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The family is like a forest, when you are outside it is dense, when you're inside you see that each tree has its place. – African Proverb Family ties make Faroese women Europe's top baby makers. BLOG 1: https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-faroe-islands-childrens-world-in.html BLOG 2: https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-adopted-children-of-faroe-islands.html |
The Faroe Islands have one of the highest fertility rate in Europe with an average of 2.1 per woman. Even though their fertility rate has gone down in recent years, they are still the highest in Europe and they also have a high international adoption rate, where children from about 77 countries are adopted. However, in the turn of the tide: in 2025, their fertility rate came back to 2.1 per woman after a two-year rise.
In my two previous post in 2024 – one was called ‘THE FAROE ISLANDS: CHILDREN’S WORLD IN EUROPE’, I blogged about how the Faroe Islands have a high fertility rate in Europe and in the second blog, I post about how the country has a high international adoption rate. As for this blog post, I will post two articles on the Faroe Islands on their aging population and the return of their high fertility rate before giving my thoughts.
How the Faroe Islands reversed the brain drain of an ageing population
The small community found a big answer to an ageing population crisis
Writer
There’s a question that sooner or later confronts those who grow up in a small community: do I stay, or do I go? The overwhelming number of people across Europe that stump for the latter are leaving large swaths of some countries completely hollowed out. Latvia has lost a third of its population in three decades, Bulgaria is on track to lose a fifth of its people by 2050 and some areas in the Scottish Highlands are now emptier than Lapland. It’s a challenge that’s far easier to acknowledge than to address: how do you create an environment that doesn’t just keep people in it but draws back those who have left? The Faroe Islands, a self-governing Danish territory of 18 islands and about 55,000 people in the North Atlantic, could provide an answer.
Two decades ago, the islands were grappling with steady depopulation. Between 2004 and 2013, more than 2,700 residents under the age of 40 left the Faroes. As in so many peripheral regions, young people sought education and opportunity abroad without reason to return. Yet, by 2022, that trend had not only reversed – but swung back dramatically. The number of under-40s rose by 3,000 in just nine years, a youth boom that has left the Faroes with a median age of 37.1, making it demographically younger than any country in the EU.
Nell Frizzell with
Faroese women ahead of their knitting festival. Photograph: Bardur Eklund [PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/09/knitting-skills-knitwear-faroe-islands-festival-sweaters-knit]
So how did they do it? The first step was to enhance connectivity. Building world-class undersea tunnels has made opportunity a two-way street. The Faroese capital, Tórshavn, is now within easy commuting distance of the archipelago’s 17 inhabited islands and smaller villages are now accessible to new residents and visitors, breathing life and money into once-isolated communities. Alongside this, record-breaking 5G speeds – among the fastest in Europe – make remote working feasible even from the most blustery headland.
Coupled with ambitious pro-family funding – a year of paid leave, heavily subsidised childcare and affordable housing – the Faroes have substantially eased the economic pressures that often drive people to bigger foreign cities.
The final element, which is less tangible but equally crucial, is a cultural shift. The islands have a self-assurance that has allowed them to step out of the Danish shadow. While local pride has always been strong – more than 90 per cent of residents speak Faroese as a first language – it’s now more visible. On shop shelves and in pubs, local beer, whisky and even soft drinks regularly outsell global brands. When citizens see ambitious infrastructure being built, generous support for families and investment in local enterprise, they want in.
The Faroes’ transformation is remarkable but it raises questions about whether such success can be replicated. Its circumstances are hard to ignore: it’s small, socially cohesive and wealthy, with a GDP per capita of €61,800 (double the EU average). The economy also leans heavily on fishing rights and subsidies from Denmark, providing access to the EU’s markets and research funding. But these are advantages, not magic bullets. Young Faroese once packed their bags for the same reasons as their European peers: a shortage of opportunity.
Perhaps the Faroes’ most striking marker of success is that it makes no attempt to keep its young people at home. Instead, they’re encouraged to gain experience abroad, confident that most will return. For communities everywhere, the question isn’t whether they can replicate the Faroese model. It’s how they can apply its core principle: creating a place so strong in identity and opportunity that it trusts its people to return once they’ve exercised their wanderlust.
Joseph Phelan is a freelance journalist based in London. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://monocle.com/affairs/society/faroe-islands-population-reverse/
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Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table. – Psalm 128 vs 3 (ESV) Faroe Islander Gunnhild Helmsdal (L) is awaiting the birth of her fourth child which will bring her family up to seven, including her husband and his daughter from a previous relationship (June 19, 2018) BLOG 1: https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-faroe-islands-childrens-world-in.html BLOG 2: https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-adopted-children-of-faroe-islands.html |
Faroe Islands fertility rate hits 2.1 in 2025 after two-year rise
Date: 12. Apr 2026
Author: Edmund Jacobsen
The fertility rate in the Faroe Islands rose to 2.1 children per woman in 2025, returning to the key replacement level after two years of growth, according to new data from Hagstova Føroya.
The figure marks a clear increase from 1.9 in 2024 and follows a sharp decline in earlier years, when the rate fell below 2.0 for the first time in 2023.
Birth numbers drive an increase
A total of 642 children were born in 2025, up by 50 compared with 2024.
The rise in the fertility rate is mainly linked to more births rather than changes in the number of women of childbearing age, which remained broadly stable.
Growth is strongest among first-time mothers
The increase was strongest among women having their first child.
