Accounts of folklore, cultural practices, and superstition in the Faroe Islands, by Danish topographers and foreign travel writers, date back to the 17th century. The Danish clergymen Thomas Tharnovius (1669) and Lucas Debes (1673) both mention ballads and dance. According to Debes the Faroese were rustic, traditional peasants living in superstition and primitivism – a trope that was to remain in evidence. The American travel writer James Nicoll, who visited the Faroes in 1841, gave a pastoral and idyllic interpretation of the people in their natural setting, which became enshrined in Romantic Nationalism.

In 1821 the Danish clergyman H.C. Lyngbye described wedding rituals in the Faroe Islands, at a time when folklore studies around Europe and in Scandinavia were emerging. The Danish bailiff on the Faroe Islands, Chr. Pløyen (1803–1867), wrote Grindavísan (“The whale-killing ballad”) in 1835, which he romanticized the Faroese practice of slaughtering pilot whales – a custom which has since become a national symbol of the Faroese nation.

V.U. Hammershaimb, who spent his life collecting ballads, proverbs, tales, and other forms of oral literature, gave a politically charged account of Faroese folklore in his authoritative Færøsk Antologi (“Faroese anthology”, 1891). He created a Faroese ethnotype and self-image around romanticized descriptions of ballad-singing, whale-slaughtering, and kvøldseta (convivial gatherings by the fireside where people would exchange gossip, tales, and ballads); here the influence of the Norwegian folklorist P.C. Asbjørnsen is evident.

These writings inspired a systematic collection of Faroese folklore in archives, museums, and ethnographic collections in Denmark and in the Faroes as well. A mid-19th-century Faroese farmhouse was moved to Lyngby in Denmark to the Frilandsmuseet (“Open-air National Museum”) and was opened in 1965. Faroese folklore and culture formed part of the Danish pavilions at world exhibitions and at the Koloniudstillingen samt udstilling for Island og Færøerne (“Danish exhibition of its colonies as well as Iceland and the Faroes”) display in Copenhagen in 1905. This display infuriated Icelanders, because they did not want to be on show together with Greenlanders, whom they considered racially inferior.

Folklore interest also triggered a new interest within the Faroe Islands in folk music, the preservation of medieval architecture and design, as well as the creation of a national costume with an inspiration from the Norwegian Bunad (national costume) in the early 20th century.