The Rise of Faroese Separatism: Danish-Faroese relations from 1906-1925 and the radicalization of the national- and home rule question

Faroese national and political awareness developed within a greater Nordic context. The Icelandic struggle for independence from Denmark, granted in 1918, which originated in Icelandic political demands in the 1830ies, had at the turn of the century, significant influence on the leading Faroese homerule supporters-especially on the homerule leader Jóannes Patursson-who wanted extended political power to the Løgting. There were, however significant differences. While the Icelanders managed to avoid the implementationof the Danish constitutionin Iceland already in 1851, the Danish constitution was implemented in the Faroe Islands in 1850 without resistance (Thorsteinsson 1990). At the same time, Norway, which according the Treaty of Kiel in 1814 became part of the Swedish King’s territories and lost the North Atlantic territories Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands to the Danish King, gained full independence from Sweden in 1905. Thisdevelopment also influenced the Faroese home rule supporters and, more importantly, probably laid the foundation for a conflict between Denmark and Norway on the rights to the former Norwegian territoriesin the North Atlantic.The events in 1814 were not noted in the Faroe Islands until much later. However, when Norwegian nationalists in the aftermath of the important events in 1905 put forward demands against Denmark regarding the former Norwegian territories in the North Atlantic, the emerging Faroese political parties reluctantly became part of a Danish, and later a broad Danish-Norwegian political discourse (Sølvará 2014).The Norwegian argument was that Norway had not recognized the Treaty of Kiel, which was an agreement signed by the Danish and Swedish Kings(e.g. Gjelsvik 1923). The main hypothesis in my recent work is that this transnational Danish-Nordic context and discourse, which the new political parties in the Faroe Islands increasingly became part of in the period 1906-1925, influenced the development of local Faroese politics. Subsequently, this affected the relationship between the Faroe Islands and Denmark in such a way that the home rule movement, which originated in 1906 with good relations with the Danish state authorities, became increasingly radicalized and hostile against the Danish state authorities. It is, of course, necessary to distinguish between text (historical sources) and context, but in this research it has also been essential to distinguish between real context and the political discourse. These levels are not, of course, independent of each other, but each level can add completely new and important - even contradictory -aspects to the original tangible context.