Stranded in a stormy corner of the North Atlantic midway between Norway and Iceland, the Faroe Islands are part of """"the unknown Western Europe""""- a region of recent economic development and subnational peoples facing uncertain futures. This book tells the remarkable story of the Faroes' cultural survival since their Viking settlement in the early ninth century. At first an unruly little republic, the islands soon became tributary to Norway, dwindled into a Danish-Norwegian mercantilist fiefdom