The field work in the Faroe Islands on which this essay is based was supported in part by the Comparative International Program, Department of Social Relations, Harvard University. Further research on Scandinavia in 1976–77 was supported by a Fulbright-Hays Senior Research Fellowship at the Sosialantropologisk Institutt, Universitetet i Bergen. Field work in Dominica was carried out under the aegis of the Island Resources Foundation, St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands. I am grateful to the Bergen social anthropologists for hearing out some preliminary generalizations about Scandinavia, and to the Center for International Studies at Cornell University for sponsoring a lecture based on a draft of this essay.

¹ Patois-the Dominican brand of Lesser Antillean French Creole-has no standard written form. I render it here according to the phonemic system proposed by Taylor, Douglas, Languages of the West Indies (Baltimore and London, 1977), 198–204.Google Scholar

² The quotations below are from Edwards, Bryan, History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, 4th ed., 3 vols. (London, 1807), I, 435–36Google Scholar. The clearest picture of the attack is given by a map, a photocopy of which (from the original in the Bib-liotheque Nationale) is in the Map Room at the New York Public Library, entitled “Plan de la Conquete de L'Isle de la Dominique par le M^r le M^is de Bouilté En 1778.” Edwards's account, like most in English and some in French, relies on that of Atwood, Thomas, The History of the Island of Dominica [etc.] (London, 1791; facsim. ed. London, 1971)Google Scholar, 108ff. Most French accounts rely on documentary sources, and on the Marquis de Bouillé's correspondence and memoirs. See, e.g., Mémoires du Marquis de Bouillé, Barriére, M. Fs., ed. (Paris, 1859)Google Scholar, 46ff; Lacour-Gayet, G., La Marine militaire de la France sous le règne de Louis XVI (Paris, 1905), 181–83;Google Scholar and Lerville, E., “Rivalté Marine-Armée de Terre à la Martinique en 1779 vue a travers les documents chiffres,” Revue Historique de I' Armée, 28:3 (3rd trimester, 1972), 33–52.Google Scholar Fora quasi-official British military view, see Beatson, R., Naval and Military Memoirs of Great Britain from 1727 to 1783, 6 vols. (London, 1804), IV, 384ff.Google Scholar The attack is illustrated, in some respects no doubt rather fancifully, by Godefroy, F., Recueil d'estampes represantant des différents évenemens de la Guerre qui a procuré I'Independance mix Etats unis de I'Amerique (Paris, n.d. [1783?]).Google Scholar

The British often named strongpoints after officers. Scotts Head, for example, at the southern tip of the island, is named for Lieutenant Colonel George Scott, who was the lieutenant governor of Dominica during 1765–68.

³ There are in addition several minor races, including Caribs, Portuguese, and East Indians. Black people themselves range in color from what they call “black” to “red-skin” to “clear-skin.” the patois term was is nearly synonymous with “family” (famiy) in the latter's sense of people related by blood.

I hope it will be clear that the following ideas about racial characteristics are in no way my own.

⁴ Here and throughout, I use the terms respectability and reputation in the senses proposed by Wilson, P. J., Crab Antics: The Social Anthropology of English-Speaking Negro Societies of the Caribbean (New Haven and London, 1973)Google Scholar, 2ff., to mean dialectically related principles of social stratification based respectively on nonlocal and local values and pursuits. Wilson argues persua sively that this dialectic is fundamental in West Indian cultures. In a less extreme form (because not aligned with alleged racial characteristics) it is probably common to all provincial cultures. I suggest at the end of this essay that there is a third kind of elite, formed of what might be called people of substance, whose members rather precariously mediate respectability and reputation. A preacher is respectable, for example, a good fisherman is reputable, and a well-to-do landowner is a man of substance.

⁵ In Casse, where everyone's first language is patois, competence in English varies im mensely. At present most people's English is probably best described as a nascent English Creole influenced by patois as well as by standard English and by existing West Indian English Creoles; cf. Amastae, J., “Dominican English Creole Phonology: An Initial Sketch”, Anthropological Linguistics, 21 (04 1979), 182–204.Google Scholar In Casse, patois is not believed to be a “real language.”

