Faroese language
insular Nordic language spoken as a native language by the people of Faroe Islands
Faroese ( FAIR-oh-EEZ, FARR-; endonym: føroyskt [ˈføːɹɪst]) is a North Germanic language spoken as a first language by about 69,000 Faroe Islanders, of whom 21,000 reside mainly in Denmark and elsewhere.
It is one of five languages descended from Old West Norse spoken in the Middle Ages; the others include Norwegian, Icelandic, and the extinct Norn and Greenlandic Norse. Faroese and Icelandic, its closest extant relative, are not easily mutually intelligible in speech, but the written languages resemble each other quite closely, largely owing to Faroese's etymological orthography.
History
Around 900 AD, the language spoken in the Faroes was Old Norse, which Norse settlers had brought with them during the time of the settlement of Faroe Islands (landnám) that began in 825. However, many of the settlers were not from Scandinavia, but descendants of Norse settlers in the Irish Sea region. In addition, women from Norse-occupied Ireland, the Norse–Gaelic Isles, Orkney, and Shetland often married native Scandinavian men before settling in the Faroe Islands and Iceland. As a result, the Middle Irish language has had some influence on both Faroese and Icelandic.
There is speculation about Gaelic language place names in the Faroes: for example, the names of Mykines, Stóra Dímun, Lítla Dímun and Argir have been hypothesized to contain Celtic roots. Other examples of early-introduced words of Celtic origin are: blak/blaðak (buttermilk), cf. Middle Irish bláthach; drunnur (tail-piece of an animal), cf.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q25258. The Library of Congress control number is sh85047334. Authority coordinates are 62.000, -6.783. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Faroese language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.