1536-1850 on the Faroe Islands

The Reformation was introduced around 1538 and was fully implemented in 1540 when an Evangelical superintendent replaced the last Catholic bishop. The diocese was abolished in 1557 when the Faroe Islands became a deanery under the Diocese of Bergen, and in 1620 under the Diocese of Zealand. During the Reformation, the church estate was placed under the crown. That constituted about 48 % of the total land value in the Faroe Islands, while the crown estate accounted for around 5 %. The crown estate was subsequently granted to the King’s yeomen.

In the period leading up to 1619, Faroese trade was handled by various agencies. At the beginning, the king had a monopoly on trade, but in some years, the Faroese were allowed to trade freely. Magnus Heinason took over the trading rights in 1579. During the five years he was in charge of the trade, he built a redoubt in Tórshavn to defend the city against pirates.

Changes in administration and trade

In 1619, Islandsk Kompagni acquired the rights to trade in the Faroe Islands, which meant that trade was moved from Bergen to Copenhagen. The secular and the ecclesiastical administration of the Faroe Islands also moved to Copenhagen at the same time, thus ending the close ties between the Faroe Islands and Norway, which had been of such great importance throughout the Middle Ages.

Administratively, the change was not that significant, since the Faroe Islands were still governed according to Norwegian laws and regulations, but within commerce the change was considerable. Since trade was managed indirectly via Norway, dried fish was an important commodity, but Islandsk Kompagni was more interested in stockings than in fish. The Faroese got a fair price for woollen stockings, which gradually became the most important export item.

The impact of the changes were not felt administratively until 1655, when King Frederik III appointed the Dane Balzer Jacobsen as lawman. He was appointed against the will of the Løgting, and the discontent among the members of the old Faroese court was so great that the lawman was soon named the evil lawman. The fact that the king appointed someone other than the Løgting wanted was clear evidence that the absolute monarchy was becoming stronger and stronger, while the Løgting’s power gradually weakened. However, the state was not yet so strong that it was able to stand up to the Løgting, so a few years later Balzer Jacobsen resigned as lawman, and the person that the Løgting had originally recommended was appointed. In the following 100 years, all lawmen were Faroese.

The Gabel era

At the same time as attempts were made to appoint a Dane as lawman in the Faroe Islands, Christoffer Gabel was granted the Faroe Islands as a fief, and in 1662, he was also given charge of trade in the Faroe Islands. Christoffer Gabel was one of the king’s closest advisers when absolute monarchy was introduced in 1660. Christoffer Gabel’s son, Frederik Gabel, inherited the fief from his father and held it until his death in 1708.

While Frederik Gabel managed the trade, it gradually became more and more difficult to sell Faroese stockings, which meant that the trade generated an increasingly large deficit. Gabel and his merchants decided that, in the future, the trade should accept raw wool instead of buying knitted stockings, a decision that caused great discontent when announced in the Faroe Islands. The Faroese knew that the decision would result in the loss of their most important source of income, which was linked to preparing the wool for the production of stockings. The Løgting convened to express their dissatisfaction, and it was clear that an uprising was imminent if the decision was not withdrawn. The members of the Løgting agreed that the living conditions of the Faroese would become unbearable if this source of income disappeared.

When word of the discontent reached Copenhagen, the king ordered the Løgting to send a delegation of four of the country’s most gifted men to Copenhagen to discuss the matter. The negotiations resulted in a new trade tariff being set for all the goods that the trade sold or bought in the Faroe Islands. This trade tariff from 1691 largely appeased the Faroese, but meant that Frederik Gabel had a deficit from the Faroese trade until his death. For the Faroese, the trade tariff meant that it was totally clear how many goods they had to sell to the trade in order to get what they needed. The trade tariff from 1691 is called the Centennial Tariff, as it remained in force almost unchanged until 1790.

From royal monopoly to free trade

When Frederik Gabel died in 1708, the Gabel family’s time as feudal overlord ended. The absolute monarappointchy became better and better organised during these years, and now the administration in Copenhagen had to manage this part of the kingdom. A board was appointed which was to prepare a report regarding the country’s public holdings in the Faroe Islands. One of the board members was the king’s administrative officer, who was employed as the sovereign king’s representative and was in charge of public affairs in the Faroe Islands. The administrative officer was also to manage trade, and he was to serve as a guarantor that everything was settled correctly in connection with the king’s takeover of the trade from the Gabel family in 1709. The other two board members were a superior ranking navy officer and the Faroese lawman.

The board’s work resulted in the Commission’s report of 1709‑10 regarding the state of the Faroe Islands following the King’s takeover of the monopoly in the Faroe Islands. This report long formed the basis for how the central administration in Copenhagen managed the Faroe Islands, and the period 1709‑25 reflected that the administration tried to gain control over all matters relating to the Faroe Islands. However, subsequently, the administration in Copenhagen showed only limited interest in meddling in Faroese affairs until around 1770.

When the king took over the monopoly, he also took over the deficit it had long had from the trade with Faroese stockings. The demand for the stockings increased, however, and during the 1720s the deficit became a surplus, and both the trade and the Faroese became interested in producing as many stockings as possible.

The demand created economic progress throughout most of the 18th century, but around 1770, all the wool that could be obtained from Faroese sheep was used up. When it was no longer possible to make progress by increasing resources, the big question became who should be given the right to the limited resources. This issue is undoubtedly the reason behind the act of the 21st of May 1777, which in a Faroese historical context is often called the Slave Law. Now peasants in the villages could be forced into labour, and the law also made it possible to prohibit marriage until after four years of employment on a farm. Furthermore, the intent of the law was to encourage the intensification of grain cultivation. This was part of the physiocratic movement where the physiocrats believed that welfare could only be increased if the land was made to produce more.