⁶ Bell, H. J., Obeah (London, 1893), 414–15.Google Scholar

⁷ Waugh, A., Hot Countries (New York, 1930), 89.Google Scholar

⁸ Only Baptiste told me the story of the siege of Labatwi. It is evidently not commonly known in the village, but most people are probably aware that Dominica used to be French. The enmity between French and English is sometimes attributed to the latter's having executed Joan of Arc for working obeah. The story of Joan of Arc was probably popularized by French priests in the late nineteenth century, and has been perpetuated by several movies that have toured the island.

⁹ I am speaking here of knowledge with no obvious practical importance. Practical knowledge is learned mostly by rote and imitation, and quickly fades if its applications disappear. Thus the few constellations people once knew were forgotten when night smuggling trips ceased.

¹⁰ Álvabpur's settlement supports a small literature. The fullest treatment, relying mostly on documentary sources, is by Bjørk, E. A., “Elsta søga Skopunar,” Úrval, 3:1 (1968), 3–37.Google Scholar The discussion by Hjalt, Edward, Sands søga (Torshavn, 1953), 95ff., relies more heavily on oral tradition in Strandarvík; his dating appears to be off by at least a year. I am grateful to Niklas Jacobsen for letting me copy his file of newspaper clippings, upon which the following account is also based.Google Scholar

¹¹ It appears, however, that this ballad was taken over from an Icelandic saga about an incident in Norway, the plot being applied to this island in the Faroes because of a chance congruence of names. The name Álvabøur itself more likely means “elves’ infield” than “Álvur's infield.“ See Poulsen, J. H.. “Urn Finnbogarimu fsreysku,” Skírnir [Reykjavik]¹³⁷“ (1963), 46–58.Google Scholar

¹² Bjørk, , “Elsta Søga Skopunar,” 12–13.Google Scholar

¹³ Nolsøe, P., “Tá Skopun varO endurbygd: Hvat skjölini siga frá nýbúsetingini,” interview in 14 September [Tórshavn], 2 October 1950.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Literally, “… that the first house in Álvabøur was raised” (reist). Completion of a house is customarily dated to the erection of the roof-tree.

¹⁵ Bjørk, “Elsta Søga Skopunar,” 18.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Cf. Poulsen, J. M., “Hvör bygdi Skopun?” letter to the editor, 14 September, 24 July 1950.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Øssurson, J., “Meira urn Skopun,” letter to the editor, 14 September, 21 August 1950.Google Scholar

¹⁸ It might be called legendary history, and indeed its details of kinship, dwelling-place, and land tenure are standard features of Faroese legends (sagnir). So is the tendency to edit out named foreign figures (in this case the Danish authorities), which lends it the sense—culturally telling but historically no more accurate than the lack of local figures in Baptiste's story—that only Faroese took part in the events described. I am at present preparing a book on Faroese history in which the style and importance of legendary recollections are discussed at some length.

¹⁹ The stone was eventually turned into a memorial for men lost at sea and on the bird-cliffs. Ironically, therefore, it bears Mikkjal's name but not Johan Hendrik's.

²⁰ Like other Álvabøur families, the Davidsens do not form a clan or a class, but rather what Faroese call an ætt: essentially a patrilineage, generally exogamous within three or four degrees of kinship. The looser and more colloquial term fólk, sometimes used synonymously, may also mean family, people, folk, race, etcetera. For a discussion of the Faroese kinship system, see Wylie, J., ”I'm a Stranger Too“ (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1974).Google Scholar The Davidsens were slow to be drawn into the complicated web of Álvabøur kinship. None of Old Jóhan Hendrik's three boys married village girls, and his daughter married away. Only two of his eighteen village-born grandchildren took Álvabøur spouses: four died young, two never married, four married elsewhere, and six took spouses from elsewhere.

²¹ A further indication of Álvabøur's somewhat peculiar situation is the fact that the Social Democrats took votes away from the Self-Rule Party. Elsewhere in the Faroes, the Self-Rule Party drew only about 35–40 percent of the total vote in 1920–36, and in general it was their conservative rival, the Union Party (Sambandsflokkur) which lost votes to the Social Democrats. Another Davidsen was a member of the Løgting in 1932–36. For detailed voting statistics, see Waag, E., Vol og valtøl 1906–1966 (Klaksvik, 1967).Google Scholar

²² Jakobsen, J., Færøske folkesagn og æventyr, 3 vols. (Copenhagen, 1898–1901; rpt. T´orshavn, 1964–1972), I, 46.Google Scholar For a history of the Faroes as seen through the legends, see Jakobsen's, Færøsk sagnhistorie (Copenhagen, 1904).Google Scholar

²³ Jakobsen, , Færøske folkesagn og ceventyr, I, xxxiv.Google Scholar Jakobsen dates the beginning of the demise of the Kvøldseta to 1856, when, with the advent of free trade, people began gathering in the shops that sprouted up in each village.

