1850-1920 on the Faroe Islands

The period 1850‑1920 defined the legal position of the Faroe Islands in the Danish kingdom as well as the administrative, cultural and political development of the Faroe Islands.

Position in the kingdom and administration

When the Danish Assemblies of the Estates of the Realm were convened in 1830, it proved a challenge to incorporate the former Norwegian tributaries into the Danish kingdom. Unlike Denmark and partly also Iceland, the Faroese peasant society was not a class society with defined lower and upper classes. However, the Danish electoral system could not be used in Iceland or in the Faroe Islands, but the Icelanders were represented by Icelanders appointed by the king, while the Faroes were represented by a former Danish civil servant in the Faroe Islands. Furthermore, there was the difference that the Icelanders had their Althing re-established as a special Icelandic estate assembly already in 1843, while Faroese applications from 1844 and 1846 to establish a similar representation of the Faroese people were not granted. The outcome was that, while in 1851, the Danish authorities failed to enforce the June Constitution from 1849 in Iceland, which was already politically more self-governing at the time, there was no opposition among the Faroese population to the Constitution entering into force in 1850.

Thus, the Faroe Islands’ legal position as part of the Danish constitutional area was established, while Iceland paved the way towards sovereignty in 1918 and 1944, respectively. The Løgting was restored in 1852 in the form of a county council with advisory powers vis-à-vis the Danish parliament (the Rigsdag), which had legislative authority in the entire Danish constitutional area. The powerful chairman of the Løgting became the chief administrative officer, who, with the exception of the period 1897‑1911, was always a Dane, while the dean became a permanent member. The Faroese elected 18 members to the Løgting, who, under the leadership of the chief administrative officer, were to undertake the administration of the islands.

As part of the Danish constitutional area, the Faroese were also given the right to elect two representatives for the bicameral Danish Rigsdag, one in the Folketing and one in the Landsting. The Faroese voters elected the Folketing representative by direct election, while the Landsting representative was elected by indirect election. From 1867, it became the Løgting which elected the Landsting representative from among its members.

With some minor and insignificant changes in 1854, this provided the administrative framework for the Løgting’s activities until a major revision of the Løgting Act in 1923. In 1906, however, the electoral system for the Løgting was changed from single-member constituencies to prioritised lists candidacy, at the same time as secret and written elections replaced oral and public elections. In 1916, women were guaranteed franchise on equal terms with men.

At the same time as the restoration of the Løgting, relieving officers were introduced on the islands, but it was not until 1866 that Tórshavn was established as an independent municipal unit, and with the Municipal Act of 1872 the number of municipalities was set to eight. However, due to division already in 1876, the number of municipalities was 12, and this development escalated towards the end of the period. The number of municipalities increased from 15 to 33 from 1908 to 1920.

Business and population

Until well into the 1800s, Faroese society can be characterised as a traditional peasant society, which supported itself by farming and related fishing organised around the village community. Rights to catch birds, pilot whales and fish with open boats were organised according to the access to land, which could be either the king’s copyhold land or private freehold land. The poor had limited access to marry and establish their own family and had to support themselves by working for the landowners. Originally, every man in the village had the right to a place in the large farmers’ boats and therefore also a right to his share of the catch. But when fishing started becoming detached from the occupational structure of peasant community in the mid-19th century, it was increasingly perceived as a duty. The Slave Act from 1777 was repealed in 1846, and the farmers’ first right to assign men from the village to their boats was repealed in 1865.

During the monopoly, trading only took place in Tórshavn, which is why Faroese from all other parts of the country had to travel there to trade. A plan in 1709 to open a trading station branch on Suðuroy had been abandoned, since the authorities did not think that, as in Tórshavn – which was fortified by a redoubt – it was possible to defend the branch against pirates. It was not until 1836, 1838 and 1839 that three trading station branches were established in Tvøroyri, Klaksvík and Vestmanna, respectively. With the release of trade, the property of the monopoly was sold to private individuals who established trading stations in these and many other places.

