An unknown Icelandic author preserves the Faroe Islands’ founding saga

Story: 1210 C.E.  |  Last updated: January 1, 1210

Sometime in the early 13th century C.E., an anonymous writer in Iceland set down one of the most remote and dramatic stories in all of Norse literature — the saga of how a scattered Atlantic archipelago became Christian, became Norwegian, and became, in some essential way, itself.

What the evidence shows

• Færeyinga Saga: The text was composed in Iceland shortly after 1200 C.E., likely around 1210 C.E., though the precise date and the author’s identity remain unknown.
• Original manuscript: No original copy survives — the saga is preserved through passages copied into two major later manuscripts, Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta and the Flateyjarbók.
• Faroe Islands history: The saga records the conversion of the Faroe Islands to Christianity and their incorporation into the Norwegian kingdom, events spanning roughly the late 10th to mid-11th centuries C.E.

A story written at the edge of the known world

The Faroe Islands sit in the North Atlantic halfway between Norway and Iceland — 18 small islands of volcanic rock, grass, and wind. By 1210 C.E., they had been settled for roughly three centuries and had converted to Christianity within living memory of the saga’s earliest characters. Someone in Iceland decided this story needed to be written down.

That decision mattered enormously. The Faroe Islands had no literary tradition of their own at this point. Without this Icelandic author — whose name we will never know — the political and cultural drama of the islands’ founding generation might have been lost entirely.

The saga centers on a narrative structure common to Old Norse literature: competing claims to land and power, cycles of vengeance, and the long arc of a society moving from one religious order to another. Its central figure, Þrándr Þorbjarnarson — known in Modern Faroese as Tróndur í Gøtu — is one of the more psychologically complex characters in the saga tradition. He is the antagonist, but also the survivor. He manipulates, schemes, and outlasts nearly everyone around him.

The conversion story and what it meant

At the heart of Færeyinga Saga is the Christianization of the Faroe Islands, which the text frames as coming through the direct intervention of Olaf Tryggvason, the Norwegian king who converted around 995 C.E. and immediately set about extending that conversion to Norway’s Atlantic territories.

Sigmundr Brestisson, a warrior who had risen from slavery to become one of the most powerful men in the islands, becomes Olaf’s instrument. His attempt to introduce Christianity at the Tórshavn þing — the island assembly — is defeated by Þrándr, who rallies the farmers against him. Sigmundr eventually succeeds only by capturing Þrándr at night and forcing him to convert under threat of death. The scene is characteristic of how saga literature handles religious change: not as a peaceful awakening, but as a struggle with real losers.

Sigmundr himself does not survive long. He is eventually driven into the sea by Þrándr’s men, swims until exhausted toward another island, makes it to shore, and is then murdered by a local farmer who wants his gold ring. It is an anticlimactic, inglorious death for the story’s closest thing to a hero — and the saga does not look away from it.

A first settler with a Gaelic name

One of the most quietly remarkable details in the saga is its account of the first settler of the Faroe Islands. His name is Grímr Kamban — a Norse first name paired with a Gaelic surname. This combination strongly suggests he came not from Norway directly, but from Norse-Gaelic settlements in Scotland or Ireland.

This detail, preserved in the version found in Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, aligns with the writings of the Irish monk Dicuil, who recorded knowledge of islands in the far North Atlantic around 825 C.E. It is a small but important reminder that the settlement of the North Atlantic was not a purely Scandinavian affair. The people who first pushed into these waters came from hybrid communities, carrying knowledge from multiple traditions.

It also points to something the saga does not fully develop: that the Faroe Islands, before Norse settlement, may have been known to Irish monks and hermits seeking solitude at the edge of the world. Archaeological evidence of pre-Viking habitation continues to be examined by researchers working in the islands.

Lasting impact

The saga’s survival — even in fragmentary, copied form — has made it the foundational text of Faroese cultural identity. When the Faroe Islands began developing their own written literary tradition in the 19th and 20th centuries C.E., Færeyinga Saga was already there as an anchor. The modern Faroese language itself, spoken today by roughly 75,000 people worldwide, carries names and place-names that echo directly through the saga’s pages.

Tórshavn, the capital of the Faroe Islands, takes its name from the þing at which so many of the saga’s key moments play out. Gøta, the home of Þrándr, is still a town on the island of Eysturoy. The geography of the saga is the geography of a living place.

Beyond the Faroes, the saga contributes to the broader record of Norse Atlantic expansion — one of the most ambitious sequences of open-ocean settlement in pre-modern history. It documents political structures, legal customs, and social dynamics of a North Atlantic community that left few other written records from this period.

Blindspots and limits

The saga was written at least two centuries after the events it describes, and the original manuscript no longer exists — what survives are later copies embedded in other works, each with its own editorial choices and inconsistencies. The saga tells the story largely through the lens of chieftains and warriors; the lives of ordinary Faroese farmers, women, and the enslaved people mentioned briefly in the text are almost entirely absent. The account of Christianization reflects a Norwegian royal perspective on a process that local communities likely experienced very differently.

Read more

For more on this story, see: Wikipedia — Færeyinga saga

For more from Good News for Humankind, see:

• Rhinos return to Uganda’s Kidepo Valley
• Indigenous land rights: 160 million hectares recognized ahead of COP30
• The Good News for Humankind archive on the medieval era

About this article

• 🤖 This article is AI-generated, based on a framework created by Peter Schulte.
• 🌍 It aims to be inspirational but clear-eyed, accurate, and evidence-based, and grounded in care for the Earth, peace and belonging for all, and human evolution.
• 💬 Leave your notes and suggestions in the comments below — I will do my best to review and implement where appropriate.
• ✉️ One verified piece of good news, one insight from Antihero Project, every weekday morning. Subscribe free.