page_title: Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen
section_title: Early years
hierarchical_section_title: Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen / Early years
context_page_description: Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen was a Faroese writer. He has a distinct place in Scandinavian literature, as he is the only Faroese writer to achieve international best-seller status. This status derives from his sole novel, Barbara: Roman, which has the added cachet of being one of the few Scandinavian novels to be translated twice into English within the space of fifty years. The novel was translated into five other languages shortly after the first edition in the Danish language. It was also adapted as a motion picture directed by Nils Malmros in 1997.
  These facts, together with Jacobsen's essays, a study of the Faroe Islands published in the guise of a travel guide, and a volume of his letters, are sufficient to suggest that had he lived longer, he would have been one of the outstanding literary figures in Scandinavia in the twentieth century. He was one of five Faroese writers, all born between 1900 and 1903, who represented a remarkable blossoming of literature in a country which had no tradition of literature in a modern sense.
context_section_description: Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen was born 29 November 1900 in Tórshavn. His father, merchant Martin Meinhardt Jacobsen, was of Faroese, Swedish, and Danish descent, and, having been born and spent his childhood in Copenhagen, was mainly Danish speaking. His mother, Maren Frederikke Mikkelsen, was thoroughly Faroese. Their home was thus bilingual, and, according to Heinesen, a distant relative, Jørgen-Frantz spoke Danish to his father and Faroese to his mother and siblings. In general, their extended family was interested in music and theater, and Jørgen-Frantz thus grew up in a highly cultured environment.
  He first went to school in Tórshavn, where he took his middle-school examination. He began attending Sorø Academy in Denmark in 1916. His father died the following year, but Jacobsen continued his studies, passing his final examination and leaving school in 1919. Armed with this degree, he went to the University of Copenhagen to study history and French, but in 1922 he developed tuberculosis, and ill health prevented him from finishing his studies until 1932.
  After graduation, he worked for two years as a journalist on the newspaper Politiken. He gave up journalism in 1934 in order to write a history of the Greenland monopoly—a work that he never finished, in large part because of continued ill health.
caption: Faroe Islands writers William Heinesen and Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen, 1918 (both at the age of 18)
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