The Roman historian Pliny the Elder mentions in 67 CE an island called "Scadinauia" in the sea at the edge of the world, north of Germania as it was in fact no island but the southern tip of Sweden, the province of Scania (Skåne). The word "Scandinavia" was purely geographical, referred to the peninsula of contemporary Sweden and Norway. Canada rather than the Arctic Circle is one example of the 'northern' Europe originally coming from the French name Nordic described of the cultures of five countries. Iceland´s history dates back to the first Icelandic settler, Ingolfur Arnarson who settled in Reykjavik in 874 AD. 330 B.C. – A land, Ultima Thule, in the farthest north was for the first time mentioned in geography by the Greek navigator Pytheas.
From the Viking Age of Scandinavia (800-1050CE), Sweden ruled over Finland for over 600 years, Denmark ruled over southern Sweden also for over 600 years or Sweden has ruled over eastern Denmark for the past 300 years and over Norway for nearly 500 years, while Iceland was ruled from Norway for some 200 years and then from Denmark yet another 500 years. Finland did have a Viking age and a culture very close to its western neighbours such that Kievenland was united into the Swedish kingdom.
From 600-900AD Celtic (Gaulish) settlers (Irish monks) make it to the Faroes to the colonized Faroe Islands by Norwegian settlers before the middle ages and oat seems cultivated on the Faroes since about 625, for example in Mykines-the western-most of the main 18 islands in the Faroe Islands. It is possible that Saint Brendan, an Irish monk (a Papar) sailed past the islands during his North Atlantic voyage in the 6th century. The Carvetii were a people and civitas of Roman Britain living in what is now Cumbria and Lancashire in north-west England. They are not mentioned in Ptolemy's Geography or in any other classical text, and are known only from inscriptions found in Penrith and Temple Sowerby in Cumbria. Their capital is presumed to have been Luguvalium (Carlisle), the only walled town known in the region. North Yorkshire had both a Roman and Viking history as being the capital of its kings when Deira continued to have an Anglian king. Colne came under Northumbrian and then Viking rule.
Brigantine presence in Ireland (Tipperary, Waterford, Carlow, Thomond and Ossory) on certainly a second century map by Ptolemy shows the Brigantes there, and excavations on the island of Lambay show Brigantine artefacts dating from the end of the first century AD. This might indicate a settlement of Brigantines fleeing from the final Roman occupation of their tribal territories in England. Indeed the name 'Brigantes' is translated as 'The People of Brigit'. The Brigantes dominated what is now northern England, with settlements at Catterick, Aldborough, Ilkley and York. The Picts and Brigantes are two of the oldest pre-Roman inhabitants of Great Britain. Both inhabited and battled the Romans and each other for the lands of Northern England and Scotland. (Cashel Expedition and America). Colman, son of Lenin, lived from 522 to 604 A.D. He had been a poet and bard at the court of Caomh, King of Munster at Cashel. It was St. Brendan of Clonfert that induced Colman to become Christian.
Mount Brandon became Christianised and was dedicated to St. Brendan the Navigator, a 6th century monk who is said to have sailed to America long before Columbus. The inhabitants of the tract KERRY, according to Ptolemy's chart, were in his time designated Velabri or Vellibori; the Lugadii of Irish writers, which in a general sense comprehended all the inhabitants on the southern coast, from the harbour of Waterford to the mouth of the Shannon, though sometimes confined to those of the county of Waterford. The area around Lough Allen was divided into districts ruled by local clans. Some trace Kerry from Ciar, the eldest, son of Fergus, King of Ulster.
St. Brendan saw an 'Island of Sheep' and a 'Paradise of Birds', which some say could be the Faroes with its dense bird population and sheep. The monk Fidelis who (762) journeyed along the canal then still existing, between the Nile and the Red Sea; from clerics who had lived in Iceland for six months. From about 795, Irish monks reach Iceland from the Faroes, were brought by Vikings or stayed in the Faroes. Dicul was an Irish monk and geographer from the order Flavius Theodosius II was born in the later eighth century who belonged to one of the monasteries of the Frankish Kingdom with islands near England and Scotland and wrote 814-816. Dicul at about 825 refers to the Irish monks who were banished by the Vikings. From about the beginning of the 9th century Grímur Kamban, a Norwegian emigrant who had left his country to escape the tyranny of Harald I of Norway, settled in Faroe islands and is said to be the first Norse settler in the Faroes at the place, which is named Funningur (the find). This would make the first placename a new toponym of the time. Around 900AD, the Faroese Althing is assumed to be founded. If this is true, it is the oldest existing parliament of the world. Toward the end of the century, the Færeyinga Saga started with its main story then followed by the return of Sigmundur Brestisson and the Faroese Althing adopts christianity against Trónd's resistance.