²⁴ Park, G. K., ”Regional Versions of Norwegian Culture: A Trial Formulation,” Ethnology, 11:1 (01 1972), 3–24, at 9. Park says this betokens “a positive resistance to community.” I should argue that it exhibits exactly the sort of agreement on which a sense of community is based.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁵ Quoted in The Government of Iceland, Iceland and the Law of the Sea (Reykjavik, 1972), 7.Google Scholar

²⁶ Gislason, G. Þ, The Problem of Being an Icelander: Past, Present and Future, Karlsson, P. K., trans. (Reykjavik, 1973), 91.Google Scholar

²⁷ Space permits only a cursory discussion of Faroese cultural development since the early nineteenth century. For a fuller account, see my forthcoming history of the Faroes, and Wylie, J. and Margolin, D., The Ring of Dancers: Images of Faroese Culture (Philadelphia, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and West, J., Faroe: The Emergence of a Nation (London and New York, 1972).Google Scholar

²⁸ Oakley, S., A Short History of Denmark (New York and Washington, 1972), 172–73. Until 1846 there was no satisfactory system for writing Faroese, which was in any case rarely written and then usually quasi-phonetically in awkward accordance with Danish conventions. The Ham- mershaimb orthography mentioned below is at once morphophonemic and etymological. For an account in English of the development and symbolic significance of this orthography, see Wylie and Margolin, Ring of Dancers, 82–94.Google Scholar

²⁹ Barnes, J. A., “Class and Committees in a Norwegian Island Parish,” Human Relations, 7:1 (1954), 39–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 54. One is reminded that the Icelandic “family sagas,” the villain of the piece is often an ójafnaðarmað—an “unequal-man,” one who is “overbearing, self-willed, uncompromising, … who is not fair-minded and temperate in his dealings with his neighbors.” Andersson, T. M., The Icelandic Family Saga (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁰ Park, , “Regional Versions,” 9;Google Scholarcf. Hollos, M., “Conflict and Social Change in a Norwegian Mountain Community,” Anthropological Quarterly, 49:4 (1976), 239–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³¹ Blom, J.-P. and Gumperz, J. J., “Social Meaning in Linguistic Structure: Code-Switching in Norway,” Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication, Gumperz, J. J. and Hymes, D., eds. (New York, 1972), 407–34, at 433.Google Scholar

³² Cf.Ringel, G. and Wylie, J., “God's Work: Appreciations of the Environment in Dominica” (Caribbean Conservation Association, forthcoming).Google Scholar

³³ The British offered a parting gift of EC$53.4 million. Denying that this was a “golden handshake,” Premier John declared he had demanded EC$200 million. According to Dominican economic norms, one must always retain at least the appearance of control over any transaction.

³⁴ The New Chronicle [Roseau], 14 July 1978.Google Scholar

³⁵ Manning, F., “Religion and Politics in Bermuda: Revivalist Politics and the Language of Power,” Caribbean Review, 8:4 (Fall 1979), 18–22Google Scholar, 42–43, at 19. For a nominally secular counterpart of this sort of politics of revelation, sounding almost like a parody of the French faith in the rationality of civilization, see Farrugia's, L. call to introduce into Guadeloupe “the essential principles of rationality,” in Autonomic pour la Guadeloupe (Pointe-á-Pitre[?], 1967).Google Scholar

³⁶ Culturally, the increasing popularity of the Freedom Party around the time of independence and its subsequent victory at the polls represent an internal recreation of the preindependence Black-White and Dominican-British distinctions. They also followed, of course, from fragmentation and factionalism within the Labour Party and increasing disgust with Patrick John's corrupt and high-handed ways.

³⁷ The following attempt at a social history of Casse since the Second World War is necessarily tentative. It draws on snippets of information I picked up, on personal communications from Amastae, Jon and Wouk, Jonathan, and on Wouk, J., “Witchcraft and Sorcery in a Dominican Fishing Village” (senior honors thesis, Harvard College, 1965).Google Scholar