"Tórshavn - Europes Forgotten Capital " a Tórshavn Travel Page by TomFoolery

Ask someone to name a European capitals, and it's unlikely you'll be offered Tórshavn as an answer. To me, this massively adds to the appeal of the place - most people couldn't even tell you what the capital of the Faroe Islands is, let alone say they've been. I'll try and share some of my experiences in this page.

I've seen Tórshavn called the smallest capital in the world by a number of different sources. I don't think this can be true, and certainly I've heard this claim from many other capital cities (Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands being one).
However it's certainly true to say it's small by most capitals standards. Just 18,000 people live here, mind you thats about a third of the whole population of the Faroes.

Pronunciation

I'd be interested to hear a locals view on this. I never quite mastered how to actually pronounce "Tórshavn", I think it's something like "Toe-Ush-Hown". However everyone understood what I meant if I said "Tour's Harven". I guess it's one of those things whereby a city changes it's name and pronunciation in a foreign language, like "Paree" becoming "Paris". Or something.

The name Tórshavn literally means "Thors Harbour", named after the Norse god of thunder.

The area called Tórshavn today encompasses 3 villages (or Bygd in Faroese) - Hoyvík, Tórshavn and Argir.