[1] He was a seaman, trader, poet, farmer and boat builder who tried to develop direct trade between the Faroes and the rest of Europe and introduced vaccination to the islands.

[2] After his father's death in 1786 he fulfilled his ambition of going to sea, and travelled widely; he supposedly served in both the British and the French Navy, captained a US merchant vessel,[3] and also sailed on pirate ships in China.

[4] In 1798 he married a woman from his home island, Sigga Maria Tummasdóttir, and was based in Copenhagen for a couple of years, then returned to the Faroes in 1800.

Launched on 6 August 1804 and christened Royndin Fríða (The Free Trial), this schooner was the first seagoing ship built in the Faroe Islands,[5] and the first Faroese-owned vessel since the early Middle Ages.

[12] He reacted by counter-suing the Tórshavn district sheriff, Joen Christiansen Øre, for large-scale smuggling; the Monopoly officials appear to have been conducting personal trading on the side.

[7][13] In 1807, after a year's effort to overcome refusals by the local government in the Faroes and by the Monopoly, he sailed to Copenhagen on Royndin Fríða as one of a deputation of five presenting a popularly supported proposal for a three-year experimental lifting of the trade restrictions.

They had to illegally sell 2,600 knitted sweaters and other merchandise to a Norwegian merchant to finance the voyage,[14] but Crown Prince Frederick, who was governing as regent for his father, and others in Copenhagen were sympathetic, and trade would have been opened up if war with the United Kingdom had not begun.

[15] After the battle in 1807, the British Navy began a six-year blockade of Denmark as part of the ongoing Napoleonic wars, cutting off the Monopoly barley trade which had supplied 80% of the Faroes Islanders' grain needs.