Culture of the Faroe Islands

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Culture of the Faroe Islands
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Traditional Faroese houses with turf roof in Reyni, Tórshavn. Most people build larger houses now and with other types of roofs, but the turf roof is still popular in some places.
Johanna TG 326 was built in Sussex, England in 1884, but was sold to the village Vágur in the Faroe Islands in 1894, where it was a fishing vessel until around 1972. The smack was restored in the 1980s and now gives pleasure trips.[1]

The culture of the Faroe Islands has its roots in the Nordic culture. The Faroe Islands were long isolated from the main cultural phases and movements that swept across parts of Europe. This means that they have maintained a great part of their traditional culture. The language spoken is Faroese. It is one of three insular North Germanic languages descended from the Old Norse language spoken in Scandinavia in the Viking Age, the others being Icelandic and the extinct Norn, which is thought to have been mutually intelligible with Faroese.

Until the 15th century, Faroese had a similar orthography to Icelandic and Norwegian, but after the Reformation in 1538, the ruling Danes outlawed its use in schools, churches and official documents. This maintained a rich spoken tradition, but for 300 years the language was not written down. This means that all poems and stories were handed down orally. These works were split into the following divisions: sagnir (historical), ævintyr (stories) and kvæði (ballads, often set to music and the mediaeval chain dance). These were eventually written down in the 19th century mostly by Danish scholars.

  1. ^ Johanna.fo, History Archived 2013-02-13 at archive.today