If you look at a map, it would appear obvious that the neighboring Norse folks settled both Iceland and the Faroe Islands. After all, Norway is the closest country to Iceland at around 900 miles, while it is also the nearest neighbor to the Faroe Islands — an archipelago of 18 islands in the North Atlantic — at around 350 miles.
However, new evidence says the truth is more complicated. A genetic analysis shows that Icelandic people come from a relatively similar gene pool, while residents of the Faroe Islands come from both a more diverse and far-flung one, according to a report in Frontiers in Genetics.
“Scientists have long assumed that the Faroe Islands and Iceland were both settled by similar Norse people,” Christopher Tillquist, an associate professor at the University of Louisville in Kentucky and the lead author of the study said in a press release. “Yet our novel analysis has shown that these islands were founded by men from different gene pools within Scandinavia. They have separate genetic signatures that persist to this day.”
