Ebba Hentze (25 September 1930 – 20 May 2015[1][2]) was a Faroese writer of children's books and a poet and translator.
She received three Faroese literature and cultural prizes: Barnamentanarheiðursløn Tórshavnar býráðs (Tórshavn City Council's Children's Books Prize) in 1984, Faroese Literature Prize (Mentanarvirðisløn M. A. Jacobsens) in 2006 and Faroese Cultural Prize (Mentanarvirðisløn Landsins) in 2008,[3] together with grants from Denmark and Sweden. Some of her books were written in Danish and some in Faroese. She was most active as a translator, having rendered around a hundred books into Danish from English, German, Faroese, Swedish and Norwegian.[4]
Ebba Hentze was an adopted child and grew up in Tvøroyri. Her parents were Peter Christian Pauli Hentze (1891-1971) and Olivia Sophie Skaalum (1888-1976) from Hvalba. As a young girl she moved to Denmark to study. She graduated from High School at the Statens Kursus in Copenhagen in 1950 and then studied literature and linguistics at the University of Copenhagen. In the 1950s she obtained scholarships enabling her to study at the universities in Uppsala, Sweden, in Vienna, Rome and in the Sorbonne[5][6]
She worked as a publishing consultant for Politiken and Gyldendal and on a freelance basis for Danish, Swedish and Faroese radio. She moved back to the Faroe Islands in the late 1970s and played an important role among writers and other intellectuals in Tórshavn. She was a member of the Faroese committee, which nominates Faroese books to the Nordic Council's Literature Prize. She was an honorary member of the Faroese Writer's Association (Rithøvundafelag Føroya).[7]
Ebba Hentze published a few poems in the Danish literature magazine Hvedkorn. These poems were her debut as a writer. She wrote several short stories in Danish which were published in Politikens Magasin. In 1985 she published an important contribute to Faroese women's literature with her prose poem Kata, ein seinkaður nekrologur (Kata, a delayed obituary). The poem tells about a woman who gives up her dreams to get an education, because she must take care of her younger siblings after their mother's death. Ebba Hentze made a great effort to make Faroese literature known outside the Faroe Islands, first of all by translating Faroese novels and poems by various writers and poets to Danish and by her efforts to find publishing houses who wished to publish the books. She translated several of Jóanes Nielsen's novels and poetry collections. She also translated Rói Patursson's poetry collection Líkasum (1985), which won The Nordic Council's Literature Prize.[8]
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