The last European country to be settled was Iceland, monks, Picts, Celts were first known to have inhabited during the eighth century left throughout the arrival of the pagan Norsemen from 870-930 AD. Icelanders call each other by their first names - not because they all know one another. Very few Icelanders have original surnames habitative or topographical although most people have a patronymic rather than a family surname Icelandic is the national language and is believed to have changed very little from the original tongue spoken by the Norse settlers with English and Danish.
The settlement period in Iceland is the Landnámabók (Book of Settlements) twelfth century according to, the first settler was Ingólfur Arnarson, a chieftan from Norway arriving with his family in 874. During the next 60 years, viking settlers from Scandinavia, bringing some Celtic (westmen) people with them, spread their homesteads over the habitable areas. In the yeare 930, at the end of the Settlement period, a constitutional law code was accepted and Alþingi established which adopted Christianity in the yeare 1000. The first bishopric was established at Skálholt in South Iceland in 1056, and a second at Hólar in the north in 1106.
In the late tenth century Eiríksfjord, Greenland was discovered and colonized by Icelanders under the leadership of Eirik the Red from Breidafjord. The Greenland colonies survived for 500 years, from 1000 to 1500. From the Book of the Icelanders by Ari the Learned (1067-1148) about Wineland, few words are brief enough as to the discovery and the early attempts that were made to settle there, although the mainland surmised to be Newfoundland. Where Greenland was named Eiriksfjord, the same kind of people had been there as lived in Wineland and whom the Greenlanders call Skrælingjar. He began settlement in the country 14 or 15 years before Christianity came to Iceland, according to what a man who himself had gone there with Eiríkur the Red told Thorkell Gellisson [Ari's uncle] in Greenland. The Landnam Saga tells of the first settlements in Iceland, and the Greenlander Saga tells of the first voyages and settlements farther west but voyagers were blown off course and reached Iceland by mistake in the 850s. It was about the last mention of sea ice near Iceland for 300 years. The first attempt at a Norse settlement there, led by a farmer, Floki Vilgerdason, and a band took place in the 860s one winter and returning home to Scandinavia, "he called the country Iceland". They established a thriving colony, in spite of the island's name.
Over the next centuries, in the warmth of the little optimum, a period of relative climatic warmth, some Norse travelers voyaged to the Mediterranean, trading with Italy and the Arab world. Others followed the river systems which moved far into continental Europe where they helped to found the state that became Russia. Norse Europe had followed the rivers south and east as far as Byzantium and among permanent colonies established, America. The next stage in the sagas of the Westvikings had not Vikings and not such founders from the decades of arrival.
During the 960s voyages brought whole families to settled areas of the islands. Marrying into a family maintaining a locative byname of its descriptive meaning was closer to Continental Celtic using the Roman given name in spelling (nickname) and upon a better farm and among many exchanges from one generation to one another, the character. There are several Norse letters of the alphabet not found in the Roman alphabet. Bynames that are prefixed to the given name could mean that they are hypenated with the given name. One follows the given name as a second word, the second is prefixed to the given name to form a compound word. The predominant conditions of region land met the band's leaders (hersir chieftain, local leader) insofar the sagas refer to "Erik the Red" or Erik, with a shipload of followers, headed west to the new country Greenland. In round terms, the Greenland colonies survived for 500 years, from 1000 to 1500. Bynames that are prefixed to the given name occured later from following the given name as a second word to its patronym or transition. From the Landnámabók, the Old Norse name considers byname and nickname together.
In 999, the Norwegian king Olav Tryggvason sent the Viking chieftain Sigmundur Brestisson along with several priests came to the Faroese in order to baptize the people and instruct them in the best of the Christian faith. The teachings were at that time Roman Catholic. The Catholic Church in the Faroe Islands goes back to the yeare 999, when Olav Tryggvason, king of Norway, sent Sigmundur Brestisson with some priests to the islands on a mission. Nobility in Norway grew out of the old chieftain (hersir) families; after the unification of the country under royal power from about 1000 A.D. the heads of those families went into royal service as the kings' representatives in the various districts; those were then called lendmenn, evolved also a service nobility with basis in service at the court; those were called skutil sveiner.
