s work, the novel about Barbara.
Jacobsen had thought about writing a novel before, but his embarking on Barbara
just at this time was due to the fact that the great love of his life, Estrid
Bannister, entered on a relationship with another man immediately after the writer entered hospital.
Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen borrowed the action in Barbara
from the Faroese legend of Beinta and Peder Arrheboe, but without making “any
attempt to reproduce the factual events or the historical Bente”, as he wrote
to William Heinesen (8.1.1935). For it was his intention that Estrid, alias
Barbara, should be portrayed “in her inexhaustible charm” and “fundamentally
equally fantastic insufficiency”, which is justified on the ground of her only
possessing “one strength, her sex” (17.11.1935).
Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen makes Barbara as such symbolise the life that is at once
generous and unpredictable, and the presentation of it in the book, according to his own statement in a letter to
William Heinesen, thus becomes both “a hymn and a pavanne” (17.1.1935). The
novel thereby also expresses Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen’s own view of life, for, he
writes in another letter to his friend (10.8.1937), it is not happiness in
itself but on the contrary “the vast tension between sorrow and joy” that makes
life great. He then goes on to say that for that reason he remains “deeply
grateful to life and will always be reconciled to its conditions, for it gives
more than it takes, and I have already been given so much that I will never
have any valid reason to complain”.
The thought that Barbara should one day stand as what Jørgen-Frantz
Jacobsen himself describes as a human monument to the course of the love
between himself and Estrid Bannister was an important if not the essential
driving force for him in working on the novel throughout the whole of his
protracted illness. But he was not to be allowed to complete it. Our
nevertheless knowing the novel today, which on publication in September 1939
not only sold well but also became a huge success with reviewers, is thus
primarily due to William Heinesen, for it was essential to him to have Jørgen-Frantz
Jacobsen’s novel published and thereby “raise this truly worthy monument to
him”, as he writes to Christian Matras (8.4.1938).
On his death, Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen left not only the manuscript of Barbara,
but also his extensive correspondence with William Heinesen which, seen at a
distance, constitutes as important a work as the novel. A small selection of
these letters was published by William Heinesen in 1958 under the title of Det
dyrebare Liv. Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen i Strejflys af hans Breve (Precious
Life. Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen in the Sidelight of His Letters), and a major
selection of the correspondence between the two friends will be published by
Gyldendal early in 2001.