At the beginning, line fishing on the Faroese coasts formed the basis of the trading stations’ business and the fishing industry, but in 1872 the Faroese bought the first sloop from England, which gave a boost to fishing off Iceland. Sloop fishing revolutionised Faroese society. Merchants, shipowners, shipmasters and fishermen became the dominant class instead of farmers and servants. In 1801, 1 % of the population, which at the time totalled around 5,000 inhabitants, stated that they supported themselves by fishing, while 85 % stated that they supported themselves by agriculture. A hundred years later, 53 % of a now tripled population of around 15,000 inhabitants stated that they made a living from fishing, while 18.4 % made a living from agriculture. Fishing, which together with agriculture was the basis for population growth, became increasingly important throughout the 19th century. In absolute figures, however, the statistics show that the number of people living from agriculture grew until 1850, after which this number also declined in absolute figures.

At the end of the 19th century, especially when coastal fishing failed, many went to live, fish and work in Iceland for two or three months during summer. It was called ‘fara til lands’. During the summer of 1880, there were about 100 Faroese fishing cutters that fished off the coast of Iceland; in 1890, around 1,000 Faroese went to Iceland to live and work. The men took part in coastal fishing and the women prepared the cod for drying.

The strong population growth from 1850 to 1920 from around 8,000 to around 20,000 people led to major shifts in population trends and between geographical areas. While the agricultural society had distributed the population relatively evenly over the entire arable Faroese agricultural land, the trading and fishing society created population concentration and growth around areas with natural harbours. Trading stations were established here, and sloops were berthed and overwintered in the ports where the catch from the Iceland fishery was landed. Here, the fish products were processed into dried and salted fish, which were sold mainly to southern European markets. Shipowners and labour concentrated in these places where there were business opportunities related to trading and fishing as well as work for men and women.

This development first started in Tvøroyri and Vági on Suðuroy, but later also reached Tórshavn and Vestmanna. In Vági (later Klaksvík) on Norðoyggjar, where the monopoly trade had had a branch, development also soon got under way, but it was not until after 1900 that this societal development really took hold in Klaksvík. Around 1920, the traditionally dominant agricultural villages were outperformed by fishing villages such as Tvøroyri, Vágur, Vestmanna, Klaksvík and Tórshavn.

This development did not only change population trends. The more heterogeneous population composition in the rootless immigrant villages also changed the identity of these places and provided breeding ground for new cultural centres with a culture that was less characterised by agriculture.

Færø Amts Sparekasse (which went bankrupt under the name Eik Banki in 2010 and has now been restored under the name Betri Banki) was already established in 1832, but market and fishing communities also needed banks. In 1906, Landmandsbanken, later called Danske Bank, established Føroya Banki, and in 1932, the first Faroese-owned bank, Sjóvinnubankin (Fishery Bank), was established.

Culture, schools and education

One of the oldest Faroese cultural institutions, the Faroe County Library, was established by chief administrative officer Christian Ludvig Tillisch and Jens Davidsen in 1828, today Landsbókasavnið (the National library of the Faroe Islands). Tjóðsavnið (National Museum of the Faroe Islands) was established in 1898. A national revival or perhaps rather (re)creation of Faroese culture was on the way in the 19th century.

The Faroese peasant culture had only survived centuries of influence from Danish written culture as an oral tradition, but in 1846, the modern Faroese orthography was constructed. The first compulsory school system – provisional regulations – was created in 1846, but was short-lived due to Faroese protests. It was not the school language, Danish, that was the cause of the many protests, but rather the expensive system and the fact that the families needed the children in their daily work. Already in 1854, the newly established democratic Løgting therefore decided to abolish the school system. At the same time, a secondary school, which moved into a new building in 1861, was established in Tórshavn.

It was not until the Municipal Act of 1872 that compulsory schooling was finally re-established in the Faroe Islands. This time it became the municipalities’ responsibility to ensure the implementation of compulsory schooling. Before that, in 1870, a new teachers’ school was established in Tórshavn, which was supposed to supply the schools with trained teachers. In 1884, women were allowed to apply for admission to the school.

Awareness of the special Faroese identity and the need for information about Faroese matters increased in the latter half of the 19th century. The first Faroese newspaper, Færingetidende, was published in 1852, but the newspaper was written in Danish and was published only nine times. Færø Amtstidende (later Dimmalætting), which has been published since 1877, also in Danish, did better. In contrast, Føringatíðindi from 1890 was the first Faroese newspaper published in Faroese. It was one of the most important signs of the nascent national movement, which formally began with the Christmas Meeting in Tórshavn on 26 December 1888; a public meeting where the preservation of Faroese culture and language was up for debate and which resulted in the foundation of the association Føringafelag. The newspaper used the orthography from 1846, but at that time a different orthography had been proposed by Jakob Jakobsen, which caused disagreement, and the newspaper was published the last time in 1906. Instead, the cultural-radical and selfgovernment-oriented Tingakrossur came in 1901, which in the first years was written in Danish.

