Name Christian Matras Role Poet | Books Seeing and Remembering | |
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Born December 7, 1900 Viðareiði Died October 16, 1988, Torshavn, Faroe Islands | ||
Christian Matras (1900–1988) was a Faroese poet and academic.
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He was born at Viðareiði in the Faroe Islands. He took a doctor’s degree in Old Norse in 1933 from the University of Copenhagen, and in 1952 he became a professor at the same university. In 1965 he returned to the Faroe Islands to become head of the department of Faroese language at the University of the Faroe Islands in Tórshavn, where he produced an extensive body of work analysing Faroese language, literature, and culture.
As a poet he is one of the most important in Faroese literature.
Life
The surname Matras goes back to an immigrant from France.
In 1900, Christian Matras born in the village Viðareiði, Viðoy, which located at far northern part of the Faroe Islands. He attended primary school until he moved to Tórshavn in 1912. Then he came to secondary school. He was in a class with Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen and William Heinesen. In 1917 he completed his high-school diploma. In the same year he moved to Sorø, Denmark, where he completed his schooling in 1920.
After graduation Matras studied Scandinavian Studies at the University of Copenhagen. He also spent a semester in Norway, where he worked with Norwegian seal which should characterize him very. In 1928 he obtained his MA in Linguistics, and in 1933 he received his doctorate with a dissertation on the place name in the Faroe Islands. From 1936 Christian Matras worked at the University of Copenhagen, and became in 1952 a professor of linguistics. He was the first Faroese who ever became a professor, and until 2009 the only in Copenhagen. - Faroese, the professor in Copenhagen was. In 1965 Matras returned to the Faroe Islands, where he from the beginning head of the Faroese Faculty of University of the Faroe Islands was. He was the only professor in the Faroe Islands. In 1971 he retired for reasons of age. Christian Matras died on 16 October 1988. A few months earlier he was a stamp of Postverk Føroya honored. In October 2006, his birthplace Viðareiði got first street name. A bear of the twelve roads and paths the name Kristjansgøta ( "Christian Street") - by Christian Matras.