Faroe Islands
The Faroe Islands, also known as the Faroes, are an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean and a of the Kingdom of Denmark. Located between Iceland, Norway, and the Hebrides and Shetland isles of Scotland, the islands have a population of 54,870 as of 2025 and a land area of. The official language is Faroese, which is partially mutually intelligible with Icelandic. The terrain is rugged, dominated by fjords and cliffs with sparse vegetation and few trees. As a result of their proximity to the Arctic Circle, the islands experience perpetual civil twilight during summer nights and very short winter days; nevertheless, they experience a subpolar oceanic climate and mild temperatures year-round due to the Gulf Stream. The capital, Tórshavn, receives the fewest recorded hours of sunshine of any city in the world at only 840 per year.
Færeyinga saga and the writings of Dicuil place initial Norse settlement in the early 9th century, with Grímur Kamban recorded as the first permanent settler. As with the subsequent settlement of Iceland, the islands were mainly settled by Norwegians and Norse-Gaels who also brought thralls of Gaelic origin. However, a 2024 study found that Viking colonizers of the Faroe Islands and nearby Iceland had different origins.
Initially governed as an independent commonwealth under the, the islands came under Norwegian rule in the early 11th century after the introduction of Christianity by Sigmundur Brestisson. The Faroe Islands followed Norway's integration into the Kalmar Union in 1397 and came under Danish rule following that union's dissolution in 1523. Following the introduction of Lutheranism in 1538, the Faroese language was banned in public institutions and disappeared from writing for more than three centuries. The islands were formally ceded to Denmark in 1814 by the Treaty of Kiel along with Greenland and Iceland, and the was subsequently replaced by a Danish judiciary.
Following the re-establishment of the and an official Faroese orthography, the Faroese language conflict saw Danish being gradually displaced by Faroese as the language of the church, public education, and law in the first half of the 20th century. The islands were occupied by the British during the Second World War, who refrained from governing Faroese internal affairs: inspired by this period of relative self-government and the declaration of Iceland as a republic in 1944, the islands held a referendum in 1946 that resulted in a narrow majority for independence. The results were annulled by King Christian X, and subsequent negotiations led to the Faroe Islands being granted home rule in 1948.
While remaining part of the Kingdom of Denmark to this day, the Faroe Islands have extensive autonomy and control most areas apart from military defence, policing, justice and currency, with partial control over foreign affairs. Because the Faroe Islands are not part of the same customs area as Denmark, they have an independent trade policy and can establish their own trade agreements with other states. The islands have an extensive bilateral free trade agreement with Iceland, known as the Hoyvík Agreement. In certain sports, the Faroe Islands field their own national teams. In the Nordic Council and Council of Europe, they are represented as part of the Danish delegation.
The islands' fishing industry accounts for around 90% of their exports, with tourism becoming increasingly prominent since the 2010s. They did not become a part of the European Economic Community in 1973, instead keeping autonomy over their own fishing waters; as a result, the Faroe Islands are not a part of the European Union today. The, albeit suspended between 1816 and 1852, claims to be one of the oldest continuously running parliaments in the world.
Etymology
The islands' endonym Føroyar, as well as the English exonym Faroe Islands, derive from the Old Norse Færeyjar. The second element oyar is a holdover from Old Faroese; sound changes have rendered the word's modern form as oyggjar. Names for individual islands also preserve the old form.The name's etymological origin has been subject to dispute. The most widely held theory, first attested in Færeyinga Saga, interprets Færeyjar as a straightforward compound of fær and eyjar, meaning in reference to their abundance on the archipelago. Clergymen Peder Clausson and Lucas Debes began casting doubt on this theory in the 16th and 17th centuries, arguing that the West Norse-speaking settlers, whose word for sheep was sauðr instead of the East Norse fær, could not have coined it from this exact origin. Debes surmised that it could have derived from fjær, while Hammershaimb leaned towards fara.
Others have theorised an Old Irish origin: relating it to the etymologies of neighbouring Orkney and Shetland, Scottish writers James Currie and William J. Watson suggested the words feur and fearann as possible derivations, arguing that the original Celtic attestations of the islands made this more likely. Archaeologist Anton Wilhelm Brøgger concurred, elaborating on Watson's theory by positing that the Norse, having first learned of the islands from Scottish and Irish accounts as a fearann, could have coined Færeyjar as a homophonic translation.
History
Archaeological studies from 2021 found evidence of settlement on the islands before the arrival of Norse settlers, uncovering burnt grains of domesticated barley and peat ash deposited in two phases: the first dated between the mid-fourth and mid-sixth centuries, and another between the late-sixth and late-eighth centuries. Researchers have also found sheep DNA in lake-bed sediments dating to the year 500. Barley and sheep had to have been brought to the islands by humans; as Scandinavians did not begin using sails until about 750, it is unlikely they could have reached the Faroes before then, leading to the study concluding that the settlers were more likely to originate from Scotland or Ireland.Irish monk Dicuil described a group of islands north of Scotland of very similar character to the Faroe Islands in his work De mensura orbis terrae. In this text, Dicuil describes a group of small islands separated by narrow stretches of water that was always deserted since the beginning of time and previously populated by "hermits from our land of Ireland/Scotland" for almost a hundred years before being displaced by the arrival of Norse pirates.
