Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen

It is not clear whether Gabriel is right. Barbara has weathered storms before. But this is as far as Jacobsen wrote before succumbing to his tuberculosis. When Heinesen and Matras undertook to have the manuscript published, they came to the conclusion that this open ending was in fact a fitting way of finishing the novel, although a few gaps in the writing were filled in by Heinesen. That they were right to leave the ending open is demonstrated by the general dissatisfaction felt by viewers to the sentimentalized ending of the 1997 motion-picture adaptation, in which it appears that Barbara actually makes the ship and sails off to Copenhagen.

Det dyrebare Liv: Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen i Strejflys af hans Breve (Precious Life: Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen Illuminated by his Letters, 1958), edited by Heinesen, is an example of the way in which Jacobsen's close friends and contemporaries ensured his survival as a writer. It consists of letters that Jacobsen wrote to Heinesen between 1921 and his death in 1938. They are accompanied by a succinct commentary by Heinesen sufficient to string them together, but not such as in any way to turn this into a scholarly, academic edition of the letters. It is ultimately a deeply personal and poetical work, but nevertheless a work of vital importance to an understanding of Jacobsen and his sole novel. In his introduction, Heinesen makes it clear that this is only a small selection of letters, which in total fill some 1,500 pages, and that it is, strictly speaking, not an autobiography. There is no attempt to follow Jacobsen's life day by day, but rather to give a series of momentary impressions of his life and opinions both as a young student and as a mature man marked by the tuberculosis that was to lead to his early death. It is not intended to idealize Jacobsen, but to show his incredible optimism and love of the life that he must surely at an early stage have been aware he was to leave before long. In the words of Heinesen in the introduction:

In 1943, Christian Matras collected and published a volume of Jacobsen's newspaper articles under the title of Nordiske Kroniker ("Nordic Chronicles"). Originally published between 1925 and 1937, the articles cover a wide range of topics, some of which are related to those in Danmark og Færøerne, while others have a wider cultural interest, as for instance the essay on the Faroese dance. The term "Nordic" is to be understood in a wide sense, including not only mainland Scandinavia and Iceland, but also England and the Shetland Islands. In these articles Jacobsen discusses the extinction of the Norn language of the Shetland Islands and examines the nature of Faroese as an independent language, ridiculing the suggestion that it is really only a dialect; in another essay, "Den yderste Kyst" (The Farthest Shore), he produces an outstandingly beautiful and poetical description of the outlying island of Mykines.

Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen died 24 March 1938, after suffering from tuberculosis for nearly sixteen years. His position in Scandinavian literature is unlike that of any other; much of what has been published results from the decision by Christian Matras and William Heinesen to preserve his memory. The one novel on which his reputation rests is unfinished and yet could scarcely have been finished more successfully, and this incomplete work has had enormous sales both in Scandinavia and beyond, standing as a milestone in twentieth-century Scandinavian fiction.

In 1927, Jacobsen was asked by representatives of the Faroese Students' Association to write a study of the relationship between the Faroe Islands and Denmark. The result was Danmark og Færøerne (Denmark and the Faroe Islands, 1927) a competent and well-written study that first examines the historical relationship between the two countries and then the cultural awakening of the Faroe Islands, with brief summaries of the works of the main figures concerned, finishing with a review of present-day relations between the two countries. Here, as elsewhere in his writings, he stresses the fact that the Faroese are not Danes, that their cultures and temperaments are quite different. Without being openly anti-Danish, he clearly reveals himself as an ardent Faroese nationalist. His Faroese sympathies are also evident in his 1936 publication Færøerne: Natur og Folk (The Faroes: Nature and People), a warm, fond, and poetical presentation of the Faroe Islands, their scenery, their way of life, their history, their constitution, and their links with Denmark. The final section is a tour of the islands with a brief entry on each of the eighteen inhabited islands. The literary qualities of this book are emphasized in the entry in Dansk Biografisk Leksikon from 1937, which reads that the volume "er anlagt som en grundig Vejleder for rejsende, men samtid skrevet med en Kærlighed til Stoffet, der hæver Bogen op over Genren og gør den til en Digters Værk" ("is in the form of a thorough guide for travelers, but at the same time written with a love of the material that raises the book above the genre and turns it into the work of a poet").

The selection opens with the "Nytårsouverture" (New Year's Overture), marking the start of 1921 in a grand, dithyrambic prose poem divided into sections with musical markings: Maestoso, Grave, Andante, and so on, and describing the writer's experience of the Faroe Islands—which are at the center of everything he wrote—at the beginning of 1921. There is then a gap until mid-1922, when there follows, in a completely different vein, a lengthy, humorous account of French student life in Grenoble, in which Jacobsen shows his skill at instant characterization. Yet, even Grenoble is constantly compared with Tórshavn: the sunrise, the grass on the bastion, the mist-covered mountaintops—all of these images give the reader a sense of the author's homesickness. The following section consists of letters written at the end of 1922 and beginning of 1923, by which time Jacobsen had been diagnosed as suffering from tuberculosis. They are as good-humored as the earlier ones and express for the first time Jacobsen's remarkably positive acceptance of what life sent him:

He first went to school in Tórshavn, where he took his middle-school examination. He began attending Sorø Academy in Denmark in 1916. His father died the following year, but Jacobsen continued his studies, passing his final examination and leaving school in 1919. Armed with this degree, he went to the University of Copenhagen to study history and French, but in 1922 he developed tuberculosis, and ill health prevented him from finishing his studies until 1932. After graduation, he worked for two years as a journalist on the newspaper Politiken. He gave up journalism in 1934 in order to write a history of the Greenland monopoly—a work that he never finished, in large part because of continued ill health.

Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen  (November 29, 1900 – March 24, 1938) was a Faroese writer. He has a distinct place in Scandinavian literature, as he is the only Faroese writer to achieve international best-seller status. This status derives from his sole novel, Barbara: Roman (1939; translated, 1948 and 1993), which has the added cachet of being one of the few Scandinavian novels to be translated twice into English within the space of fifty years. The novel was translated into five other languages shortly after the first edition in the Danish language. It was also adapted as a motion picture directed by Nils Malmros in 1997 (see Barbara).

These facts, together with Jacobsen's essays, a study of the Faroe Islands published in the guise of a travel guide, and a volume of his letters, are sufficient to suggest that had he lived longer, he would have been one of the outstanding literary figures in Scandinavia in the twentieth century. He was one of five Faroese writers, all born between 1900 and 1903, who represented a remarkable blossoming of literature in a country which had no tradition of literature in a modern sense. Jacobsen, together with William Heinesen, Christian Matras, Heðin Brú, and Martin Joensen, created modern Faroese literature, whether writing in Danish, as did Jacobsen and Heinesen, or the Faroese language, as did the others.

Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen was born 29 November 1900 in Tórshavn. His father, merchant Martin Meinhardt Jacobsen, was of Faroese, Swedish, and Danish descent, and, having been born and spent his childhood in Copenhagen, was mainly Danish speaking. His mother, Maren Frederikke Mikkelsen, was thoroughly Faroese. Their home was thus bilingual, and, according to Heinesen, a distant relative, Jørgen-Frantz spoke Danish to his father and Faroese to his mother and siblings. In general, their extended family was interested in music and theater, and Jørgen-Frantz thus grew up in a highly cultured environment.