The monopoly trade caused a large deficit in the 1780s, so a committee was set up in 1789 to prepare proposals on how it could be abolished. When a proposal for new regulations for trade in the Faroe Islands was presented the following year, it led to objections from the Faroe Islands, which is why the abolition of monopoly trade was initially postponed until 1796. However, it was not abolished, and free trade was not introduced until 60 years later in 1856.

The establishment of Faroe County

Administratively, the administrative officer and the lawman were the highest authorities in the Faroe Islands in the 18th century. In 1720, a prefect was appointed for the Faroe Islands and Iceland, but when the prefect settled in Bessastaðir in Iceland in 1770, it became difficult for him to manage the Faroese part of his office. Therefore, in 1776 the Faroe Islands came under the aegis of the prefect of Zealand County. The prefect had a deputy in the Faroe Islands who could make decisions in cases that could not await processing in Denmark. Usually, the administrative officer or the lawman were the prefect’s deputies. When the War with England broke out in 1807, the old administrative officer and the commandant of the Skansin redoubt in Tórshavn were both deputies of the prefect, and as a result of the war, they served to a still greater extent as an independent form of ‘chief administrative officers’.

With the Treaty of Kiel in 1814, the Danish king lost Norway, but the old Norwegian tributaries of the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland remained under the Danish crown. Accordingly, the central administration in Copenhagen wanted to strengthen its administration of the Faroe Islands. At the beginning, the chief administrative officer did not want to give up the task, but when he was given another office in May 1816, it was only natural to make some changes. With the appointment of the new chief administrative officer for Zealand County, it was decided to establish the Faroe County with a provisional chief administrative officer in the Faroe Islands. The commandant of the redoubt, who had previously served as deputy to the chief administrative officer, was appointed to hold this office. At the same time, the centuries-old Løgting and the office of lawman were abolished, whereby the chief administrative officer alone became the highest authority in the Faroe Islands.

Reforms and modernisation

A central administration was also created together with the office of chief administrative officer, who to a greater extent than the civil servants in the old system was able to promote changes, even though the strong peasants of the peasant society opposed any reforms. In 1821, the commandant was appointed chief administrative officer, but being a military man, he was less of a reformist. However, this changed in 1825, when the first of several young jurists was appointed chief administrative officer, leading to accelerated modernisation of society. For example, in 1829 both a hospital was built and a fund was founded to establish schools.

It soon became clear to these chief administrative officers that the monopoly trade was the biggest obstacle to the development of Faroese society. However, it was also the monopoly trade that ensured access to the necessary goods, which was a security that the Faroese could hardly give up. The chief administrative officers believed that the monopoly trade had also prevented the development of the Faroese, so that they were intellectually unable to accept free trade. It was therefore necessary to prepare them for free trade, and among the measures they introduced was the establishment of a school system and the creation of several trading branches. The chief administrative officers led the efforts to support those who wanted to settle in outlying villages or who wanted to cultivate new land. They became aware early on that the greatest opportunity for economic growth was in developing the fishing industry. This type of industry was started in the 1830s, and commercial boat fishery was established in the last years leading up to the abolishment of monopoly trade in 1856.

All these measures resulted in strong growth in population numbers. While in 1801 there were around 5,000 inhabitants, the population had grown to around 8,500 when monopoly trade was abolished and that growth continued. The Faroe Islands transitioned into a period that was characterised by considerable development as well as profound changes.

Nólsoyar-Páll

Poul Poulsen Nolsøe (1766‑1808) was born on Nólsoy, hence the name Nólsoyar-Páll. He started long-distance shipping early on, graduated as ship’s mate in Copenhagen and sailed as a shipmaster to, e.g., America.

After living in Copenhagen with his Faroese wife, he moved to the Faroe Islands around 1800. After the death of his first wife, he married a farmer’s daughter in Klaksvík, where he became a King’s yeoman.

He left his mark as a proponent of free trade. He built the first ship in the Faroe Islands, Royndin Fríða, in 1804. During the Napoleonic Wars, the supply of goods to the Faroe Islands was unreliable, and in this connection, in 1807, he obtained a special permission from the Danish crown prince to take a cargo of grain to the Faroe Islands on his ship. In mid-November 1808, when Tórshavn had been sacked and famine threatened, Nólsoyar-Páll set out again from London for the Faroe Islands with a cargo of grain, but the ship was wrecked and never arrived. He was then 42 years old.

Nólsoyar-Páll was not always in line with the Danish civil servants, despite the fact that his brother worked for the trade, and he composed a large number of satiric ballads (tættir) about Danish civil servants. The most famous is Fuglakvæðið, written in 1806‑07, in which he compares the civil servants to birds of prey and himself to the oystercatcher, which protects the smaller and innocent birds. Many of his ballads are still sung in connection with chain dancing.

Nólsoyar-Páll was rediscovered in the Faroe Islands especially after Jakob Jakobsen’s biography of him from 1912 and has since been regarded as a national hero.

Further reading

• 1850-1920 on the Faroe Islands
• 1920-1970 on the Faroe Islands
• 1970-2007 on the Faroe Islands
• Ancient times on the Faroe Islands
• Argisbrekka
• Population trends on the Faroe Islands from 1327-2022
• The middle ages on the Faroe Islands
• The viking age on the Faroe Islands

Read more about History on the Faroe Islands