There are many other islands in the ocean to the north of Britain which can be reached from the northern islands of Britain in a direct voyage of two days and nights with sails filled with a continuously favourable wind. A devout priest told me that in two summer days and the intervening night he sailed in a two-benched boat and entered one of them.It has been argued that these were likely the eremitic Papar that had similarly resided in parts of Iceland and Scotland in the same period, with these Papar also being the ones to bring sheep to the islands. A voyage tale, recorded in the ninth-century, concerning Irish saint Brendan, who proceeded Dicuil by 3 centuries, details him visiting an unnamed northern group of islands; this has also been argued to be referring to the Faroe Islands, though not nearly as conclusively. Some toponyms around the islands refer to the Papar and the Irish, such as Paparøkur near Vestmanna and Papurshílsur near Saksun. Vestmanna is itself short for Vestmannahøvn. Tombstones in a churchyard on Skúvoy display a possible Gaelic origin or influence.
There is another set of small islands, nearly all separated by narrow stretches of water; in these for nearly a hundred years hermits sailing from our country, Ireland, have lived. But just as they were always deserted from the beginning of the world, so now because of the Northman pirates they are emptied of anchorites, and filled with countless sheep and very many diverse kinds of sea-birds. I have never found these islands mentioned in the authorities.
Old Norse-speaking settlers arrived in the early 9th century, and their Old West Norse dialect would later evolve into the modern Faroese language. A number of the settlers were Norse–Gaels who did not come directly from Scandinavia, but rather from Norse communities that spanned the Irish Sea, Northern Isles, and Outer Hebrides of Scotland, including the Shetland and Orkney islands; these settlers also brought thralls of Gaelic origin with them, and this admixture is reflected today in the Faroese genetic makeup and many loanwords from Old Irish. According to Færeyinga saga, many of the Norwegian settlers in particular were spurred by their disapproval of the monarchy of Harald Fairhair, whose rule was also seen as an inciting factor for the Settlement of Iceland.
The founding date of the Løgting is not historically documented. However, the saga implies that it was a well-established institution by the middle of the 10th century, when a legal dispute between chieftains Havgrímur and Einar Suðuroyingur, resulting in the exile of Eldjárn Kambhøttur, is recounted in detail.
Christianity was introduced to the islands in the late 10th and early 11th centuries by chieftain Sigmundur Brestisson. Baptised as an adult by then-King of Norway Olaf Tryggvason, his mission to introduce Christianity was part of a greater plan to seize the islands on behalf of the Norwegian crown. While Christianity arrived at the same time as in Iceland, the process was met with much more conflict and violence, and was defined particularly by Sigmundur's conflict with rival chieftain Tróndur í Gøtu, the latter of whom was converted under threat of decapitation. Although their conflict resulted in Sigmundur's murder, the Islands fell firmly under Norwegian rule following Tróndur's death in 1035.
14th century onwards
In 1380, the Faroe Islands entered a union with Denmark through the unification of Denmark and Norway, marking the beginning of a prolonged period under Danish influence. This transition led to significant changes, including the introduction of Lutheranism in 1538, which had profound effects on the islands' religious practices and cultural identity.The Faroe Islands were subjected to repeated slave raids by the Barbary corsairs between the 16th and 18th centuries. The most famous slave raid on the Faroe Islands was the slave raid of Suðuroy in the summer of 1629.
The 17th century brought economic challenges as Denmark imposed a trade monopoly, restricting the Faroese economy and limiting their commercial interactions with other nations. This monopoly was eventually lifted in 1856, allowing the islands to develop a modern fishing industry and revitalize their economy.
The 19th century was a pivotal era for Faroese cultural and political revival. Lutheran minister Venceslaus Ulricus Hammershaimb introduced an official orthography for the Faroese language in 1846, reaffirming its cultural significance after centuries of suppression. This linguistic renaissance fueled the growth of a national movement, leading to the reinstatement of the Løgting in 1852 as an advisory body.
The early 20th century saw the emergence of political parties advocating for greater autonomy. The Union Party favoured maintaining ties with Denmark, while the Self-Government Party pushed for full independence. These debates culminated in a 1946 referendum where a slim majority voted for independence; however, the Danish government annulled the results, and the islands remained under Danish sovereignty. In the first year of the Second World War, on 12 April 1940, British troops occupied the Faroe Islands in Operation Valentine. Nazi Germany had invaded Denmark and commenced the invasion of Norway on 9 April 1940 under Operation Weserübung. In 1942–1943, the British Royal Engineers, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel William Law, built the first and only airport in the Faroe Islands, Vágar Airport. The British refrained from governing Faroese internal affairs, and the islands became effectively self-governing during the war. After the war ended and the British army left, this period and Iceland's declaration as a republic in 1944 served as a precedent and a model in the mind of many Faroe Islanders.
The Løgting held an independence referendum on 14 September 1946, resulting in a very narrow majority for independence; 50.73% voted in favour and 49.27% against; the margin was only 161 votes. The Løgting subsequently declared independence on 18 September 1946; this declaration was annulled by Denmark on 20 September, arguing that the number of invalid votes being greater than the narrow margin in favour made the result invalid. As a result, King Christian X of Denmark ordered that the Faroese Løgting be dissolved on 24 September, with new elections held that November. The Faroese parliamentary election of 1946 resulted in a majority for parties opposed to independence: following protracted negotiations, Denmark granted home rule to the Faroe Islands on 30 March 1948. This agreement granted the islands a high degree of autonomy, and Faroese finally became the official language in all public spheres.
In 1973, the Faroe Islands declined to join Denmark in entering the European Economic Community ; as a result, the islands are not part of the European Union today. Following the collapse of the fishing industry in the early 1990s, the Faroes experienced considerable economic difficulties.
Today, the Faroe Islands are a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, proud of their cultural heritage, fishing industry, and political autonomy.