The official language of the Faroe Islands

Faroe Islands

The Faroe Islands are an island group situated between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, approximately halfway between Scotland and Iceland. The Faroe Islands are a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, along with Denmark proper and Greenland...

 is Faroese

Faroese language

Faroese , is an Insular Nordic language spoken by 48,000 people in the Faroe Islands and about 25,000 Faroese people in Denmark and elsewhere...

. The Faroese language is a Germanic language which is descended from Old Norse

Old Norse

Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....

.

Faroese is similar in grammar to Icelandic

Icelandic language

Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...

 and Old Norse, but closer in pronunciation to Norwegian

Norwegian language

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...

. In the twentieth century Faroese became the official language and, because the Faroe Islands are a Danish territory, Danish

Danish language

Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

 is taught in local schools.

Historically

The first recorded settlers of the Faroe Islands were Irish monks (papar

Papar

The Papar were, according to early Icelandic historical sources, a group of Irish or Scottish monks resident in parts of Iceland at the time of the arrival of the Norsemen...

), so it is possible to assume, that one of the first languages in the islands was some form of Old Irish

Old Irish language

Old Irish is the name given to the oldest form of the Goidelic languages for which extensive written texts are extant. It was used from the 6th to the 10th centuries, by which time it had developed into Middle Irish....

. Neighbouring Shetland was inhabited from the Stone Age

Stone Age

The Stone Age is a broad prehistoric period, lasting about 2.5 million years , during which humans and their predecessor species in the genus Homo, as well as the earlier partly contemporary genera Australopithecus and Paranthropus, widely used exclusively stone as their hard material in the...

, and was Pictish

Pictish language

Pictish is a term used for the extinct language or languages thought to have been spoken by the Picts, the people of northern and central Scotland in the Early Middle Ages...

 speaking when the Norse arrived.

Norse settlers first arrived in the middle of the 9th century, bringing their West Norse language (from which the Faroese language evolved).

Other groups are known to have lived in the Faroes as well. These include Norwegian peoples, and this is evident in certain Faroese places names, such as Signabøur

Signabøur

Signabøur is a village on the east coast of the Faroese island Streymoy in the Torshavnar municipality. The 2005 population was 157. Its postal code is FO 416. There was a whaling station here from 1903 to 1920.22-External links:*...

 (Bø of 'Sygnir') and Øravík

Øravík

Øravík is a village on the east coast of the island of Suðuroy in the Faroe Islands. The village is located in the center of the island on a crossroad where the road to Fámjin goes towards west over the mountains to the west coast. One part of the village is located in the bay of Øravík, the other...

 (bay of 'Hörðir'). People from Suðuroy

Suðuroy

Suðuroy is the southernmost of the Faroe Islands. The island covers 163.7 km². In 2010 there were 4763 inhabitants, but there has been a gradual decline in the population numbers ever since the 1950s....

 also refer to 'Frísarnir í Akrabergi' (The Frisians

Frisians

The Frisians are a Germanic ethnic group native to the coastal parts of the Netherlands and Germany. They are concentrated in the Dutch provinces of Friesland and Groningen and, in Germany, East Frisia and North Frisia, that was a part of Denmark until 1864. They inhabit an area known as Frisia...

 of Akraberg

Akraberg

Akraberg is the southern tip of Suðuroy, 5 km south from the village Sumba, Faroe Islands. The name Akraberg derives from akur . Five kilometres south of Akraberg is the southernmost point of The Faroe Islands, a rock called Munkurin , also called Sumbiarsteinur, which is one of a group of six...

).

English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 and German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

are sometimes used for the purposes of tourism. Norwegian is occasionally heard too, due to the islands' geographical proximity to Norway.