The Faroe Islands are an island group off the coast of Northern Europe, between the Norwegian Sea and the north Atlantic Ocean, about one-half of the way from Iceland to Norway or mid-way between Iceland, Norway and the Shetland Islands, Scotland.
| Borðoy, Eysturoy, Fugloy, Hestur, Kalsoy, Koltur, Kunoy, Lítla Dímun, Mykines, Nólsoy, Sandoy, Skúvoy, Stóra Dímun, Streymoy, Suðuroy, Svínoy, Vágar, Viðoy |
The old Gaelic name for the Shetland Isles (Innse Cat, "Islands of the Cat People") suggests that the original inhabitants were the same tribal group who inhabited Caithness "Cat People's Headland", and Sutherland Cataibh, "Cat People's Land". The Pictish language was replaced by Norn, which was replaced by the Northern Dialect of Scots, which in turn is being replaced by Scottish English (Doric). A phonology includes a voicing of {/b, d, g/} to {/p, t, k/ } before or between vowels. Norn belongs to the West Scandinavian group, separating it from the East Scandinavian group consisting of Swedish and Danish and belongs to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages. The features of Norn grammar were very similar to the other Scandinavian languages. There were two numbers, three genders and four cases (nominative, accusative, genitive and dative). The two main conjugations of verbs in present and past tense were also present and like almost all other Scandinavian languages.
The pre-Norse, Celtic placename element divides the placename and topography. Stóra Dímun [Danish : Net curtain Dimon , German : Large Dimun] as to speak of story is an island in the southern Faroe Islands, the island was home to several of the people in the 13th century work Faeringa Saga (Saga of the Faroe Islanders). Di-mun is the third-smallest of the 18 islands of the Faeroeer, landed by the region of Sandoy, a small island that is part of the Faroe Islands. The largest population center on the island is the village of Sandur. Norwegian colonization, beginning about a hundred years after Irish monks settled in the seventh century and developing throughout the Viking Age, making the Faroes a central part of the Viking settlements along the coasts of the North Atlantic and the Irish Sea. Shortly after the islands came under control of the Norwegian kings, one of whom being the famous King Sverre, who was brought up at the Faroese bishop’s seate at Kirkjubøur.
| The name Dímun probably comes from Kelti and means then two hills in allusion on the two neighbouring isles large Dimun and small Dimun . The settlement of Dimun was colonized in the time of Wikinger into the tenth century AD in the Faeringersaga. Sigmundur Brestisson became as 9jaehriger boy a witness of the murder at his father Brestir and his brother Beinir but abolished the Faeroeer in 999. Sigmundur was the son of Brestir and his girlfriend Cæcilia. Sigmundur married Turið Torkilsdóttir and together they had a daughter, Tóra, and four sons: Tórálvur, Steingrímur, Brandur and Heri. Sigmund whose family had flourished in the southern islands but had been almost exterminated by invaders from the northern, was sent from Norway, he had escaped, to take possession of the islands for Olaf Tryggvason, king of Norway. He introduced Christianity at the command of King Olav of Norway and though he was subsequently murdered, Norwegian supremacy was upheld, and continued till 1386. | 
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Lítla Dímun is a small island between the islands of Suðuroy and Stóra Dímun in the Faroe Islands. The island features as the site of a battle in the 13th century work Færeyinga Saga (Saga of the Faroese). The saga states that the king of Norway told Sigmund to go by ship to the Faroe Islands with orders from The King of Norway. Sigmund´s orders where clear: he was supposed to make the 18 small islands Christian, which is what he did, according to the saga. This event is believed to have taken place around 1000 and the Faroe did not establish an organised Catholic Church before around 1100, so there do appear to be some inconsistencies in the saga.
In the beginning, the language spoken in the Faroe Islands was Old West Norse, which Norwegian settlers had brought with them during the time of the landnám that began in AD 825. However, many of the settlers were descendants of Norwegian settlers in the Irish Sea. Native Norwegian settlers often married women from Norse Ireland, the Orkneys, or Shetlands before settling in the Faroe Islands and Iceland. As a result, Celtic languages influenced both Faroese and Icelandic and various bynames from Norway, Greenland and parts of North America. Mykines and Stóra & Lítla Dímun have been hypothesised to contain Celtic roots.
The Hereford map is the first known map, which mentions the Faroes - as Farei in 1280. Slavery on the Faroes is abolished by King Sverre during the late twelfth century. By 1290 the Hanseatic League is forbidden to trade with the Faroes. The beginning of the Saint Magnus Cathedral in Kirkjubøur was never finished in the fourteenth century while the prohibition against the Hanseatic League is renewed by Norway.