Faroese Language Conflict - Revival As The Language of Instruction

Revival As The Language of Instruction

History worked for the demands of Sjálvstyri. 1908 is considered to be the start of the conflict, which persisted until 1938. In 1908 the teachers of the sixth-form high school in Tórshavn (the capital) petitioned the school administration to be allowed to use Faroese in teaching. The administration responded with a partial refusal: Faroese could be used only as an aid, in order to explain certain things. Jákup Dahl, who later became the Provost, was opposed to the administration's ruling and refused to teach in Danish; from then on he taught in Faroese. The school administration referred the issue to the Danish education ministry, which referred it to the Løgting, the Faroese parliament, who could not agree on the issue and in 1910 split into two sides, a majority opinion and a minority opinion. The majority opinion was represented by Samband: Danish was more important as a foreign language than others such as German and English, and the pupils were to hear and speak Danish in all subjects. An important argument for this was that Danish was a key to the higher education in Denmark, and thus was important for the young people's vocational progress.

The Sjálvstyri maintained their previous position, that it was natural and understandable that a people should be taught in their native language. But they did not dispute that there were no appropriate teaching materials in Faroese. So they proposed that it should be left to each teacher in which language he taught.

As a compromise, it was planned that Faroese was to be used as the language of instruction for the younger children. For the older students, fundamental instruction would be in Danish with Faroese permitted as an aid to instruction. On January 16, 1912, this regulation was passed by the Danish government as §7 of the Faroese school regulations.

Although it could be rated as a partial success of Sjálvstyri, their demands remained on the agenda of the party after passage of the §7 regulation. Louis Zachariasen in Velbastaður was the first teacher to oppose the regulation openly, and he refused to teach further on Danish. This contravened the regulation that "Faroese was only to be used as an auxiliary language." Zachariasen quit publicly as a teacher and became one of the "separatist martyrs".

The language conflict entered a new phase in 1918, when the question was raised of why Faroese spelling was still not a compulsory subject in the schools. In the above mentioned school regulations of 1912, this question had been deliberately ignored, since many Faroese teachers did not have sufficient knowledge of the orthography of their native language. However there were already efforts under way to address this problem, as summer vacation courses in Faroese orthography were being conducted. As the time seemed ripe, the Løgting requested the Danish government to introduce Faroese spelling as a compulsory subject. The Danish education ministry immediately agreed, but §7 remained unchanged.

The language conflict became more abstract and it became a matter of a finding suitable formulation for instruction. Efforts were made to find a good way to teach Faroese, while still guaranteeing that the students would have an appropriate knowledge of Danish to further their higher education. The Ministry of Education in Copenhagen suggested in 1925 that Faroese should become the language of general instruction, but Danish should be the language of instruction in geography and history. At that time the party of the Samband rebelled because they believed that the new rules went too far in separating the Faroese from the Danish. As a result the majority in the Løgting rejected the new regulations.

In the Løgting elections of 1936, Javnaðarflokkurin (the Social Democratic Party) substantially increased its representation at the expense of the Samband. Together with Sjálvstyri the Social Democrats changed the law to replace the Danish language with Faroese. On December 13, 1938 the Danish government agreed.