Barbara is a Faroese Moll Flanders, a woman of insatiable sexual desire which leads her from one man to another in search of sexual gratification. There is a highly successful Danish feature film of the novel.
Jorgen-Frantz Jacobsen's novel combines the action of an old Faroese ballad about a woman who led three clergymen husbands to their destruction and the author's own experience of a woman with whom he was in love, but who proved elusive in the manner of the fictitious Barbara.

The novel was unfinished when Jacobsen died, and it was left to, his friend and fellow author, William Heinesen to tie up a small number of loose ends.