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

seriously. The issue was given more consideration because the Faroese
for once were united in a cause: ‘we want to fish off Greenland’. But at
the same time there was a broad understanding of the responsibilities
Denmark had towards the Greenlanders and their welfare.
Balancing the reasonable and contradictory Faroese and Greenlandic
interests in the matter became a major political issue for the government,
which had to act under rising Greenlandic self-consciousness and
protests.
Sources
Many documents from the Danish ministries and departments—and most of the essential
papers on Faroese fishing rights—are published in the Faroese printed minutes from the
Lagting (the county council), Lagtingstidende, dating back to the nineteenth century.
Checks in the Archives of the Realm (Rigsarkivet) prove the accuracy of these
publications. In his unpublished MA thesis ‘Færøfiskeriet ved Grønland’, 1982, Søren
Spanner demonstrates this after a painstaking search in the Rigsarkivet. Since this article
deals with the Faroese politics in the matter and only secondarily with the more general
Danish administration and politics and the Greenlandic angle I have found it legitimate in
general to build primarily on Faroese sources and Danish published governmental and
parliamentary material.
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