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author succeeded in convincing the reader, or at least Eigil
Tvibur, that in 1846 Napoleon Nolsøe had broken the
Hippocratic Oath. That accusation was not just hard; it was
enough to destroy a man’s legacy.
In 1846, namely, measles was ravaging the Faroes; in
Tórshavn alone around 50 of the 800 inhabitants died.
Doctor Napoleon, who at that time practiced in
Nólsoyarstova, was asked by county administrator Pløyen to
travel to Su
ð
uroy to help with the crisis. He would be paid
50 rigsdaler a month. However, Napoleon refused to depart.
A few years after Eigil read Ole Jacobsen’s article, the
literary history
Bókmentasøga I
by Árni Dahl was published.
It was clear that Dahl greatly respected the doctor. Indeed,
page 75 of the book featured a large photograph of the man;
the picture was accompanied by a short biography, and
Dahl reprinted a few snippets composed in Faroese by
Cand. med. & chir. N. Nolsøe.
That made Eigil furious. He had always been disgusted by
the type of nationalist who claimed to love the native
poetry, but could care less about the country’s inhabitants.
As Regin Dahl wrote:
I love the land, hate the people.
Or
maybe it was the reverse. Eigil simply had no tolerance for
that kind of verbiage. And that was more or less how
Napoleon Nolsøe was described in Ole Jacobsen’s essay. He
loved the Faroese songs and ballads, but in 1846 had turned
his back on his dying countrymen.