The idea behind the project was to approach the medieval Faroese heroic ballads from the perspective of Old Norse philology, and to place and relate them to their cultural context, both medieval and modern. Since very few scholars currently work on Faroese heroic ballads, another main aim of this project was to stimulate new research and consolidate the networks of those currently working in the field. A final goal of the project was to make the ballads more accessible to those without knowledge of Faroese by publishing translations of selected ballads and an edited collection to provide an introduction to the subject.

The focus of the project was on the Völsung legend, narrative material about several of the most pre-eminent heroic figures of the Middle Ages, including the youth, marriage and death of Sjúrður Fávnisbani (Old Norse: Sigurðr Fáfnisbani), his lover Brynhildr Buðladóttir, Sigurðr’s slaying of the dragon Fáfnir, and associated legendary events concerning the Nibelung royal house and their treasure. The most famous Völsung Faroese ballads, the Sjúrðar kvæði (Regin smiður, Brynhildar táttr and Høgna táttr) provide us with unparalleled and undervalued material about Sigurðr, Brynhildr and the events and people associated with them. The content of these ballads is connected to, and the material probably drawn from, oral Old Norse saga material as well as material from further south in Germany (represented in text form in, e.g. the Nibelungenlied). There are also additional Faroese ballads concerning the Völsungs, and they have analogues in Nordic balladry from the Scandinavian mainland, which were used as comparative material in the project. Some visual sources also exist, most notably depictions of Sigurðr’s deeds carved on stones in Sweden and portals of stave churches in Norway. These were also taken into account during the course of the project.

The objectives of the project were:

• To determine how the Faroese ballads relate to and are located in the Norse and wider Germanic story-telling world.
• To integrate medieval Faroese ballads into the relevant research fields that discuss story-telling traditions of the North.
• To consolidate links between medieval philologists working on medieval ballad material in Norway and Denmark and those scholars working on more contemporary aspects of ballads (19th century when the ballads were collected to contemporary ballad peformance) from the Faroe Islands.
• To form a network and preliminary findings to support further grants applications by the project leader and other team members.
• To produce two publications:
  • one substantial edited collection on the international context of Faroese ballads, also containing a Stand der Forschung for Faroese ballad studies
  • one volume of translations of the Nordic ballads about Sigurðr to kickstart further research and thereby make the material accessible to scholars of Germanic philology, history and cultural studies that are prevented from including it in their research for linguistic reasons, or by simply not knowing about it in the first place.