Around one-third of all births in 2025 were first children. A similar share were second children. In 2024, first births accounted for 29%, while second births made up 37%.
Long-term shift in age patterns
Fertility has changed over time across age groups.
Rates among women under 30 have fallen sharply compared with earlier decades. In contrast, fertility among women over 30 has increased.
This shift is reflected in the average age of mothers, which has risen from about 27 years in 1985 to just over 31 years in 2025.
The level of 2.1 children per woman is widely seen as the threshold for maintaining population size without migration.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://faroefocus.wordpress.com/2026/04/12/faroe-islands-fertility-rate-hits-2-1-in-2025-after-two-year-rise/
KINDERWELT LINKS:
KINDERWELT LINKS:
KINDERWELT LINKS:
A woman should be home with the children, building that home and making sure there's a secure family atmosphere. - Mel Gibson
PRAYING FOR MORE BABIES - Endorsing EveryLife
https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2026/07/praying-for-more-babies-endorsing.html
“Children are a blessing; they are a kind of a wealth. God says in the Scriptures that children will bless you even if they don’t feel like a blessing immediately. And we really believe that and our experience has confirmed it.” - Dr. Catherine Pakaluk
Täuferische Mutterschaft – The God who sees by Natasha Sweazy
https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2026/03/tauferische-mutterschaft-god-who-sees.html
“I
think that bringing children into the world is like bringing holiness into the
world. Like every soul has a mission that can only be fulfilled by that
individual and we don’t know what that individual’s mission is and even what
our own mission is. We’re all figuring it out as we go. And I think, yes, it is
something that I do for God in a sense of the work component.”
― Catherine Pakaluk, Hannah's
Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth
BOOK REVIEW: Hannah's Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth by Catherine Pakaluk
https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2025/11/book-review-hannahs-children-women.html
“The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other.” - Mario Puzo
JOHN TROYER MEMORIAL REPORT 2025
https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2025/10/john-troyer-memorial-report-2025.html
“A father’s holy life is a rich legacy for his sons.” - Charles Spurgeon
JOHN TROYER MEMORIAL AWARD
https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2025/07/john-troyer-memorial-award.html
You never soar so high as when you stoop down to help a child or an animal. – Jewish Proverb
BABYLAND IN ISRAEL – ISRAEL’S BABY BOOM
https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2026/03/babyland-in-israel-israels-baby-boom.html
The Hebrew phrase for "children are a joy" is "ילדים הם שמחה" (yeldim hem simcha). "ילדים" (yeldim) means "children", and "שמחה" (simcha) means "joy" or "gladness". Israel is the only OECD countries that have the highest fertility rate of 2.91 per woman.
From September 2023 to September 2024, about 183,000 babies were born in Israel, meaning that more than 400 babies were born per day. There was a similar case in 2022, in its annual Amish population study, the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College estimates that 1,450 Amish babies were born in Lancaster County last year. Only 145 Amish of all ages died. That population increase of 1,305 brought the total number of Amish living here to 44,315. There were more Amish births than deaths in that state.
https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2024/12/israels-baby-boom-2024-children-are-joy.html
15 And
he blessed Joseph and said, “The God before whom my fathers Abraham and
Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day,
16 the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the boys; and in
them let my name be carried on, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac;
and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.” - Genesis
48:15-16 (ESV)
ISRAEL’S CHILDREN WORLD: THE ULTRA-ORTHODOX JEWS ON THE RISE
https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2025/06/israels-children-world-ultra-orthodox.html
“Our children are the only treasures we can take to heaven.”
AMISH BABY BOOM PART 1 – PROVERBS ABOUT CHILDREN
https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2024/10/amish-baby-boom-part-1-proverbs-about.html
Who takes the child by the hand, takes the mother by the heart. – Danish Proverb
AMISH BABY BOOM PART 2 - CANADIAN AMISH ON THE RISE
https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2025/07/amish-baby-boom-part-2-canadian-amish.html
11 And she vowed a vow and said, “O Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.” – I Samuel 1:11 (ESV)
Our home joys are the most delightful earth affords, and the joy of parents in their children is the most holy joy of humanity. - Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi
https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2025/05/2025-mothers-day-sermons.html
Honor the house in which you were born, the tree that gave you shade, and the village where you were raised. – Swedish Proverb
THE FAROE ISLANDS: CHILDREN’S WORLD IN EUROPE
https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-faroe-islands-childrens-world-in.html
Children are a poor man’s wealth. – Danish Proverb
THE ADOPTED CHILDREN OF THE FAROE ISLANDS
https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-adopted-children-of-faroe-islands.html
“Children are arrows in a quiver, and they are to be trained as missionaries and shot at the Devil.” — Jim Elliot
MEET CHARLTON AND NATASHA SWEAZY AND THEIR 11 CHILDREN
https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2026/01/meet-charlton-and-natasha-sweazy-and.html
Children are like tiny flowers: They are varied and need care, but each is beautiful alone and glorious when seen in the community of peers. - Friedrich Frobel
Im Dutzend billiger (Cheaper By the Dozen) – Meet Pastor Alex Probst and Kim with their children
https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2026/02/im-dutzend-billiger-cheaper-by-dozen.html
Beyond 2050 the world population may start to decrease if women across the world will have, on average, less than 2 children. But that decrease will be slow. - Hans Rosling
BIRTHGAP – CHILDLESS WORLD DOCUMENTARY FILM
https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2025/09/birthgap-childless-world-documentary.html