The traditional oral peasant culture was developing into a written high culture around 1900. The first Faroese newspapers, school books and novels were published during this period. At the beginning of the 20th century, the fight for recognition of the newly found national Faroese identity became a cardinal point in Faroese politics.

A government-supported folk high school was established in Klaksvík in 1899, but it was moved to Føgrulíð already in 1900 – a deserted area just west of Klaksvík. In contrast to other schools and in the church, the folk high school taught in Faroese, and services at the school were also held in Faroese. The national anthem Tú alfagra land mítt was composed in 1906 by Símun av Skarði in Føgrulíð, while the school was located there. It moved to Tórshavn in 1909, where it had a more central location and it was easier to recruit students. The folk high school, which was of great importance for the development of the Faroese language, is still located in the capital.

Communication and traffic

Communication- and traffic-wise, the Faroese have been connected by the sea and the mountains. Seventeen of the 18 islands have been inhabited, and traffic between the islands used to take place by boat, and during the often rough winter conditions, people had to navigate the Atlantic Ocean. The special arrangement to convey civil servants between the islands and villages meant that the farmers had a duty to row public servants and vicars between the islands. This transport arrangement applied to public servants until 1922 and to vicars until 1936. Postmen walked across the mountains to deliver mail to the various villages no matter the weather. At the end of the 19th century, postal transport by sea between the islands became organised, and the first post offices were established in the 1870s. Private companies organised ship and boat transport between the islands with e.g. milk, goods and passengers; it was not until 1939 that the Løgting took over all rights to carbotage between the islands. Throughout the period, there were mostly only footpaths between the villages and there was no lighting. The first real road between two Faroese villages, Skopun and Sand, was established in 1916.

The cargo ships from Denmark to the monopoly in Tórshavn delivering and collecting goods came in spring and unloaded and loaded cargo at the monopoly’s depots. Later, with free trade in 1856, the number of trading stations and ships increased. Whereas, during the monopoly, the Faroese had to row to Tórshavn at least once a year to buy and sell their goods, they later had to row to the larger trading stations to buy and sell their fish catch, which was then processed there and exported to the large European markets.

There were no fundamental changes in traffic during the period, but in the latter half of the period the boats became larger, and ultimately even motorised decked boats were used. Many traders and shipowners therefore built their own quay facilities for their vessels so that they could dock safely.

If it became necessary to send a quick message between the villages, it was also possible to send smoke signals. This was done in case of an emergency or when a village had discovered pilot whales and it needed help for the killing from men and boats in other villages.

While improvements were made in the physical links between the islands, fundamental changes were also implemented in the communication system. The first telegraph connection with the outside world was established in 1905, and the following year, the first telephone connection was established between two villages.

Politics

It has often been said that Faroese politics did not start until the formation of parties in 1906, when a national conservative cultural movement that was against political change was split in two by a breakaway progressive movement that wanted greater political autonomy as a result of the newly found national Faroese identity. However, it probably started much earlier.

Already in 1844, the same year that some members of the estate assembly in Roskilde characterised the Faroese language as merely a depraved Danish dialect, a group of Faroese living in Copenhagen applied to the estate assembly for a parliament in the Faroe Islands. The application was clearly inspired by Iceland, which in 1843 had established its own estate assembly, yet the application showed an awakening political consciousness in the Faroe Islands. When the application did not make the agenda in 1844, 28 Faroese applied again in 1846 – the same year that the Faroese written language was constructed – for a parliament to be established in the Faroe Islands. This time the application made the agenda and was considered, but although it was rejected, there were similarities between the proposal made in the application and the Løgting that was ultimately re-established in 1852. And since then several proposals to expand the Løgting’s powers were submitted to the Løgting in the period from 1874 to 1920. These examples show that the political track was not simply a causal consequence of a preceding cultural period, but rather parallel tracks that can be traced back to the 1840s. What was new in 1906 was that the Faroe Islands had the first actual political parties and a relatively autonomous political system.

