(Photo Provided) Randi Ward gives an acceptance speech at the Faroese Cultural Awards where she received the Heiðursgáva Landsins award, the first time a non-citizen was presented the award.

PARKERSBURG — A local writer and translator has received an honorary award for distinguished service to Faroese culture.

Randi Ward of Belleville was presented the Heiðursgáva Landsins award at the 2024 Faroese Cultural Awards ceremony in the Faroe Islands. The award for contributions to the Faroese culture, which comes with $10,000, was the first time the honor was given to a person who is not a citizen.

Ward began translating poetry as a 16-year-old American Field Service exchange student in Norway. She continued her study of Nordic literature at the University of Southern Denmark at Odense and later became the first American to earn a graduate degree from the University of the Faroe Islands when she completed her master’s of arts in 2007.

She has twice won the American-Scandinavian Foundation’s Nadia Christensen Prize, awarded each year for the most outstanding translation of poetry, fiction, drama or literary prose written by a 20th or 21st century Nordic author. In the 44-year history of the competition, Ward is the only translator to win the prize by translating a literary work from Faroese, the official language of the Faroe Islands.

The archipelago, located north-northwest of Scotland, about halfway between Iceland and Norway in the North Atlantic, is a self-governing nation under the external sovereignty of the Danish Realm.

Ward was grateful and welcomed the opportunity to return to the Faroe Islands after an absence of 15 years. She delivered her acceptance speech in Faroese.

“Even though this isn’t my home, these islands have been in my thoughts every single day these past 20 years. All these years, through my art and work, I’ve tried to create and maintain contact while I simultaneously built bridges between the Faroes and the wider world,” she said. “I’ve also hoped that, somehow, one of these bridges would bring me back to your weather-beaten shores.”

In the award’s citation, Sirið Stenberg, minister of Social Affairs and Culture of Faroe Islands, commended Ward as among the foremost translators of contemporary Faroese literature into English these past 20 years and for her skill in the translation and promotion of Faroese literature. Ward was likened to a cornerstone for the ways her award-winning work has helped structure Faroese literature into a network that brings it flush with contemporary world literature.

Author and editor Oddfríður Marni Rasmussen said Ward’s efforts have put Faroese literature, particularly Faroese poetry, on the literary world map.

“Randi Ward is razor-sharp, meticulous, and hard-working,” Rasmussen said in a video produced by the Faroese Broadcasting Corporation to highlight Ward’s contributions. “She leaves nothing to chance. Everything she does is deliberate. She publishes her translations, her photography and her own poetry as widely as possible, always raising awareness of Faroese literature, always creating opportunities that make Faroese writers more and more visible.”