Ebba Hentze


Ebba Hentze was a Faroese writer of children's books and a poet and translator.
She received three Faroese literature and cultural prizes: Barnamentanarheiðursløn Tórshavnar býráðs in 1984, Faroese Literature Prize in 2006 and Faroese Cultural Prize in 2008, 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.

Biography

Ebba Hentze was an adopted child and grew up in Tvøroyri. Her parents were Peter Christian Pauli Hentze and Olivia Sophie Skaalum 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
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.

Children's books