From 1851, Faroese stood as candidates for Danish parties to the Danish Rigsdag and later to the Løgting, and the lines of separation were often the same as the Danish. The first political controversies appeared already at the beginning, but culminated in 1860, when a majority of the Løgting’s members, 12 out of 18, became so displeased with the chairman of the Løgting, country administrative officer Dahlerup, that they left the Løgting and refused to return until he had been removed. Dahlerup was undoubtedly a skilled Danish civil servant, but he was unable to reconcile or mediate between very differing views among the elected Faroese in the Løgting.

Political personalities

Among the notable political personalities during this period was Niels Winther, who was the Faroe Islands’ first member of the Danish Folketing and also among the first members of the Løgting in 1852. He had wanted a more open-minded Løgting without civil servants, but ended up voting in favour of the proposal for the Law on the Faroe Islands’ Løgting of 1851. In 1852, Winther published the Faroe Islands’ first newspaper, Færingetidende, where he quickly fell out of favour following his harsh and uncompromising accusations against the civil servants and was convicted of falsely accusing them of fraud. Niels Winther was a member of the Danish Folketing and the Løgting until 1857, when he left the Faroe Islands and settled in Hjørring, Denmark.

Another prominent personality was Johan Hendrik Schröter, who in 1884 submitted proposals to the Løgting for a significant democratisation of the assembly, which would have to choose its own chairman, as well as an expansion of the Løgting’s powers. However, the proposal proved too far-reaching for the Løgting, which rejected it. Other proposals were rejected by the Danish government since the chief administrative officer advised against adopting them.

It was not until the aftermath of the democratisation that accompanied the system change in the early 1900s that some changes in attitude could be seen in Denmark and the Faroe Islands. The new member of the Danish Folketing Jóannes Patursson, who was first elected in 1903, managed to garner the support of J.C. Christensen’s government for giving the Løgting more political and economic wriggle room. At the same time, the Løgting elected the self-government-oriented Christian Bærentsen, the only Faroese who was ever a chief administrative officer in the Faroe Islands, as Faroese member of the Danish Landsting. A system change had thus taken place. In 1906, Jóannes Patursson managed to make a deal with the Danish government that the Løgting should take over some county-municipal areas (ports, roads and telephony). The Løgting should also be given authority to collect taxes, and if the revenues were not sufficient, the Løgting should be able to apply to the Danish government for an annual state subsidy.

Election to the Løgting in 1906

However, in the subsequent 1906 general election, which debated the deal with the Danish government, it became evident that a large majority of the Faroese voters refused to recognise the agreement. One reason was that the opponents argued that taxes would skyrocket because of the deal. Furthermore, Patursson could not guarantee that the Danish government would be willing to support the deal with an annual state subsidy. The decisive factor, however, was that the powerful Faroese temperance movement, which wanted a ban on alcohol, strongly opposed the deal, which was intended to be partly financed by a higher tax on alcohol.

Consequently, Jóannes Patursson and the independence supporters, as they were then called, lost all three elections in the Faroe Islands in 1906: the election to the Danish Folketing, the election to the Løgting and, as a logical consequence, the election to the Danish Landsting. The newly elected Løgting rejected the deal, and the temperance movement prompted a referendum to ban alcohol in 1907. The result was a convincing victory for the temperance movement, but it did not lead to the total ban on alcohol that the temperance movement had wanted. The ban only applied to the sale and serving of alcohol (brandy, wine and beer), while the Faroese were still allowed to import alcohol for their own consumption.

The scheme, with various amendments, remained in force 1992, when a public monopoly on the sale of alcohol was established. Politically, the matter relating to the deal with the Danish government was a major defeat for the independence supporters, and the division between unity and independence supporters became a main dividing line in Faroese politics after 1906. As a result of the disputes, Sambandsflokkurin (the Unionist Party), which wanted the Løgting to practice austerity in its work as well as unchanged relations between Denmark and the Faroe Islands, was established in 1906. Sjálvstýrisflokkurin (the Independence Party), which wanted as much autonomy as could be achieved in agreement with the Danish government and the Danish Rigsdag, was formally established in 1909. According to the party’s platform, it wanted to ensure the same rights for the Faroese language as Danish in the Faroe Islands, and an improvement of the school system based on the Faroese language. Furthermore, no law should be enforceable without the approval of the Løgting.

