In earlier works on Faroese, the authors frequently mention dialectal differences. Some of them also try to divide the Faroes into dialect areas and describe the characteristics of the various dialects. This is especially true of Hammershaimb and Jakobsen, who emphasize in the introduction to their works that the dialectal differences are pretty much restricted to phonological variation and the differences in the inflectional system only show up in the inflection of the personal pronouns.

This paper first investigates what the existing linguistic descriptions of 19th century Faroese actually say about inflectional differences in Faroese. It seems that the differences described are in fact larger than, say, Hammershaimb’s introduction indicates. The paper first briefly describes how earlier authors draw the isoglosses between Faroese dialects. Then the inflectional differences pointed out in earlier linguistic descriptions are discussed and the variations compared to Modern Faroese.

The topics discussed include the merger of the vowels /i/ and /u/ in inflectional endings, various kinds of analogical changes and merger in the nominative and accusative plural in masculine words, new plural endings in the nominative and accusative in the neuter ija- and an-stems, and the endings of the dative singular. There is also a separate discussion of the complex changes of the inflection of the personal pronouns from Old Norse to Modern Faroese. Considerable dialectal differences are involved here, e.g. with respect to the distinction between dual and plural and various analogical changes in the inflection.

The inflection of the demonstrative pronoun tann is also discussed in this context. Finally, changes in the verbal inflection are pointed out and several kinds of simplifications and analogical changes discussed. The loss of the subjunctive is mentioned but the main emphasis is on changes in the person and number inflection. The paper also mentions other kinds of inflectional differences that have not been discussed in linguistic descriptions or textbooks so far but show up in the modern language and seem to indicate tendencies towards further simplification of the Farroese inflectional system.