Regin Dahl is an important Nordic poet and composer

A touch of ragnarok and gimle

BY HANUS KAMBAN

In a collection of poetry written by the Faeroese poet Regin Dahl and entitled Eftirtorv (1981), there is a text in which the reader (on one level) is given a precise description of the western area of the town of Tórshavn in the 1920s. We are in the depths of winter. Mother and son have been shopping at Restorff’s grocer’s shop next to the town cemetery. On their way home, with the rain and wind beating into their faces, their shopping bag splits open and they have to search the muddy street looking for beetroots and apples. As they pass the brow of the hill and spot the old vicarage, they are hit by the full force of the wind. But a light is shining down in the vicarage, as if to say:

Heima situr pápin
og byggir várt mál.
(Father is sitting at home / building our language)

The symbol of the poem is language. Caring for language, and the survival of language, justify both personal defeat and exposure to the whims of a powerful natural environment. If we imagine that the poem is autobiographical, pápin is of course the poet’s father – Jákup Dahl (1878-1944), theologian and poet, Dean of the Faeroe Islands from 1918 to 1944, the man who wrote the first grammar of Faeroese and translated the Bible into Faeroese.
Regin Dahl’s literary works comprise 12 collections of poetry. The titles of his books, chosen with care and taken from the more obscure corners of the Faeroese language, can generally be translated into terms such as “poetic morsels”, “relics”, or even “kleinkunst”. The poet thus achieves a sense of ironic understatement. But even though these titles express a modesty that is probably not entirely sincere, they do fit the historical situation in which the poet lived. Regin Dahl, born in 1918, belongs to the generation that followed the pioneers – the political, cultural and industrial builders of Faeroese modernity. And in his poetic universe, these pioneers often appear to have an almost iconic charisma.
Apart from Jákup Dahl, they include Jóannes Patursson (politician and popular leader), the Djurhuus brothers, and Rasmus Rasmussen and Símun av Skarði (folk high school principals). In this context it seems natural today to mention Regin Dahl’s grandfather as well: Georg Casper Hansen, better known as Hansen the Baker from Bornholm, multi-talented musician and outstanding music teacher. Hansen the Baker was one of the initial leaders of modern musical life on the Faeroe Islands.
Regin Dahl’s position in Faeroese poetry is unique. At an early stage he liberated himself from the kind of (national) romanticism that influenced a good deal of Faeroese poetry, and found his own voice: a form and style that were more related to poets such as Johs. V. Jensen or Rilke. In his own field he developed a voice that was influenced by both sensibility and expressive robustness. With unique linguistic musicality he knew how to utilise the full range of all the many diphthongs in the Faeroese language, from everyday language to the language of lays and myths. Faeroese is relatively closely connected to Old Norse, whose vocabulary and timbre (complete with a touch of myth and obscure grandezza, of Ragnarok and Gimle) the poet cleverly manages to incorporate into his later works in particular.
Regin Dahl’s poetry has great thematic scope, but whatever his subject (religious or philosophical, dealing with ecology, eros or cultural barbarity) it is always a breach or a disaster that releases his linguistic and lyrical energy. In this universe, exile is one of the main factors. Regin Dahl has lived in Denmark for most of his life. But he has retained the image of Faeroese culture and identity more intensely than his colleagues on the Faeroes. The other main factor is a love affair that was cut short by the German attack on Denmark in 1940. In Regin Dahl’s best poems, exile and personal separation form part of a symbiosis with the insignia of the 20th century: war, displacement, “vandalism and sudden death”:

Hvar mant tú hølast, armingin, nú
í díkisskógum, fjallagloprum,
ímeðan eldur og eiturbland
rigna oman av himli?
(I wonder where you’re hiding now, my friend / in swamps, mountain caves / while fire and poison / rain down from heaven?)

The fact that Regin Dahl appears to be an optimistic poet despite the gloominess of his lyrical universe is due to the dialectic of regeneration that runs through his work from beginning to end. His greatest poem (perhaps), dealing with the funeral of a poet, is simply bursting with strong, cosmic vitality. And this intense sense of vitality is expressed no less radically in “Morgunsálmur” (Morning Hymn), in which intellectual prisoners in a concentration camp, naked and on their way to extinction in the gas chambers, sing:

tín er degningur
handan líkdampsins flókar.
(Yours is the dawn / beyond the vapours of death)

It would not be difficult (if the claim gives any meaning at all) to argue that Regin Dahl is the greatest Faeroese poet of the 20th century. And yet he remains virtually unknown both in Denmark and in other Nordic countries. Even fewer people know that Dahl is both a poet and a composer, and that there is a qualitative equivalence between his poetic work and his musical compositions.
The story of Regin Dahl the composer has a touch of the miraculous about it. Dahl composed tunes even in his youth, but he hadn’t learned to transcribe them so he kept them in his head and rendered them at cultural events, with a piano accompaniment. Niels á Velbastað, who was director of the Faeroese student publishing house in Copenhagen for a while, made sure that this treasure-trove of music was recorded on a tape in a studio and stored safely in the 1970s. Regin Dahl’s complete musical works comprise about 450 tunes.
The scope of this aspect of Dahl’s artistic activities is particularly characteristic. Dahl has written tunes for both Faeroese texts and Nordic and European texts, including a few poems by Goethe, Burns, Johs. V. Jensen and others, as well as 9 poems by Hamsun, 19 by Aakjær and 34 by Erik Axel Karlfeldt! In general, his music is of high quality and distinctive originality; it is both lyrical and strongly expressive, with a hint of Faeroese lay tunes, Taube and Bellman. When it provides contrapuntal balance to the texts, it is often reminiscent of Schubert’s Winterreise, for instance. A selection of Dahl’s tunes has been released on the CD Tú lýsti (ISBN 99918-42-21-7), complete with songs and accompanied by Faeroese and Nordic musicians. Some of the highlights of this CD are Fröding’s “Ett Helicons blomster” and Karlfeldt’s wonderful “Julia Djuplin”, sung by the Swedish singer Håkan Hagegård. Dahl’s tunes for these two texts are congenial masterpieces.
In 1999 there were two traumatic events in the life of Regin Dahl. His partner of many years died of illness. And a few months later he himself became blind due to unfortunate complications following an eye operation. He moved to the Faeroes and lived there for a while, probably for the first time since 1934. Few people imagined that he would ever get over these two blows. But in the spring of 2000 he started to recover – and to create new poetry! The result was a collection of poetry entitled Smámunir, which was published later the same year. The book consists of brief, epiphanic glimpses, strong sensations and concentrated images. The following lines are personal, and they also bring one of Goethe’s most famous poems up to date, based on recent European history:

Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh.
Von Buchenwalde spürest Du
kaum einen Hauch,
kaum einen Rauch.
Warte nur, warte nur,
balde
ruhest Du auch.

Hanus Kamban is an author

Translated by Nick Wrigley