Europa 2010 Childrens books – Faroe Islands

A good children’s book is not merely a children’s book, it is just as soon a book for everybody to enjoy, both to look at and to read. Each person gets something out of it, the adult as well as the young reader. There must be room for all age groups.

The same goes for all true works of art – they are timeless and not confined within certain limits, neither time- nor age group-limits. If the work is of good quality, everybody ought to be able to enjoy it.

Two more recent Faroese children’s books ”A dog, a cat and a mouse” and ”Moss Mollis’ journey” are shown on this issue of new Faroese stamps.

In 2004 the book ”A dog, a cat and a mouse” was published which Bárður Oskarsson (born 1972) both wrote and illustrated. The entire story takes place in a house that could be anywhere in the world. All the illustrations are in tawny water colours on which has been drawn with pencil and black ink. This is a classic dog’s-, cat’s- and mouse-story. No wonder that some of the salient characteristics of the modern comic strip-literature has stolen its way into the picture book. The impact from international inspiration is at work.

In 2008 came the book ”Moss Mollis’ journey”. In a short introduction Janus á Húsagarði (born 1975) says the story is about one of the small trolls in the Faroes that can stand the sun, a fact which enables it to travel around the islands at will. In richly water-coloured pictures the small troll Moss Mollis travels around the islands like another Niels Holgarsson, Selma Lagerlöf’s Swedish boy, though not sitting on the back of a goose. The journey commences at the bottom of the ocean where Moss Mollis picks up a pearl from an open horse mussel. With this pearl it travels across the country on the back of a gannet, of a horse, of a whale, of a crow and of a ram until it finds its darling troll who gets the pearl and who sits at his side in the moonlight watching the sea.

Title: Europa 2010 Childrens books
Date of Issue: 26 April 2010
Country: Faroe Islands
Denominations: 10Kr, 12 Kr