Education in the Faroe Islands bishop of Faroe Islands; later speeches of his, show that he was taught Latin, a feature revealed by his knowledge of the Decretum Gratiani. The school in Kirkjubøur continued until the Protestant Reformation. After the reformation Latin Schools were established in the Danish kingdom, extending over today's Denmark, Iceland, Greenland, Faroe Islands, Skåneland and Gotland in Sweden, and Øsel (now Saaremaa) in Estonia. The Latin School in the Faroe Islands is first mentioned in 1547, in a letter to Thomas Koppen who got the Faroe Islands as a fief. In 1870 the Faroese Teachers School () was established to offer
Faroe Islands "sýslur" (similar to the British "shire": Norðoyar, Eysturoy, Streymoy, Vágar, Sandoy, and Suðuroy). Although today "sýsla" technically means "police district", the term is still commonly used to indicate a geographical region. In earlier times, each "sýsla" had its own assembly, the so-called "várting" ("spring assembly"). The Faroe Islands have been under Norwegian/Danish control since 1388. The 1814 Treaty of Kiel terminated the Danish-Norwegian union, and Norway came under the rule of the King of Sweden, while the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland remained Danish possessions. From ancient times the Faroe Islands had a parliament ("Løgting"), which was abolished in 1816,