Dreams of Cars on an Island Youth, Cars and Cultural Values in the Faroe Islands

Dreams of Cars on an Island Youth, cars and cultural values in the Faroe Islands Dreymar um bilar á oyggjum Ungdómur, bilar og mentanarlig virði í Føroyum Firouz Gaini Teacher College – Føroya Læraraskúli – University of the Faroe Islands Frælsið 20, FO-100 Torshavn Email: firouz@flsk.fo eina nýggja mynd av einum evni, ið hevur verið eyð- Abstract kent av sterkari samfelagsligari fordøming av hugburði This article, based on a research project on youth and og atferð ungdómsins. car cultures in the Faroe Islands, describes and analyses the meaning, value and symbol given to cars and Introduction driving among young people today. The article focuses on leisure, social interaction and cultural identity in There is a peculiar relationship between order to understand and define the position and role youth and cars. Young people themselves of the car among young people. The risk behaviour consider car driving as praxis tailored to and attitude of drivers is investigated with these youth cultures. The car symbolizes the questions in mind: How do young people interpret vivaciousness and hedonism in their life- their own risk behaviour? How do young people com- municate experiences and information concerning the styles. The private car is the vehicle to safety and danger of driving? The article aims to give a success in social endeavours among peers. fresh view on a field that has been characterized by Without access to a car many young people strong prejudiced societal condemnation of young feel detached from popular social networks people´s attitudes and behaviour. in their local community. The car is the key to free, funny and sensual lifestyles. But free- Útrak dom involves danger. Car driving is hence Hesin tekstur, ið hevur støði í granskingarverkætlan um also a question of risk calculation and crucial ungdóm og bilmentan í Føroyum, lýsir og greinir mein- decision-making on the roads. Risk beha- ingar, virði og symbol, ið ung geva bilum og bilkoyring viour is part of the style of many young men, í dag. Teksturin hyggur serliga at frítíðini, sosiala sam- skiftinum og mentanarliga samleikanum við tí fyri eyga blamed for being devils on wheels in the at skilja og allýsa støðuna og leiklutin, ið bilurin hevur media. This article takes a closer look at the millum ung. Risiko-atferðin og hugburðurin hjá bil- so-called `car cultures’ of young people in førarum verða kannað við hesum spurningum í huga: the Faroe Islands. It takes the reader on a trip Hvussu tulka ung sjálv sína risiko-atferð? Hvussu sam- with these introductory statements as a skifta ung sínar royndir og sína vitan viðvíkjandi trygd og vanda í bilkoyring? Málið við tekstinum er at geva roadmap. The article discusses youth, cars Fróðskaparrit 57. bók 2009: 59 -76 60 DREAMS OF CARS ON AN ISLAND and cultural values in the Faroe Islands today behaviour on the roads of the Faroe Islands. from an interpretive anthropological app- Today people are in general consciously roach. aware of modern road traffic dangers. The As an island community the Faroes are ‘car culture’ of young people is also changing; normally associated with boats and sea new values and symbols are being intro- routes (Joensen, 1982). For centuries water duced to the youth cultures (Gaini, 2009). was – in every meaning of the word – the Especially, young men, aged 18-30, are main component of life. So why write about considered hard to advice and educate young people’s dreams of cars on small dots regarding safe driving. of land in the vast Atlantic Ocean? Because the car is indispensable in contemporary Methods Faroese culture – for work, family-life, leisure, In June 2009, I published a report – commis- etc. Motor vehicles infiltrate every societal sioned by the Road Safety Council – on sphere, especially those involving young young people, traffic behaviour and road people. The car is the means and end of pro- safety in the Faroe Islands. This recent jects. Cars, says a French philosopher, are the anthropological research venture (2006- aesthetic cathedrals of the 20 th and 21 st 2008) provides this article’s prime data. The centuries (Heddelin, 1991). Symbolic car report is based on qualitative semi-structu- worshipping takes place around the red interviews and questionnaires involving globalized world; even small peripheral around 100 people in total during 2006-07. archipelagos give homage to the trans- Most informants are aged 16-30 and resi- national ‘car cult’. There are more than dents of Torshavn. The informants have 20.000 registered motor vehicles in the Faroe different social, cultural, religious and family Islands, the home of 49.000 inhabitants backgrounds, but all of them are students or (Akstovan, 2009). former students of upper secondary schools The Faroe Islands, a latemodern society of the Faroe Islands. One out of three infor- in the North-western corner of Europe, mants was undertaking higher education at witnessed relatively high numbers of serious departments of the University of the Faroe