Language Policy of the University of the Faroe Islands

The University of the Faroe Islands is the primary higher education and researchinstitutionin the Faroe Islands, the nation’s only university and its foremost knowledge centre.

The University undertakes research and research-based teaching at a high international level, providing forsynergy between research and teaching to serve the evolving needs and priorities of the Faroes and their wider region.

Faroese is the official language of the Faroes. The Faroese community, which is largely responsible for resourcing the University, prioritizes its language in a wide range of areas including schools, public administration, mass media and in cultural institutions.

Reflecting this, the University is the only university in the world with an obligation to conduct research-based teaching in Faroese.

The Faroese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Culture presented a report in 2007 about language policy. A recommendation was that the University should adopt a language policy to support and strengthen the position of the Faroese language across all fields of higher education and research in the Faroe Islands.

More recently, The University of the Faroe Islands, Strategic Plan 2020-24 has acknowledged the “special responsibility” of the University in “preserving and developing the Faroese language”.

The Plan highlightsthat this responsibility “is of profound importance for the whole society, in terms of social inclusion, democracy and development, and it is one which the University will take seriously at all times”.

To support this, the Strategic Plan indicates that the University will support “the usability and usage of the Faroese Language”, and identifies the following commitments and priorities:

• To develop and implement a clear language policy and be a language role model amongst universities in similar sized countries and territories with their own languages.

• To promote the use and development of Faroese academic language, including precise scientific terminology, in all disciplines, and to support the publication of high-quality academic work in Faroese.

• To support the teaching of the Faroese language at all levels of education and its use and development in wider society, and to seek to do so also amongst Faroese people living abroad.

• To seek to contribute to improving the teaching of Faroese to non-native speakers, and particularly for those whose native language is other than a Scandinavianlanguage.

Read the Language Policy of the University of the Faroe Islands here.