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Demographics
Demographics
The vast majority of the population are ethnic Faroese, of Norse and Celtic descent.
Recent DNA analyses have revealed that Y chromosomes, tracing male descent, are 87% Scandinavian.
The studies show that mitochondrial DNA, tracing female descent, is 84% Scottish / Irish.
Of the approximately 48,000 inhabitants of the Faroe Islands (16,921 private households (2004)), 98% are realm citizens, meaning Faroese, Danish, or Greenlandic.
By birthplace one can derive the following origins of the inhabitants: born on the Faroes 91.7%, in Denmark 5.8%, and in Greenland 0.3%.
The largest group of foreigners is Icelanders comprising 0.4% of the population, followed by Norwegians and Polish, each comprising 0.2%.
Altogether, on the Faroe Islands there are people from 77 different nationalities.
Faroese is spoken in the entire country as a first language.
It is not possible to say exactly how many people worldwide speak the Faroese language.
This is for two reasons: Firstly, many ethnic Faroese live in Denmark and few who are born there return to the Faroes with their parents or as adults.
Secondly, there are some established Danish families on the Faroes who speak Danish at home.
The Faroese language is one of the smallest of the Germanic languages.
Faroese grammar is most similar to Icelandic and Old Norse.
In contrast, spoken Faroese differs much from Icelandic and is closer to Norwegian dialects from the west coast of Norway.
In the twentieth century, Faroese became the official language and since the Faroes are a part of the Danish realm Danish is taught in schools as a compulsory second language.
Faroese language policy provides for the active creation of new terms in Faroese suitable for modern life.
Population trends (1327-2004)
If the first inhabitants of the Faroe Islands were Irish monks, then they must have lived as a very small group of settlers.
Later, when the Vikings colonised the Islands, there was a considerable increase in the population.
However, it never exceeded 5,000 until the eighteenth century.
Around 1349, about half of the islands' people died of the plague.
Only with the rise of the deep sea fishery (and thus independence from difficult agriculture) and with general progress in the health service was rapid population growth possible in the Faroes.
Beginning in the eighteenth century, the population increased tenfold in 200 years.
At the beginning of the 1990s, the Faroe Islands entered a deep economic crisis with heavy, noticeable emigration; however, this trend reversed in subsequent years to a net immigration.
Urbanization and regionalization
The Faroese population is spread across most of the country; it was not until recent decades that significant urbanization occurred.
Industrialisation has been remarkably decentralised, and the country has therefore maintained quite a viable rural culture.
Nevertheless, villages with poor harbour facilities have been the losers in the development from agriculture to fishing, and in the most peripheral agricultural areas, also known as the the outer islands, there are scarcely any young people left.
In recent decades, the village-based social structure has nevertheless been placed under pressure; instead there has been a rise in interconnected "centres" that are better able to provide goods and services than the badly connected periphery.
This means that shops and services are now relocating en masse from the villages into the centres, and in turn this also means that slowly but steadily the Faroese population concentrates in and around the centres.
In the 1990s the old national policy of developing the villages (Bygdamenning) was abandoned, and instead the government started a process of regional development (Økismenning).
The term "region" referred to the large islands of the Faroes.
Nevertheless the government was not able to press through the structural reform of merging the small rural municipalities in order to create sustainable, decentralized entities that could drive forward the regional development.
As the regional development has been difficult on the administrative level, the government has instead made heavy investments in infrastructure, interconnecting the regions.
Altogether it becomes less meaningful to perceive the Faroes as a society based on various islands and regions.
The huge investments in roads, bridges and sub-sea tunnels (see also Transportation in the Faroe Islands) have tied together the islands, creating a coherent economic and cultural sphere that covers almost 90% of the entire population.
From this perspective it is reasonable to perceive the Faroes as a dispersed city or even to refer to it as the Faroese Network City.[citation needed] .
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Religion
According to Færeyinga Saga, Sigmundur Brestisson brought Christianity to the islands in 999.
However, archaeology from a site in Leirvík suggests that Celtic Christianity may have arrived 150 years earlier, or more.[citation needed] The Faroe Islands' church Reformation was completed on 1 January 1540.
According to official statistics from 2002, 84.1% of the Faroese population are members of the state church, the Faroese People's Church (Fólkakirkjan), a form of Lutheranism.
Faroese members of the clergy who have had historical importance include V.
U.
Hammershaimb (1819-1909), Frederik Petersen (1853-1917) and, perhaps most significantly, Jákup Dahl (1878-1944), who had a great influence in making sure that the Faroese language was spoken in the church instead of Danish.
In the late 1820s, the Christian Evangelical religious movement, the Plymouth Brethren, was established in England.
In 1865, a member of this movement, William Gibson Sloan, travelled to the Faroes from Shetland.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, the Faroese Plymouth Brethren numbered thirty.
Today, approximately 10% of the Faroese population are members of the Open Brethren community (Brøðrasamkoman).
About 5% belong to other Christian churches, such as the Adventists, who operate a private school in Tórshavn.
Jehovah's Witnesses also number four congregations (approximately 80 to 100 members).
The Roman Catholic congregation comprises approximately 170 members.
The municipality of Tórshavn operates their old Franciscan school.
There are also around fifteen Bahá'ís who meet at four different places.
Unlike Denmark with Forn Sidr, the Faroes have no organized Ásatrú community, but there is a fair share of pagan lore, song and ritual performed in individuals' houses or in public spaces rather than in church buildings.
The best known church buildings in the Faroe Islands include St.
Olafs Church and the Magnus Cathedral in Kirkjubøur; the Vesturkirkjan and the Maria Church, both of which are situated in Tórshavn; the church of Fámjin; the octagonal church in Haldarsvík; Christianskirkjan in Klaksvík and also the two pictured here.
In 1948, Victor Danielsen (Plymouth Brethren) completed the first Bible translation.
It was translated into Faroese from different modern languages.
Jacob Dahl and Kristian Osvald Viderø (Fólkakirkjan) completed the second translation in 1961.
The latter was translated from the original Biblical languages (Hebrew, Greek, etc.) into Faroese.
Source: CIA Factbook, Wikipedia
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