Faroese language in the context of Close-mid front rounded vowel

The Faroe Islands (/ˈfɛəroʊ/ FAIR-oh) (alt. the Faroes) are an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean and an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. Located between Iceland, Norway, and the Hebrides and Shetland isles of Scotland, the islands have a population of 54,885 as of September 2025 and a land area of 1,393 km². The official language is Faroese, which is partially mutually intelligible with Icelandic. The terrain is rugged, dominated by fjords and cliffs with sparse vegetation and few trees. As a result of their proximity to the Arctic Circle, the islands experience perpetual civil twilight during summer nights and very short winter days; nevertheless, they experience a subpolar oceanic climate and mild temperatures year-round due to the Gulf Stream. The capital, Tórshavn, receives the fewest recorded hours of sunshine of any city in the world at only 840 per year.

Færeyinga saga and the writings of Dicuil place initial Norse settlement in the early 9th century, with Grímur Kamban recorded as the first permanent settler. As with the subsequent settlement of Iceland, the islands were mainly settled by Norwegians and Norse-Gaels who also brought thralls (i.e. slaves or serfs) of Gaelic origin. However, new study has found that Viking colonizers of the Faroe Islands and nearby Iceland had different origins.

Norwegian (endonym: norsk [ˈnɔʂːk] , norsk språk [ˈnɔʂːk sproːk]) is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family spoken mainly in Norway, where it is an official language. Along with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a dialect continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional varieties; some Norwegian and Swedish dialects, in particular, are very close. These Scandinavian languages, together with Faroese and Icelandic as well as some extinct languages, constitute the North Germanic languages. Faroese and Icelandic are not mutually intelligible with Norwegian in their spoken form because continental Scandinavian has diverged from them. While the two Germanic languages with the greatest numbers of speakers, English and German, have close similarities with Norwegian, neither is mutually intelligible with it. Norwegian is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Age.

Today there are two official forms of written Norwegian, Bokmål (Riksmål) and Nynorsk (Landsmål), each with its own variants. Bokmål developed from the Dano-Norwegian language that replaced Middle Norwegian as the elite language after the union of Denmark–Norway in the 16th and 17th centuries and then evolved in Norway, while Nynorsk was developed based upon a collective of spoken Norwegian dialects. Norwegian is one of the two official languages in Norway, along with Sámi, a group of Finno-Ugric languages spoken by less than one percent of the population. Norwegian is one of the working languages of the Nordic Council. Under the Nordic Language Convention, citizens of the Nordic countries who speak Norwegian have the opportunity to use it when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable for any interpretation or translation costs.

Æ (lowercase: æ) is a character formed from the letters a and e, originally a ligature representing the Latin diphthong ae. It has been promoted to the status of a letter in some languages, including Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese. It was also used in both Old Swedish, before being replaced by ä, and Old English, where it was eventually dropped entirely in favour of a. The modern International Phonetic Alphabet uses it to represent the near-open front unrounded vowel (the sound represented by the 'a' in English words such as cat). Diacritic variants include Ǣ/ǣ, Ǽ/ǽ, Æ̀/æ̀, Æ̂/æ̂ and Æ̃/æ̃.

As a letter of the Old English Latin alphabet, it was called æsc, "ash tree", after the Anglo-Saxon futhorc rune ᚫ which it transliterated; its traditional name in English is still ash, or æsh (Old English: æsċ) if the ligature is included.

Icelandic (/aɪsˈlændɪk/ eyess-LAN-dik; endonym: íslenska, pronounced [ˈi(ː)stlɛnska] , íslensk tunga [ˈi(ː)stlɛnsk ˈtʰuŋka]) is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family spoken by about roughly 390,000 people, the vast majority of whom live in Iceland, where it is the national language. Since it is a West Scandinavian language, it is most closely related to Faroese, western Norwegian dialects, and the extinct language Norn. It is not mutually intelligible with the continental Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish) and is more distinct from the most widely spoken Germanic languages, English and German. The written forms of Icelandic and Faroese are very similar, but their spoken forms are not mutually intelligible.

