Our Tape Archive is made up of wax cylinders, reel tapes and cassettes.
The recordings include resources on folklore, popular beliefs and customs. Furthermore the archives contain ballad chanting, singing, accounts of work, place names and other materials.

There are also other philological resources in the tape archives, such as material for researching literature, narrative art, local dialects, place names, vocabulary and sayings.

Professor Mortan Nolsøe, 1924-87, founded the collection with the tapes he had compiled before starting work at the Faculty of Faroese Language and Literature. He continued collecting throughout his time at the Faculty and had other collections handed over to the Faculty. These include all the tapes with Faroese recordings in the Danish Folklore Archives. Subsequently, all the tapes DR, Danish Broadcasting Corporation, had with Faroese programmes were added to our collection.

Recently place names were gathered and recorded throughout the Faroes when the map of the Faroes was reedited. People from around the country have also supplied tapes, which they recorded themselves, and we continue to receive materials.

The Tape Archive contains roughly 2,100 reel tapes and around 100 cassettes. The wax cylinders have all been recorded to tape. Our reel tapes average one hour of recording. All tapes are digitally registered as they are recorded and the content categorized by topic. The recordings represent most local Faroese dialects and the efforts to register them by village have been completed.

A large number of tapes have been recorded and work continues in 2012.