Nólsoyar Páll
| Nólsoyar Páll | |
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Nólsoyar Páll portrayed on the old 50 kroner banknote of the Faroe Islands
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| Born | 11 October 1766 Nólsoy |
| Died | winter of 1808–09 in the sea near Sumba |
| Nationality | Faroese |
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Nólsoyar Páll (originally, Poul Poulsen Nolsøe) (11 October 1766, Nólsoy – 1808 or 1809, near Sumba) is a Faroese national hero. He was a seaman, trader, poet, farmer and boat builder who tried to develop direct trade between the Faroes and the rest of Europe and introduced vaccination to the islands. He went missing in the winter of 1808/09 sailing home from England.
Poul Poulsen was the fourth of seven children. He and his brothers all took the additional name 'Nolsøe' for the island where they were born. After his father's death in 1786 he fulfilled his ambition of going to sea, and travelled widely; he supposedly served in both the British and the French Navy, captained a US merchant vessel, and also sailed on pirate ships in China. In 1798 he married a woman from his home island, Sigga Maria Tummasdóttir, and was based in Copenhagen for a couple of years, then returned to the Faroes in 1800. His wife died, and in 1801 he remarried to Maren or Marin Malene Ziska, the daughter of a wealthy crown tenant near Klaksvík on Borðoy, and took over another crown tenancy nearby. He was so successful farming there that the Danish Royal Society for the Advancement of Agriculture awarded him a silver medal, although he died before he could receive it.
His innovations in shipbuilding, a longer and more sharply rising keel and a less square sail closer to the lateen, were rapidly adopted. He also designed an improved spinning wheel.
Denied a loan to buy a ship to demonstrate the possibilities of fishing from larger ships, he, his brother-in-law Per Larsen, Jacob Jacobsen and Poul's brothers bought a wrecked ship at auction and rebuilt her at Vágur. Launched on 6 August 1804 and christened Royndin Fríða (Beautiful Trial), this schooner was the first seagoing ship built in the Faroe Islands, and the first Faroese-owned vessel since the early Middle Ages.
Since 1805 was a bad year for fishing, he instead took loads of coal from Suðuroy across the Atlantic to Bergen and Copenhagen, trying to open up direct trading, but was prevented from importing goods to the Faroes by the Danish Royal Trade Monopoly authorities. Instead, by vaccinating members of his crew successively using material from the previous man, he succeeded in bringing the first smallpox vaccine back to the Faroes, and with the help of one of his brothers spread vaccination through the islands. The following year, after again attempting to trade directly, he was convicted and fined on two charges of contravention of the trading laws, but cleared of smuggling goods back to the Faroes, having sold them to a Swedish ship in the Kattegat. He reacted by counter-suing the Tórshavn district sheriff, Joen Christiansen Øre, for large-scale smuggling; the Monopoly officials appear to have been conducting personal trading on the side. However, he seems to have dropped the lawsuit. In 1807, after a year's effort to overcome refusals by the local government in the Faroes and by the Monopoly, he sailed to Copenhagen on Royndin Fríða as one of a deputation of five presenting a popularly supported proposal for a three-year experimental lifting of the trade restrictions. They had to illegally sell 2,600 knitted sweaters and other merchandise to a Norwegian merchant to finance the voyage, but Crown Prince Frederick, who was governing as regent for his father, and others in Copenhagen were sympathetic, and trade would have been opened up if war with England had not begun.
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