When William Heinesen was told that he was among the handful of candidates under consideration for the Nobel Prize in literature for 1980, he wrote a letter to Artur Lundqvist of the Nobel Committee, asking not to be considered for the award. Heinesen said that if the award were to go to a Faroese writer, it should go to one who actually wrote in Faroese, and not to someone who wrote in Danish, as he did. This anecdote places Heinesen in both an international and a Dano-Faroese context, and at the same time it exemplifies the writer's own personal integrity. Although Faroese through and through, Heinesen had been brought up in a bilingual home, and he had chosen to write in Danish because he felt better able to let himself go in that language than was possible with the rather more conservative Faroese. As a result, he was for...