Ormurin Langi ("The Long Serpent") is a Faroese folk ballad. It was written in ca. 1830 by Jens Christian Djurhuus.
Written in 86 verses in Faroese, the song deals with the Norwegian king Olaf Tryggvason. The title Ormurin Langi refers to Olaf Tryggvason's ship with the same name (Ormrinn Langi in Old Norse).
Around 1800 there was an increasing amount of attention paid to the store of Faroese folk ballads (kvæði), which survived in the oral tradition and were sung as an accompaniment to Faroese dancing. Even before 1800 Jens Christian Svabo had recorded ballads, but collecting got under way seriously after 1800, and names like Johan Henrik Schrøter, Jóannes í Króki and later on, V. U. Hammershaimb can be mentioned in this regard.
The old ballads were seen as having special historical value, but there was also interest in more recent ballads, e.g. comic ballads (táttur), and new ballads were composed in the old style. One poet who attracts particular notice is Jens Christian Djurhuus (1773–1853), who was a farmer in Kollafjørður. The most famous of his works is Ormurin Langi, "The Ballad of the Long Serpent". His most individual work, however, is perhaps Púkaljómur (‘The Devils Ballad’), a religious epic based on a Danish translation of ‘Paradise Lost’ by the 17th-century English poet John Milton.
Otherwise he mainly takes the subject matter for his ballads from the Norse sagas, e.g. ‘Heimskringla’ (‘The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway’) and ‘Færeyinga saga’, the story of how the Faroes were converted to Christianity under Sigmundur Brestisson and with the resistance of Tróndur í Gøtu. This was the Romantic Age, and Norse literature was very much in vogue. Everything indicates that the Faroese immediately took his poetry to their hearts. In an account of a journey written in 1847-48 the ballad collector and clergyman V. U. Hammershaimb writes:
Ormurin Langi takes its subject matter from the account well given in Heimskringla of the famous sea battle off the island of Svolder in 1000, when the Swedish and Danish kings, together with the Norwegian Eiríkr Hákonarson, attacked the Norwegian king, Olaf Tryggvason, while he was on his way home from Wendland to Norway on his ship, the Long Serpent, accompanied by his fleet.
They attack in turn and King Olaf repulses the assaults of the two kings, but is defeated by his countryman Eiríkr Hákonarson.
The outcome of the battle is known; when Olaf realises that the battle is lost, he leaps overboard together with his surviving men. It is not known where this battle took place, with it being doubtful whether there ever was an island called Svolder.
In the ballad the poet has Olaf sailing from the Baltic into the Oresund between Denmark and Sweden, where he imagines the island to be located, and the battle takes place in the straits between the island and the mainland.
Various scenes from the drama described in the ballad appear on ten stamps, issued in 2006 by Postverk Føroya and designed by the artist Vigdis Sigmundsdóttir. [1] They show shipbuilding and a launch, with the king sitting on the throne while giving an audience to Einarr Thambarskelfir. Another one shows the fleet putting out to sea. Another shows the Long Serpent and the other ships heading into the straits while their adversaries stand on the shore watching them. In the Long Serpent's bow there is Ulf the Red, Olaf's forecastle man, while the king and Einar the Archer are seen up on the quarterdeck. There are dead bodies tumbling into the sea during the battle, which ends with Eiríkr Hákonarson capturing the Long Serpent and so taking command of the vessel.
The location where the song is composed is unknown.
The oldest version dates back to 1819 and was made by Jóannes í Króki of Sandur. He also collected a version in 1823.
When Svend Grundtvig and Jørgen Bloch edited Føroya kvæði , an anthology of Faroese folksongs, around 1880, they knew of six recordings of the ballad. A version in the poet's own hand turned up at a later date, but it is not known when it dates from.
Nowadays the ballad is referred to as Ormurin Langi (i.e. "The Long Serpent"), but that was not the title used by the poet himself. He referred to it as Olaf Trygvasons kvad ("The Ballad of Olaf Trygvason"), and other recorders did that as well, including Jóannes í Króki.
It was not until a version from around 1846 that it was discovered that the song got its title from Olaf Trygvason's ship, (Ormurin langi). When Hammershaimb had the ballad printed in his principal work, Færøsk Anthologi (A Faroese Anthology) of 1891, he used the title Ormurin langi, and the same title was used when it was serialised a few years earlier (1882) in the Dimmalætting newspaper.
The lyrics of the ballad vary slightly from version to version, but when the ballad is performed today, it is always in the form known from Færøsk Anthologi.
Nor do the old versions agree on which refrain (and therefore which tune) to use. The refrain that reigns supreme today is found in only one of the oldest versions. It is the one used in Færøsk Anthologi and is, incidentally, familiar from some of the old ballads. Færøsk Anthologi has had a standardising effect and its text has in some ways become the authorised version.
The song appears in the Icelandic Viking movie In the Shadow of the Raven .
Olaf Tryggvason was King of Norway from 995 to 1000. He was the son of Tryggvi Olafsson, king of Viken, and, according to later sagas, the great-grandson of Harald Fairhair, first King of Norway. He is numbered as Olaf I.