The language is more conservative than most other Germanic languages. While most of them have greatly reduced levels of inflection (particularly noun declension), Icelandic retains a four-case synthetic grammar (comparable to German, though considerably more conservative and synthetic) and is distinguished by a wide assortment of irregular declensions. Icelandic vocabulary is also deeply conservative, with the country's language regulator maintaining an active policy of coining terms based on older Icelandic words rather than directly taking in loanwords from other languages.

Old Norse was a North Germanic language spoken in Scandinavia and in Norse settlements during the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages (approximately the 8th–14th centuries). It is the conventional term for the medieval West and East Scandinavian dialects (often labelled Old West Norse and Old East Norse) that developed from Proto-Norse and later evolved into the modern North Germanic languages, including Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish.

Old Norse is attested in runic inscriptions (written in the Younger Futhark) and in numerous medieval manuscripts written with the Latin alphabet; its literary corpus includes the Poetic Edda, the Prose Edda, the Icelandic sagas, skaldic verse, law codes, and religious texts. Contact between Old Norse speakers and other languages — particularly Old English and the Celtic languages — left a substantial legacy of loanwords and toponyms; many common English words such as egg, knife, sky, and window derive from Old Norse.

Danish (endonym: dansk pronounced [ˈtænˀsk] , dansk sprog [ˈtænˀsk ˈspʁɔwˀ]) is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family spoken by about six million people, principally in and around Denmark. Communities of Danish speakers are also found in Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and the northern German region of Southern Schleswig, where it has minority language status. Minor Danish-speaking communities are also found in Norway, Sweden, the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina.

Along with the other North Germanic languages, Danish is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples who lived in Scandinavia during the Viking Era. Danish, together with Swedish, derives from the East Norse dialect group, while the Middle Norwegian language (before the influence of Danish) and Norwegian Nynorsk are classified as West Norse along with Faroese and Icelandic (Norwegian Bokmål may be thought of as mixed Danish-Norwegian, therefore mixed East-West Norse). A more recent classification based on mutual intelligibility separates modern spoken Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish as "mainland (or continental) Scandinavian", while Icelandic and Faroese are classified as "insular Scandinavian". Although the written languages are compatible, spoken Danish is distinctly different from Norwegian and Swedish and thus the degree of mutual intelligibility with either is variable between regions and speakers.

Faroese people or Faroe Islanders (Faroese: føroyingar; Danish: færinger) are an ethnic group native to the Faroe Islands. The Faroese are of mixed Norse and Gaelic origins.About 21,000 Faroese live in neighbouring countries, particularly in Denmark, Iceland and Norway. Most Faroese are citizens of the Kingdom of Denmark, in which the Faroe Islands are a constituent nation. The Faroese language is one of the North Germanic languages and is closely related to Icelandic and to western Norwegian varieties.

The Constitutional Act of the Realm of Denmark (Danish: Danmarks Riges Grundlov), also known as the Constitutional Act of the Kingdom of Denmark, or simply the Constitution (Danish: Grundloven, Faroese: Grundlógin, Greenlandic: Tunngaviusumik inatsit), is the constitution of the Kingdom of Denmark, applying equally in the Realm of Denmark: Denmark proper, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. The first democratic constitution was adopted in 1849, replacing the 1665 absolutist constitution. The current constitution is from 1953. The Constitutional Act has been changed a few times. The wording is general enough to still apply today.

The constitution defines Denmark as a constitutional monarchy, governed through a parliamentary system. It creates separations of power between the Folketing, which enact laws, the government, which implements them, and the courts, which makes judgment about them. In addition it gives a number of fundamental rights to people in Denmark, including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, and freedom of assembly. The constitution applies to all persons in Denmark, not just Danish citizens.

Færeyinga saga, Old Norse for the Faroe-Islander Saga (Icelandic pronunciation: listen; Faroese: Føroyinga søga; Danish: Færingesagaen), the saga of the Faroe Islanders, is the story of how the Faroes were converted to Christianity and became a part of Norway, originally written down in the 13th century.

