Helena Dam á Neystabø

Helena Dam á Neystabø (2008)
Photo: Magnus Fröderberg, Nordic Council

Helena Dam á Neystabø (born December 10, 1955 in Copenhagen ) is a Faroese politician and has been a minister in the state government of the Faroe Islands several times . She began her political career in the social liberal Sjálvstýrisflokkurin and switched to the Social Democrats ( Javnaðarflokkurin ) in 2001 .

Life

Helena was born in 1955 as the daughter of the Faroese couple Atli Pætursson Dam (1932-2005) and Ása Hátún (* 1932). You lived in Copenhagen at the time . When Helena was nine, her parents divorced, and at 13 she and her mother moved to the Faroe Islands - home , as she herself says. After completing secondary school and high school in Tórshavn , she went back to Denmark in 1975 to study at the University of Copenhagen , which she completed in 1983 with a master's degree in Danish and German . She has since married Kristian á Neystabø (* 1951 in Haldarsvík ), with whom she has three children. The Faroese musician Dánjal á Neystabø is one of these children.

Back in the Faroe Islands, she quickly made a career in education until she became head of the Faroe Islands' textbook publisher (Føroya Skúlabókagrunnur) in 1990 . At the same time, the Faroe Islands went through a severe economic crisis.

Political career

Helena Dam á Neystabø ran for the Sjálvstýrisflokkurin for the first time in 1990 and was immediately elected to Løgting . In addition to her reputation as head of the renowned school book publisher, she benefited from the fact that both her father Atli Pætursson Dam and her grandfather Petur Mohr Dam had been heads of government of the Faroe Islands for decades .

In 1994 she was re-elected and a short time later she was chairman of the Løgting's external committee. She was also a Faroese member of the Danish Committee of Inquiry into the banking scandal that allegedly led to the Faroe Islands' economic crisis. After the Løgting election in 1998, Helena Dam á Neystabø became Minister of Social Affairs and Health in the new government coalition of Fólkaflokkurin , Tjóðveldisflokkurin and Sjálvstýrisflokkurin - the first female minister of her party.

In 2001 she left the Sjálvstýrisflokkurin and, after a few months of non-party membership, switched to the social democratic Javnaðarflokkurin - the party that was largely shaped by her grandfather and father. In the 2004 Løgtings election it was not enough to get a seat. Even in the Folketing election in 2005 , despite the considerable number of votes, she was unable to win a seat.

On January 19, 2008 Helena Dam á Neystabø returned to Løgting. However, she suspended her mandate as she was appointed Minister of Justice on February 4, 2008. With the change of government on September 26, 2008, she moved to the Ministry of Education and Culture, which she headed until 2011.

On September 15, 2015 she was able to move into Løgting as a replacement for Aksel V. Johannesen .

Web links

• Private website ( Memento of September 30, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Helena's private website (in Faroese)
• Javnaðarflokkurin Helena on the Social Democrats website (in Faroese)
• Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksikon CV until 1998 (in Danish)