Kópakonan Has Her Skin Stolen Once Again

Once again, Faroese stories are being retold through Danish voices.

The Danish director Tea Lindeburg has just finished shooting a film in the Faroe Islands, inspired by Kópakonan, the seal woman, who in Faroese culture stands as a national symbol of survival, freedom, and strength.
Her story is one of captivity and loss: a woman whose freedom, naturalness, wildness, and identity are taken from her, forced to live a life where she is tamed and turned into something she is not.

At the same time, two Danish artists, Siri Ranva Hjelm Jacobsen and Annika Øyrabo, are working on retelling Faroese folktales.
Both have Faroese roots, but neither speaks, reads, nor writes Faroese.
They were born and raised in Denmark and still live there. They carry out their entire work in Danish, the same language that once replaced Faroese in schools and churches. Their work will then be translated back into Faroese. The project is also published through a Danish publisher and funded with Danish money, reinforcing an already skewed cultural ecology: Danish institutions once again hold the power to define and distribute Faroese stories, while Faroese artists often receive rejections when applying for support to work in their own language.

When Danes, born and raised in Denmark, rewrite Faroese folktales, they inevitably carry a Danish lens with them. They do not have the language, the lived experience, or the cultural instinct that comes from being part of the culture the stories originate from. Even with good intentions, the result easily becomes a version seen from the outside, a revised edition of Faroese culture, filtered through a Danish worldview.

When such projects receive funding and visibility while Faroese artists struggle for support, it becomes a question of power. It is not only about what is written, but who is allowed to write it, and who gets to be heard.

Faroese folktales are not just stories; they are carriers of the language. They survived the colonial era, when Faroese was banned in schools and churches, because they were preserved orally in Faroese. Writing them in Danish and then translating them back into Faroese turns that historical struggle upside down, as if taking a story that symbolizes the language’s survival and returning it to the language that once silenced it.

It is a system that continues to favor Danish voices, the Danish language, and Danish resources. And that is precisely the problem: the pattern repeats itself. Danes interpret, Danes mediate, Danes receive the funding, while Faroese people once again stand in the background of their own stories.

If one genuinely wishes to give Faroese tales new life, the smallest expression of respect would be to learn the language. It is not enough to use the culture as inspiration; one must also understand it from within.

I often experience that when I ask these questions, the Danish response is to downplay my concerns or portray me as difficult.
But I believe that not asking these questions is what is truly tone-deaf.

Yes, no one owns the folktales.
But when Danes once again take them up, certain ethical and cultural questions must be raised:
Why are they doing it?
Who is it for?
And have Faroese people asked for it?

Once again, Faroese people become extras in their own stories, while Danes position themselves at the forefront, using the Faroe Islands as a picturesque backdrop to tell our narratives.

A Story of Silence

For centuries, the Faroe Islands lived under Danish rule. During that time, the Faroese language was systematically marginalized and nearly disappeared. It did not survive through institutional support, but through oral tradition, through songs, ballads, stories, and tales passed from generation to generation.

Faroese was first allowed in schools in 1938 and in the church in 1939, but the language struggle truly ended only in 1976, when student protests finally abolished the requirement for Danish in final examinations.

Our language survived not because of tolerance, but despite oppression. These tales were not just stories, they were acts of cultural resistance, vessels of memory, and a means for a people to preserve their identity.

A Modern Form of Erasure

For several years, I have been rewriting and illustrating these tales, many of them not retold since the 1800s, in Faroese and from a Faroese perspective.

It is therefore difficult not to see a repetition of history when Danish artists with no connection to the language or culture receive funding to interpret the same stories.

What was once political domination now appears as cultural appropriation: a quiet but persistent extraction of Faroese cultural heritage for Danish benefit.

When Danish institutions finance projects that retell our stories through Danish voices, while Faroese artists struggle to gain support for work in their own language, it reveals an imbalance that remains deeply colonial in its structure.

Kópakonan as Metaphor

Director Tea Lindeburg, known for Som i Himmlen and the Netflix series Equinox, told Variety in 2023 that her next project would be the Faroese legend of the Seal Woman. In other articles, she described how she has a personal connection to the tale because it was told to her as a child. Now she is making a Danish- and Swedish-language film version of this deeply important Faroese cultural heritage.

I wrote to her to express my concerns. She responded kindly, but without real understanding of what is at stake. And since then, her narrative about her Seal Woman project has changed. Today she says the film is not inspired by the Faroese tale, but by other legends on the same theme.

Yes, the Seal Woman exists in Scottish and Orcadian folklore as well.
But when a Danish film crew travels to the Faroe Islands to shoot the story here, they are using the Faroese version of the tale. At that point, it is no longer a “shared” North Atlantic myth, it is our story they are drawing from. The actors also wear traditional Faroese sweaters and clothing in the film, further anchoring the work in Faroese culture and making it unmistakably our version of the myth.

None of the lead roles, not even Kópakonan herself, are played by Faroese actors, and no Faroese people were invited to audition for any of the main roles.

Most Faroese actors who were asked to participate as supporting roles expressed that it felt wrong to be extras in their own story, precisely because the tale is so important to us and because the project is experienced as cultural appropriation.

Of course, some Faroese film professionals are involved, but in a film industry as small as ours, people must take the work that exists. It is not free choice, it is economic necessity.

The result is a production where Danish actors cosplay as Faroese people in a story deeply rooted in Faroese experience.

The symbolism is clear:
Kópakonan, the woman who has her skin, her identity, and her freedom taken from her—is once again told through foreign eyes. A story about the loss of independence becomes yet again an image of how Faroese culture continues to be defined from the outside.

A Question of Representation

Faroese filmmakers continue to face major barriers in seeking Danish funding precisely because our films are in Faroese, a language considered “too small” or “not commercially viable.”

Yet Denmark claims to have a cultural responsibility for the entire Kingdom.

Should that not also include a commitment to represent Faroese art, language, and identity on equal terms?

Instead, Danish institutions continue to finance their own interpretations of our cultural heritage, told in Danish, by Danish artists, for a Danish audience.

So we must ask again:
Who has the right to tell our stories?
Who benefits from them?
And who is, once again, silenced?