Organisation profile

Research at Føroymálsdeildin is in the subjects: Faroese language, Faroese literature, Folkloristics and Creative writing/Music.

The Language-linguistic-program: Presently focuses on modern Faroese syntax, morphology, phonology, sociolinguistics (included dialectology), language variation and change and language contact/bilingualism; additionally, there is research of proper names in the history of Faroese.

The Literature-program (including Folkloristics and the Art-program): The literary research comprises Faroese literary history, studies of post-colonialism, travel-writings, gender, ecocritics and studies in literary criticism. Folkloristics-research includes contemporary transmission of Faroese Ballad tradition/chain dance and the Faroese efforts to safeguard traditions as “Intangible Cultural Heritage”. In the Art-program focus is mainly on the interplay between words and art in general.

Researchers produced 67 outputs in 2020, and they participate in different networks and research-projects and conferences.

Projects: Researchers that are affiliated with the Language/linguistic program are responsible for updating the following four dictionaries: Faroese Dictionary (Føroysk orðabók), Faroese-Danish Dictionary (Føroysk-donsk orðabók), Danish-Faroese Dictionary (Donsk-føroysk orðabók) and Dictionary of Idioms (Steinur brestur fyri mannatungu). Presently there is a project on L1 Acquisition that includes recordings of four children during a time-period of three years (from 9 months to 3 years). A project on Multilingualism on the Faroe Islands starts in January 2022, and the project Faroese Phonetics and Phonology has been up and running from January 2020 to June 2024. In addition to this, there is the project Faroese Language History (Føroysk málsøga). There is an also an Inter-Nordic/American projects on Ditransitives in Insluar Scandinavian.

Researchers affiliated with the literature program work on Faroese Literature History (Føroysk bókmentasøga), which is supposed to finish soon. Finished projects are Heima er ikki til (Home does not exist). Research on the oral transmitted tradition contain the PhD-project : “Hand in hand” - Transmitting Faroese Ballad Tradition in modern society”, that will finish in 2022.   

Network: Researchers participate in different networks, like the work on a Spell-Checker, the development of an Automatic Speech Recognition and for example Ballads Across Borders.  

PhD-projects. Currently there are two PhD-projects at Føroyamálsdeildin. One is “Hand in hand” - Transmitting Faroese Ballad Tradition in modern society and the other is on Devoicing of Sonorants and Aspiration (starts in January 2022).

Collections: The following four collections are at FMD: Spoken Data Collection (Bandasavnið); Collection of Placenames (Staðarnavnasavnið); Lexicographic Word-Collection (Seðlasavnið), and Collection of Manuscripts (Handritasavnið).  More information is found here: https://www.setur.fo/fo/setrid/almennar-taenastur-og-grunnar/sovn/.

Together with the Faculty of Education, staff at the Faculty have the course: Faroese as a Second Language.

Summer-courses are held at FMD, one for international students of linguistic, Germanic or Nordic, and one for Nordic students of the Scandinavian languages.