Sambandsflokkurin dominated the Løgting in the years after 1906, but conflicts over more rights in terms of the Faroese language and greater political autonomy were ever-present throughout the period. In 1912, a large majority in the Løgting adopted a new school act, section 12 of which established Danish as the language of instruction. An act on parochial church councils, which established Danish as the language of the church, was also adopted. In 1915, a proposal from Sjálvstýrisflokkurin to grant legislative authority to the Løgting in special Faroese matters was rejected by the Løgting. Sjálvstýrisflokkurin had difficulty leaving its mark during this period, but World War I and the general election in 1916 showed that Sjálvstýrisflokkurin might have a chance to break the long-standing dominance of Sambandsflokkurin. Sjálvstýrisflokkurin won the general election in 1916, but since only one half of the members were up for election in 1916, Sambandsflokkurin retained the majority.

The period during and after World War I

The difficult trading conditions in the North Atlantic during World War I changed the political climate and political priorities. The British demand that all trade ships in the North Atlantic should sail to a contraband control in a British port – Kirkwall in the case of the Faroe Islands to Kirkwall – did not initially cause major problems. However, this changed in February 1917 when, as a countermeasure, Germany introduced unrestricted submarine warfare against all ships that sailed into specific waters around the British Isles; the boundary of the danger zone was just three nautical miles from the southernmost point of the Faroe Islands. Several trade and fishing ships were sunk on their way to and near the Faroe Islands, and for some months no goods made it to the islands. In this tense situation, the politicians in favour of independence, who had previously reached out to the Danish government, approached the Danish envoy in London in April 1917 with a request that ships coming from the USA and Iceland to the Faroe Islands with goods could be exempted from contraband control in the perilous British ports. In May 1917, the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs became involved in the matter, and after a request to the British government, trade ships from the USA and Iceland with a British license were permitted to call at Halifax in Canada instead for contraband control.

This matter could have been ended in May 1917, but ended up having political consequences in Denmark in 1918. C.Th. Zahle’s social liberal-social democratic government, which had had good political relations with Sjálvstýrisflokkurin, did not have the same good relationship with the Danish political opposition, which had the majority in the Danish Landsting. There was great opposition to the Zahle government’s handling of the sale of the Danish West Indies in 1917 and the impending agreement with Iceland to recognise the country as a sovereign state. But things got even worse when, in March 1918, Zahle sent a telegram to Svenning Rytter, the chief administrative officer in the Faroe Islands, in which he indicated his support of Sjálvstýrisflokkurin’s candidate in the upcoming April general election, and asked the chief administrative officer to inform the candidate of his position. Rytter, who believed that he had fought against the independence supporters and for Denmark’s interests in the Faroe Islands during the war, was so indignant that he, together with the judge of the Faroese Court of Justice and the administrative officer, requested to be transferred to other positions in Denmark – otherwise they would resign. Against this background, the conservative opposition in the Danish Landsting decided to set up a commission in July 1918. The commission was, among other things, tasked with looking into Zahle’s relationship with the independence supporters. Furthermore, the commission was charged with investigating everything relating to the request of the Faroese independence supporters to the British government in April 1917.

The 1920 commission report

A very comprehensive commission report, which in the majority report (the opposition) accused the independence supporters of high treason and subversive activities, was submitted to the Danish Landsting for further consideration in January 1920. The minority (the government’s members in the commission, including one of the majority’s main suspects, Jóannes Patursson) responded that no illegal activities had taken place, but that the Danish Landsting with its accusations had damaged the good relationship between Denmark and the Faroe Islands. The accusations were, like the commission, fundamentally political, so the report did not have any legal consequences. The only thing that the majority in the Danish Landsting agreed to was to officially criticise Zahle for his inadequate briefing of the Landsting on the reasons why the three Faroese civil servants had applied for transfer or dismissal in March 1918.

A few months later, the king dismissed Zahle’s government in connection with disagreements about Flensburg; the Landsting Commission of 1918 thus played no role in the dismissal. According to the Danish historian Jørgen Steining, the matter did have political consequences since Jóannes Patursson became ‘an enemy of the Danish State for all time’. Sjálvstýrisflokkurin in particular was dissatisfied that Svenning Rytter became the new minister for justice and directly responsible for Faroese affairs in Niels Th. Neergaard’s Liberal Party government, which was in power between 1920 and 1924.

Further reading

• 1536-1850 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