The North Atlantic Fisheries, 1100-1976 - University of Hull

1930/31 Patursson repeated the main historical and national arguments
in a book about Faroese autonomy, where he in a short passage dealing
with the fishery off Greenland wrote, “the Faroese now craved to sail to
Greenland.” 146 The rights of Greenlanders to the resources were not
taken into consideration by Patursson.
Two main points in the interwar debate were put by Patursson in the
open: firstly the historical position whereby the Faroese by inheritance
from their Old-Norse ancestors had a right to utilize the Greenlandic
resources; secondly the coordination of Norwegian and Faroese claims in
the matter directed against the Danish authority, the Danish points of
view and the protectionist policy on Greenland.
In the event, neither of the majorities of the two Faroese parties, the
Autonomists and the Unionists, took the link to Norway seriously; on the
contrary, it was generally looked upon as a sort of high treason 147 or
fanaticism. Also, the historical argument was at the time rejected as
invalid by the Danish public and government. The political majority
played the card of being ‘Danish citizens’, with equal rights everywhere
to everybody born in the Danish realm. As demonstrated later it was the
question of social need, the difficulties faced by the ordinary Faroese
family dependent on the fishery, that mattered in Denmark. Neither the
historical nor the citizenship arguments were taken seriously in
Copenhagen—and the Norwegians were dealt with at the International
Court in the Hague in 1933. But in a wider perspective Patursson was
Danish-Icelandic Treaty of 1918, the Icelanders followed the intension of article 6 and
guaranteed the Faroese fishing rights off Iceland.
146 Patursson, Færøsk Selvstyre, the cod was reported in Greenlandic waters and “Nu
vilde færingerne til Grønland”, p. 59. The whole intense writing demonstrates, that the
meaning is “urged for”, or “craved”, or “claimed”, while the more direct translation
“wanted to go to Greenland” is to weak. See also Wåhlin et al., Færøsk og dansk politik,
185, 249, endnotes 19-21, 23.
147 During the First World War J. Patursson had been the leader of a group of nationalists
which, in vain, had tried to get into direct negotiations—behind the back of the
authorities—with the British government concerning provisions to the islands. In
1918-20 J. Patursson’s behaviour in the matter was examined by a special committee of
the parliament especially concerning high treason. As a member of parliament himself it
was a serious matter if he was convicted. In the end the majority of the commitee let him
off the hook since the case became more and more a political matter than one of the law,
cf. Wåhlin et al., Mellem færøsk og dansk politik, passim. A look at French national
reactions during and after the Great War towards anybody daring to make direct contact
with the enemy, or the Italian reaction after the political take-over by the Fascists etc.,
shows that Patursson from the First World War and onwards played a tough game with
Danish patience.
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