The Faroese ship-captain Páll Nolsøe (1766–1808, also known as Nólsoyar Páll) wrote ballads between 1800-08 which reflected on Faroese life. His most famous poem is the Fuglakvæði (“The bird ballad”, 1807), which pictures Danish government officials and merchants as birds of prey, the Faroese as domestic birds, and himself as the oystercatcher defending the Faroese. On the basis of this ballad, the oystercatcher became the national bird of the Faroe Islands, and Nólsoyar Páll has become an iconic figure. His disappearance in 1808, together with his ship and crew, only strengthened his mythical appeal; it is a matter of discussion whether he was shipwrecked, or shot by a Danish or a foreign warship.

He wrote in the genre called táttur, a literary ballad imitating the form, language, and spirit of the traditional ballad but addressing topical issues and themes. The genre is indigenous to the Faroer and little known elswhere in the Nordic world. The ballad form generally was, of course, popular in Romantic literature.

Claus Lund (1739–1815), who after studies in Copenhagen returned to the Faroes in 1765, published some 26 poems in Danish magazines in the 1790s; his Sigmund Tog mod Haralds Jernhoved (“Sigmund received Harald’s iron head”), on a hero-figure from the Faroe Saga, was printed in 1794. In 1850 Alexander Weyhe (1825–1870) published a long poem in Denmark called Førjaríman (“The Faroese poem”) celebrating the Faroese and the Faroe Islands.

Faroese patriotic verse increased in volume and scale in the 1870s in the environment of the University of Copenhagen. Within Denmark, a Romantic tradition of national verse had been influential from the 1840s onwards, and Faroese students met Norwegian and Icelandic students and cultural nationalists at the University in Copenhagen. A “Faroese Union” was formed in 1881, which in 1892 published the Føriskar vysur irktar o sungnar äv Føringafelänum y Kjøpinhavn (“Faroese songs written and sung by the Faroese Union in Copenhagen”); themes included: longing for the Faroese homeland, the Faroese landscape, the language and its poor standing, idyllic evocations of rural life, and evocations of a bygone golden age when the Faroe Islands were a free country. Many of these songs were written by important Faroese cultural nationalists such as Fríðrikur Petersen (1853–1917), author of the first national anthem, Eg oyggjar veit (“Of islands I know”, 1877), and later an anti-separatist clergyman-politician. (Petersen’s opposition to Faroese independence from Denmark may have lead to the adoption of a different national anthem, Tú altfagra land mitt, “My fairest land”, with lyrics by Símun av Skarði (1872–1942).

In 1888 the Faroese Union was also founded within the Faroe Islands, at a meeting in the courthouse of Tórshavn later termed “The Christmas Meeting”. At that meeting, a young politician of the Sjálvstýrisflokkurin (Autonomous Party), Jóannes Patursson (1866–1946), announced a nationalist campaign with his poem Nú er tann stundin komin til handa (“Now is the time”), calling for a reinstatement of the authentic Faroese language and for a fight against foreign culture and foreign rule.