 |
||||||||||||
| Total population | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 80,000 - 90,000 | ||||||||||||
| Regions with significant populations | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Languages | ||||||||||||
| Religion | ||||||||||||
| Related ethnic groups | ||||||||||||
The Faroese or Faroe Islanders (Føroyingar) are the people of the Faroe Islands in Northern Europe of Celtic and Norse origins.[4] About 21,000 Faroese live in neighbouring countries, particularly in Denmark, Iceland and Norway.
The Faroese language is a West Nordic language, closely related to Icelandic and more distantly to western Norwegian dialects.
Contents |
Origins
The first colonists were Gaelic hermits and monks who arrived in the 6th century.
Later from around 650 the Norse-Gaels came and brought Norse culture and language to the islands. Little is known about this period, thus giving room for speculation. A single source mentions early settlement, the Icelandic Færeyinga Saga. It was written somewhere around 1200, and it explains events taking place about 300 years earlier. According to the saga, many Norsemen objected the Norwegian king's unification politics and thus fled to other countries, including the new found places in the west.
Historians have understood since the time of the Færeyinga Saga that the Viking Grímur Kamban was the first settler in the Faroes. The Norwegians must have known about the isles before leaving Norway. If Grímur Kamban had settled some time earlier, this could explain the Norwegians knowing about them. Anorther and more logical explanation might be that the Norwegians became to know about the islands by the Gaels of Scotland and Ireland.
While Grímur is an Old Norse first name, Kamban indicates a Celtic origin. Thus he could have been a man from Ireland, Western Isles or Isle of Man, where the Vikings already had settlements. Some place names from the oldest settlements on the Faroes suggest that some of the settlers perhaps came from the Scottish islands and the British coast.
Recent DNA analyses have revealed that Y chromosomes, tracing male descent, are 87% Scandinavian.[5] The studies show that mitochondrial DNA, tracing female descent, is 84% Scottish / Irish.[6]
Population trends
An investigation from 2006 by the North Atlantic Group in the Parliament of Denmark, shows that 45% of the entire Faroese population choose to leave the Faroe Islands to settle down in Denmark. Most of them are the younger generation and women.[2]
See also
- List of Faroese people
- Demographics of the Faroe Islands
- Culture of the Faroe Islands
- Flag of the Faroe Islands
References
- ^ Statistics Faroe Islands, 2007
- ^ a b Politiken, 2006 (newspaper written in Danish)
- ^ Persons with immigrant background by immigration category, country background and sex. 1 January 2009
- ^ Highly discrepant proportions of female and male Scandinavian and British Isles ancestry within the isolated population of the Faroe Islands, http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v14/n4/full/5201578a.html, Thomas D Als, Tove H Jorgensen, Anders D Børglum, Peter A Petersen, Ole Mors and August G Wang, 25 January 2006
- ^ The origin of the isolated population of the Faroe Islands investigated using Y chromosomal markers, http://www.springerlink.com/content/4yuhf5m7a22gc4qm/, Tove H. Jorgensen, Henriette N. Buttenschön, August G. Wang, Thomas D. Als, Anders D. Børglum and Henrik Ewald1, 8 April 2004.
- ^ Wang, C. August. 2006. Ílegur og Føroya Søga. In: Frøði pp.20-23
Further reading
- Arge, Símun, Guðrun Sveinbjarnardóttir, Kevin Edwards, and Paul Buckland. 2005. "Viking and Medieval Settlement in the Faroes: People, Place and Environment". Human Ecology. 33, no. 5: 597-620.
|
||||||||||||||
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
