The Viking Colonization of the Faroe Islands

The Viking Colonization of the Faroe Islands

The Viking colonization of the Faroe Islands—long considered a straightforward story of 9th-century Norse migration—has been fundamentally reshaped by recent archaeological and genetic research. We now understand the settlement of these islands to be a complex, multi-phase process that began centuries before the arrival of the famous Viking longships.The Myth of the First SettlersIt was traditionally believed that the Faroe Islands were uninhabi…