Faroese Literature and my deep freeze

I'm sitting on the shores of Lake Ontario in a deep freeze, and the Faroe Islands could not be further away. Wind chills this year have been below -40 Celsius, and not a single day has passed that was above freezing. I flip through my collection of translated Faroese literature and notice that the latest work I own was written in the early 80's. The Faroe I know from the literature I read can feel somewhat aged. I don't mind so much, in fact, I enjoy reading early 20th century literature. I get a sense of the islands, a little bit of history, a feeling of how time has passed, and the origins and development of the burgeoning literary scene. But there is so much more, and so much that English-language readers, fascinated by the Faroe Islands, miss out on as Faroese literature progresses.

As I sit here, I think about the bookstores in Torshavn. The stores were filled with book lovers, and the shelves were alive with authors writing everything from the sociology of a Faroese hamlet, the development of their road network, poetry, crime thrillers, biography, children's books and translations of everything, from Voltaire's Candide, Shakespeare, Harry Potter, and even modern crime novels.

The Faroese literary scene is very active, but it's difficult to get even a glimpse of that feeling sitting in a deep freeze on this side of the Atlantic. Farlit has been promoting Faroese literature at book festivals throughout Europe. Heðin Brú's "Feðgar á Ferð" (The Old Man and His Sons) was recently translated into German, and was even found by a friend in a German airport bookstore. But the promotion of Faroese literature into the English language is not a result of the government funded and policy directed by Farlit, but a result of a new generation of poets, writers, and artists working today, merely for their interest and love for the literature of the islands. We're lucky to have them.