accidents on the roads through the 1980s Islands – including the Nursery School and and 1990s (Sigvardsen and Kragesteen, Teachers College – at the time of the inter- 2003). Fortunately, the negative statistical view. Even though most informants are stu- pattern has changed during the last years, dents in Torshavn, many have a background making the national Road Safety Council’s from distant towns and villages. (Ráðið fyri Ferðslutrygd ) preventive informa- The informants are not singled out tion campaign look successful. The purpose because they have first-hand car accident of the council’s promoted ‘zero-vision’ pro- experience; they represent a cross section of ject is a future where no one is killed or contemporary Faroese youths with different seriously wounded in car accidents (op cit). viewpoints and attitudes towards driving. This may be Utopia, but the visionary plan The informants present youth images of the changes the discourse on safe and unsafe curious rituals and ceremonies, customs and DREYMAR UM BILAR Á OYGGJUM 61 values that characterize car cultures of the Faroese society. Risk is a relational concept Faroe Islands. Another important origin of knit into specific social contexts. The this article’s data is readers’ letters and news understanding of risk, its value and articles printed in Faroese newspapers consequences, depends on the knowledge during the last decade. Most of this written and identity of the interpreter. Risk for material gives factual documentation of whom? Risk considered necessary? Risk tragic road accidents in the Faroe Islands. considered rewarding? Risk signalling total This article does not give a thorough analysis freedom? Risk and security, relevant subjects of the meaning and value of cars in the in post-9/11 political discourse, are always youth cultures and everyday lives, rather, it related to the notions of freedom and self- investigates some facets in a complex and determination (op cit). It has for generations ambiguous relation – the relation between been common sense to claim, that risk young people and motor vehicles. behaviour is the brand of the youth. The ‘live The Faroese youth research tradition is fast die young’ cliché romanticizes high risk young and quantitatively limited (Gaini, in modern youth lifestyles. 2008). No study of the meaning of motor As observed in the field, young people in vehicles in youth cultures has been conduc- the Faroe Islands discuss the local car ted before my above mentioned project cultures with direct or indirect references to 2006-08. It is therefore difficult, almost impos- risk behaviour. The cultural models that sible, to give a reliable historical overview of young people have internalized through car cultures of the Faroe Islands. The education and social interaction shape their unfortunate shortage of social data from the understanding and interpretation of risk Faroe Islands makes most new research enter- behaviour. High risk behaviour, considered prises pioneering. Texts are therefore more destructive and irresponsible, is usually pragmatically explanatory and discursive than rooted in cultural and social models hard to comparatively analytical and theoretically change. In debates and research on AIDS, it is definitive. The holistic approach given un- often pointed out how difficult it is to covers general trends in the Faroe Islands change some groups of young people anno 2009, albeit without the ambition of regarding their sexual behaviour and establishing a paradigmatic core reference attitudes. Oppositional subcultures might text for future research within youth studies. even take risks in order to contest mainstream society’s moral ‘panics’. In other eoretical framework words, the risk behaviour functions as a The text is theoretically anchored in the symbolic defensive weapon that has a work of Ulrich Beck, who concentrates on boomerang effect – you put your own the risk and risk society concepts (Denney, health and welfare at risk. 2005). The aim is not to examine Beck’s risk The text also attempts to clarify the society theory, but to use ‘risk’ as an difficult shift from tradition to (late) analytical tool and conceptual approach to modernity in the Faroe Islands through the a complex cultural field in contemporary windscreen of the car. The image in the 62 DREAMS OF CARS ON AN ISLAND windscreen changes all the time when All risk, according to anthropologist driving through the majestic landscape of Mary Douglas (1982), is socially constructed the islands; fast unexpected movements also and risk knowledge depends on belief characterize the Faroese culture of the era of systems and moral positions. Douglas argues globalization (Gaini, 2008). The car culture that individuals never strictly and exclusively of the 1960s or 1970s is not the same as the act as atomized rational cost-benefit car culture of the 1980s or 1990s. The car has calculators, avoiding any risk of private got a new meaning, status and function for interests, because human beings are not able young drivers and their passengers.

Load more