The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also referred to as the Nordic languages, a direct translation of the most common term used among Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish scholars and people.

The term North Germanic languages is used in comparative linguistics, whereas the term Scandinavian languages appears in studies of the modern standard languages and the dialect continuum of Scandinavia. Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are close enough to form a strong mutual intelligibility where cross-border communication in native languages is very common, particularly between the latter two.

The Nordic Language Convention is a convention of linguistic rights that came into force on 1 March 1987, under the auspices of the Nordic Council. Under the Convention, citizens of the Nordic countries have the opportunity to use their native language when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable to any interpretation or translation costs. The Convention covers health care, social security, tax, school, and employment authorities, the police andcourts. The languages included are Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish and Icelandic.

The Convention is not very well known and is mostly a recommendation. The countries have committed themselves to providing services in various languages, but citizens have no absolute rights except for criminal and court matters. The Convention does not automatically require authorities to provide services in another language but a citizen must demand an interpreter. Civil servants in official institutions are often unaware of the regulations on interpreting and translating and neglect to provide these services when requested. Furthermore, the convention excludes minority languages, like Faroese, Kalaallisut, Romany and Sami, and immigrant languages. English has also assumed an increasingly prominent role in interaction between Nordic citizens.

The Royal Danish Army (Danish: Hæren; Faroese: Herurin; Greenlandic: Sakkutuut) is the land-based branch of the Danish Armed Forces, together with the Danish Home Guard. For the last decade, the Royal Danish Army has undergone a massive transformation of structures, equipment and training methods, abandoning its traditional role of anti-invasion defence, and instead focusing on out of area operations by, among other initiatives, reducing the size of the conscripted and reserve components and increasing the active (standing army) component, changing from 60% support structure and 40% operational capability, to 60% combat operational capability and 40% support structure. When fully implemented, the Danish army will be capable of deploying 1,500 troops permanently on three different continents continuously, or 5,000 troops for a shorter period of time, in international operations without any need for extraordinary measures such as parliamentary approval of a war funding bill.

Proto-Norse was an Indo-European language spoken in Scandinavia that is thought to have evolved as a northern dialect of Proto-Germanic in the first centuries CE. It is the earliest stage of a characteristically North Germanic language, and the language attested in the oldest Scandinavian Elder Futhark inscriptions, spoken from around the 2nd to the 8th centuries CE (corresponding to the late Roman Iron Age and the Germanic Iron Age). It evolved into the dialects of Old Norse at the beginning of the Viking Age around 800 CE, which later themselves evolved into the modern North Germanic languages (Faroese, Icelandic, the Continental Scandinavian languages, and their dialects).

Icelandic orthography uses a Latin-script alphabet which has 32 letters. Compared with the 26 letters of the English alphabet, the Icelandic alphabet lacks C, Q, W, and Z, but additionally has Ð, Þ, Æ, and Ö. Six letters have forms with acute accents to produce Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú and Ý.

The letters eth (⟨ð⟩, capital ⟨Ð⟩), transliterated as ⟨d⟩, and thorn (⟨þ⟩, capital ⟨Þ⟩), transliterated as ⟨th⟩, are widely used in the Icelandic language. Eth is also used in Faroese and Elfdalian, while thorn was used in many historical languages such as Old English. The letters ⟨æ⟩ (capital ⟨Æ⟩) and ⟨ö⟩ (capital ⟨Ö⟩) are considered completely separate letters in Icelandic and are collated as such, even though they originated as a ligature and a diacritical version respectively.

Fróði (Old Norse: Frōði; Old English: Frōda; Middle High German: Vruote) is the name of a number of legendary Danish kings in various texts including Beowulf, Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda and his Ynglinga saga, Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum, and the Grottasǫngr. A Danish king by this name also appears as a minor character in the Middle High German epic Rabenschlacht. The name is possibly an eponym for the god Freyr.

