100 years ago, this year, Faroese poet, musician and translator Regin Dahl (1918-2007) was born in Sandágerði in Tórshavn. Regin Dahl graduated from Sorø Academy in 1937. Most of his life he worked as a publishing editor of the Gyldendal Publishing House.

Regin Dahl received the M.A. Jacobsen's cultural award in 1973 and again in 1978. He is also known in the Faroes for his groundbreaking work in Faroese music. In 1998, at the age of 80, he became the first Faroese to receive the Cultural Award of the Faroe Islands.

Regin Dahl's sense of the Faroese language came from his father, provost Jákup Dahl who, among other things, had translated the Bible into Faroese. From his mother, Maria Dahl, Regin Dahl inherited deep musical sensibility. Maria Dahl was the daughter of the renowned musician Bager Hansen, whose bourgeois name was Georg Caspar Hansen.

Regin Dahl studied literature and Norse at the University of Copenhagen. His first poem was published in the literary magazine Varðin in 1936. At the age of eighteen, he made his debut with the poetry collection "Í útlegd" (In Exile). The sense of exile was a consistent theme in his poetry, corresponding to the fact that he lived all his life outside his homeland.

Regin Dahl published eight collections of poetry. As a poet, Regin Dahl is an important voice in Faroese literature and especially in Faroese lyricism. The titles of the books display a superior knowledge of old Faroese language and culture which he exposed to his literary modernism. An example of these titles is "Eftirtorv" (Remnants of peat), indicating scraps of peat falling off the load and lying scattered over the heath.

At the inception of World War II connections between the Faroe Islands and Denmark came to a halt. Regin Dahl was one of many young Faroese who stayed in Denmark for their studies. When War came to an end in  1945 most of them went back to the Faroe Islands while Regin Dahl remained in Copenhagen.

Regin Dahl was an aesthete, poet, musician, translator and even more than that. During his time of studies at Sorø Academy he gained many friends, including the publisher Ole Wivel, who also became director of Gyldendal Publishing House. Regin routinely associated with writers in these environments, including those working for the journal Heretica. Wivel writes with a sense of tenderness about this talented son of a Tórshavn provost:

"Already in late summer 1946 I met Regin Dahl, who - without comments - was considered among the core troops. (...) ... Both on the outside - as well as on the inside - he bore a striking rememblance to Baudelaire. Small, dark, with a round head (...) highly respected, a great musical talent, a true verbal genius and wine lover with a Nordic melancholic temper and deep affection and yearning for his islands in the Atlantic Ocean, he was unlike anyone that I had met."

Wivel, 1972, pp. 161-162.

One of Wivel's memoirs "Dance of the Cranes" begins with the words: "Leikum fagurt á foldum, / enginn treður dans undir moldum" (Let's enjoy life while on earth, there is no dancing in the grave) – a lyrical fragment originating from a Faroese folklore. Wivel's comparison of Regin Dahl with Baudelaire is no conincidence since Regin is the Danish translator of Baudelaire's diaries.

As a publishing consultant Regin Dahl was involved in writing the history of Danish literature. At the same time, he as a poet helped to reinvigorate both Faroese lyric and its music-, culture- and literary history.

Kim Simonsen