The Battle of Svolder was a large naval battle during the Viking age, fought in September 999 or 1000 in the western Baltic Sea between King Olaf of Norway and an alliance of the Kings of Denmark and Sweden and Olaf's enemies in Norway. The backdrop of the battle was the unification of Norway into a single independent state after longstanding Danish efforts to control the country, combined with the spread of Christianity in Scandinavia.
The culture of the Faroe Islands has its roots in the Nordic culture. The Faroe Islands were long isolated from the main cultural phases and movements that swept across parts of Europe. This means that they have maintained a great part of their traditional culture. The language spoken is Faroese. It is one of three insular North Germanic languages descended from the Old Norse language spoken in Scandinavia in the Viking Age, the others being Icelandic and the extinct Norn, which is thought to have been mutually intelligible with Faroese.
Erik Hakonsson, also known as Eric of Hlathir or Eric of Norway, was Earl of Lade, Governor of Norway and Earl of Northumbria. He was the son of Earl Hákon Sigurðarson and brother of the legendary Aud Haakonsdottir of Lade. He participated in the Battle of Hjörungavágr, the Battle of Svolder and the conquest of England by King Canute the Great.
Ormrinn Langi in Old Norse was one of the most famous of the Viking longships. It was built for the Norwegian King Olav Tryggvason, and was the largest and most powerful longship of its day. In the late 990s King Olav was on a "Crusade" around the country to bring Christianity to Norway. When he was traveling north to Hålogaland, he ended up in battle with forces of Raud the Strong, who refused to convert to Christianity. Olaf eventually captured Raud, and gave him two choices: die or convert. The Sagas say that Olav tried to convert him but Raud cursed the name of Jesus, and the King became so enraged that he, using either the hollow stalk of an angelica or his horn and a red-hot iron, forced a snake down his throat, which ate its way out of the side of the torso of Raud and killed him. After the victory Olav confiscated Raud's riches, not least of which was Raud's ship, which he rechristened Ormen. He took it to Trondheim and used it as a design for his own new ship, which he made a couple of "rooms" longer than Ormen and named Ormen Lange.
Faroese literature, in the traditional sense of the word, has only really developed in the past two hundred years. This is mainly because of the islands' isolation, and also because the Faroese language was not written down in a standardised format until 1890. Until then the Danish language was encouraged at the expense of Faroese. Nevertheless, the Faroese language soon became a vehicle for literature in its own right and has produced writers in several genres.
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Risin og Kellingin are two sea stacks just off the northern coast of the island of Eysturoy in the Faroe Islands close to the town of Eiði. The name Risin og Kellingin means The Giant and the Witch and relates to an old legend about their origins. The Giant (Risin) is the 71m stack further from the coast, and the witch (Kellingin) is the 68m pointed stack nearer land, standing with her legs apart.
The Faroese chain dance is the national circle dance of the Faroe Islands, accompanied by kvæði, the Faroese ballads.
Jens Christian Djurhuus or Sjóvarbóndin was the first poet who wrote in Faroese. He composed several Faroese ballads in traditional style on historical themes. The best known is Ormurin langi. Djurhuus also composed satirical poems directed against Danish rule in the Faroe Islands.
Vigdis Sigmundsdóttir was an artist from the Faroe Islands, known internationally for producing a collage of 12 motives from Ormurin Langi that resulted in a series of stamps from Postverk Føroya released in 2006.
Kollafjørður is a village in the Faroe Islands, located on the island of Streymoy. As of 1. January 2024, the village had a population of 813. Its postal code is FO 410. Until 2001 it was a municipality in its own right but is now part of the Tórshavn Municipality. It is located 21.8 kilometres (13.5 mi) by road north of Tórshavn, and stretches 7 km (4.3 mi) along the fjord of the same name.
The Faroe or Faeroe Islands, or simply the Faroes, are an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean and an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. The official language of the country is Faroese, which is closely related to and partially mutually intelligible with Icelandic.
Jóannes Patursson was a Faroese nationalist leader and poet. He served as a member of the Parliament of Denmark and the Parliament of the Faroe Islands.
Jens Hendrik Oliver Djurhuus, called Janus Djurhuus, was the first modern Faroese poet. He and his younger brother Hans Andreas Djurhuus, also a poet, are called the Áarstova brothers after the house where they grew up.
Hans Andrias Djurhuus was a Faroese poet and teacher. Hans Andrias Djurhuus was one of the most productive Faroese poets. He is well known for his national poems and for his children's songs, but he also wrote psalms, short stories, plays, fairytales and one novel.
Marianne Clausen was a Danish musicologist and choir conductor. She was the daughter of composer, choir conductor and musicologist Karl Clausen (1904–1972). Her main achievement, begun in collaboration with her father in the early 1970s, intensified during the 1990s, and concluded just weeks before her death, was the preservation of traditional Faroese folk singing, which she presented in a number of large volumes with music notation transcriptions of sound recordings. Based on more than 6,000 such recordings, collected by many different scholars, including herself, throughout the entire 20th century, she published around 3,350 music notation examples of various genres of traditional Faroese singing, together with hitherto unpublished song texts, as well as historical and musicological analyses.
