British Faroes

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Deleted member 109224

During WW2, British soldiers were fairly well-liked in the Faroe Islands and known for giving out chocolates to locals.

What if the Faroe Islanders after the war opted to join the United Kingdom?
 

Jürgen

Jackson Lennock said:
During WW2, British soldiers were fairly well-liked in the Faroe Islands and known for giving out chocolates to locals.

What if the Faroe Islanders after the war opted to join the United Kingdom?
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You mean what if UK had annexed territory from a friendly neighbour. Well the Danish-British relationship would have been much cooler, expect Denmark to join EEC earlier. As for the Faroes they would have had to deal with British mismanagement of fringe areas of the U.K. rather than the autonomy they got from the Danish state after the War.
 

sendô

More likely they'd become a Crown Dependency like the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands, or British Overseas Territories.
 
Simon

Simon

The problem is that IIRC from previous threads the Faroe Islanders were, linguistically at least, closer to Denmark than the Greenlanders were, also being generally more conservative and religiously observant as well. Even without those factors I just can't see a few squaddies handing out some bars of Cadburys during the war as being swaying enough as to suddenly make people want to join the UK.

Realistically if you want the Faroe Islands to become a part of the UK then I'd say that you need to look to it occurring before 1900, the tidying up after the Napoleonic Wars being the latest. Whether they'd join the UK proper or become a Crown dependency like the Channel Islands is an interesting idea, if the latter then I do have to wonder if it might not have given the Shetland Islanders ideas in the future.
 

Jürgen

Lindseyman said:
Surely they'd become part of Scotland like the Orkneys and Shetlands?
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You mean a depopulated wasteland? Because Faroe have bigger population than the those two island together, even through it have a worse climate, smaller historical population and it also lack oil.
 

Hvalrossen

If somehow the Faroes became annexed by Britain, i think the development of the islands would be different from OTL. For one the islands would not be part of any future nordic integration initiatives, promting some of the population to instead of emigrating to Denmark to instead emigrate to mainland Britain. I doubt the Faroes would get the same autonomy and development assitance from the British govorment as they got from the Danish. This might lead to greater emigration from Faroes than OTL. At the same time there would be some migration of English speakers into the Faroes, combined with the dominace of English would lead to the gradual out phasing of the Faroese language in favor of English. The future of the Faroese is probably better staying with Denmark or going independant like Iceland did. I have a thread discussing the potential of a independant Faroes.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/ahc-independent-fareo-islands.440245/
 

Redbeard

Banned
Jürgen said:
You mean what if UK had annexed territory from a friendly neighbour. Well the Danish-British relationship would have been much cooler, expect Denmark to join EEC earlier. As for the Faroes they would have had to deal with British mismanagement of fringe areas of the U.K. rather than the autonomy they got from the Danish state after the War.
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No, we should have deeply thanked the British for relieving us from a lot of expenses and Faroean infantile pretentiousness.
 

NOMISYRRUC

Zheng He said:
Like the Falklands but closer?
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The Isle of Mann is a better comparison because of its proximity to the UK and its Nordic roots. Though the Isle of Mann is a Crown Dependency rather than a Crown Colony/Overseas Territory.

Another possibility is that they would be an Associated State like some of the smaller British West Indian colonies were between the 1960s and becoming fully independent in the 1970s and 1980s.
 

Jürgen

Redbeard said:
No, we should have deeply thanked the British for relieving us from a lot of expenses and Faroean infantile pretentiousness.
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:biggrin:

Oh yes, there's something about it. Greenland gives Denmark some foreign policy weight, Faroe gives Denmark nothing. But I suspect if the British had taken them from us, we would be more angry about their loss. It's funny how Danes who remember the 90ties often have some degree of hostility toward Faroe.
 
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