Dear international guests
Dear conference participants
Dear writers, scholars and audience
Welcome to this interesting conference on islands and literature.
Welcome to The Tower at the End of the World.
Welcome to the land of William Heinesen
In the Faroe Islands we all know William Heinesen’s quote from the novel The Lost Musicians where he compares the small island community with a grain of sand:
“The tiny rocky shore is to the vast ocean just about the same as a grain of sand to the floor of a dance hall. But seen beneath a magnifying glass, this grain of sand is nevertheless a whole world with mountains and valleys, sounds and fjords and houses with small people.”
Throughout his literary career William Heinesen had a unique gift to put into words the experience of living at the edge of existence. The stars of the universe and the undercurrents of society - both are always present in Heinesen’s islands and in Heinesens’s literature. And according to William Heinesen, island people - people living on a grain of sand - are as close to cosmos as they are to the rest of the world.
It shouldn’t surprise us, therefore, that islands and literature are longstanding friends. From Homer’s Odyssey, Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe to Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Derek Walcott’s Omeros and the novels of our own William Heinesen - not to mention some of the outstanding works by the writers present here today.
As the Faroese minister of culture it is with both pride and gratitude that I welcome the 11 foreign writers and 11 guest scholars along with our own writer, Carl Jóhan Jensen, and our scholars Malan Marnersdóttir, Bergur Djurhuus Hansen and Bergur Rønne Moberg.
We look forward to hearing what happens when the world of islands comes together on this tiny Faroese grain of sand.
You represent more than 20 different countries or island communities, and even though you share the island experience with its mythmaking and its closeness to cosmos, you also come from very different communities and represent different cultures, so I am sure that sparks will fly and waves will break in your sessions on place, memory, language and power.
We often talk of the isolation of islands, but just as the sea connected islands to mainlands in the olden days, today globalization and communication technology connects us in more ways than we are often aware of. And for us in the Faroe Islands this conference is a hopeful sign of new connections and new channels of inspiration.
Thank you, dear writers and scholars, for enriching us with your writings and your research.
Thank you, conference organizers, for choosing Tórshavn as your venue.
I wish you an inspiring conference and hope that you enjoy your stay in the Faroe Islands.
Thank you.