• The Fróði of the Grottasǫngr is said to be the son of Fridleif, the son of Skjǫldr. According to Ynglinga saga it was in this Fróði's beer that King Fjǫlnir drowned. Snorri Sturluson here and in the Skáldskaparmál make this Fróði the contemporary of Roman emperor Augustus and comments on the peacefulness of his reign, referred to as Fróði's Peace, suggesting a relationship to the birth of Christ. Though Icelandic sources make this Fróði a very early Danish king, in Gesta Danorum (Book 5), Saxo puts him late in his series of rulers, though including the chronological equation with Augustus and mentioning the birth of Christ.
• The Fróði who, according to Ynglinga saga and Gesta Danorum, was the father of Halfdan. He would have lived in the 5th or 6th century. He appears to be the same king who later in the Ynglinga saga aided the Swedish king Ongenþeow in defeating the thrall Tunni. Because of this, Egil and his son Ottar (Ohthere) became tributaries to the Danish king.
• Fróði the father of Ingjald, who in Beowulf is Froda the father of Ingeld and king of the Heathobards. The existence of the Heathobards has been forgotten in Norse texts and this Fróði there sometimes appears as the brother of Halfdan with the long hostility between Heathobards and Danes becoming a family feud between Halfdan and his brother Fróði. Fróði kills Halfdan and is himself slain by Halfdan's sons Helgi (Halga) and Hroar (Hrothgar). (In Arngrímur Jónsson's Latin summary to the lost Skjöldunga saga the names Fróði and Ingjald are interchanged. Saxo Grammaticus (Book 6) makes this Fróði instead to be a very late legendary king, the son of Fridleif son of Saxo's late peaceful Fróði. Saxo knows some of the story of this feud but nothing of any relationship to Halfdan. Instead Saxo relates how this Fróði was slain by Saxons and how, after a marriage alliance between his son Ingel and a Saxon princess to heal the feud, Ingel opened it again at the urging of an old warrior, just as the hero Beowulf prophesies of Ingjald in the poem Beowulf.
• A legend from Ydre in the South Swedish highlands tells that a king known as Frode was killed by Urkon, the same cow that created Lake Sommen.

The form Fróði is still in use in Icelandic and Faroese and appears Latinized as Frotho or Frodo. The latter form of the name is used by J. R. R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings for the main character of the story, Frodo Baggins. Alternative anglicizations are Frode, Fródi, Fróthi and Frodhi. The Danish, Norwegian and Swedish form is Frode. The meaning of the name is "clever, learned, wise".

In Norse mythology, Valhalla (/vælˈhælə/ val-HAL-ə, US also /vɑːlˈhɑːlə/ vahl-HAH-lə; Old Norse: Valhǫll [ˈwɑlhɒlː], lit. 'Hall of the Slain') is described as a majestic hall located in Asgard and presided over by the god Odin. There were five possible realms the soul could travel to after death. The first was Fólkvangr, ruled by the goddess Freyja. The second was Hel, ruled by Hel, Loki's daughter. The third was that of the goddess Rán. The fourth was the Burial Mound where the dead could live. The fifth and last realm was Valhalla, ruled by Odin and was called the Hall of Heroes. The masses of those killed in combat (known as the einherjar), along with various legendary Germanic heroes and kings, live in Valhalla until Ragnarök, when they will march out of its many doors to fight in aid of Odin against the jötnar. Valhalla was idealized in Viking culture and gave the Scandinavians a widespread cultural belief that there is nothing more glorious than death in battle. The belief in a Viking paradise and eternal life in Valhalla with Odin may have given the Vikings a violent edge over the other raiders of their time period.

Valhalla is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, in the Prose Edda (written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson), in Heimskringla (also written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson), and in stanzas of an anonymous 10th-century poem commemorating the death of Eric Bloodaxe known as Eiríksmál as compiled in Fagrskinna. Valhalla has inspired innumerable works of art, publication titles, and elements of popular culture and is synonymous with a martial (or otherwise) hall of the chosen dead. The name is rendered in modern Scandinavian languages as Valhöll in Icelandic, while the Swedish and Norwegian form is Valhall; in Faroese it is Valhøll, and in Danish it is Valhal.