Northwest Europe (9700-00-410): Faroe Islands

03*Faroe Islands

This archipelago includes eighteen major islands out of a total of 779 islands, islets (very small islands not able to support human habitation) and skerries (reefs or rocky islands) positioned between Iceland to the northwest across the North Atlantic (648 km), Norway to the east across the Norwegian Sea (620 km) and the Scottish mainland to the south across the North Atlantic (320 km).

During the 54 million years since the last lava flows erupted, plate tectonics has slowly moved the Faroe Islands away from the active volcanic region, which today is concentrated on Iceland along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

Archaeological evidence has revealed that there were two phases of settler occupation on the Faroe Islands within the 4th-6th and late 6th-8th centuries AD respectively.

The Irish monk Dicuilus (fl.814-825) in his De mensura orbis terrae (‘Concerning the Measurement of the World’, finished in 825) mentions that certain islands, which from their description must be the Faroes, had been occupied by Irish monks for about a century.  

The earliest traces of human life on the islands date back to the Viking era (793-1066). The earliest settlers probably came from Norse settlements to the south in the Hebrides, Shetland, etc, followed later during the ninth century by settlers from western Norway and from Celtic-speaking areas.