It is now the largest collection of documents in the country and has acquired educational and research functions.
In 1932, the Danish government responded to the request of Faroese politicians and administrators to stop archiving documents in Denmark rather than in the Faroes.
[1] In 2017 Faroese National Heritage (Faroese: Søvn Landsins) was dissolved and the National Archives of the Faroe Islands became an independent institution directly under the Ministry of Culture.
The archives amount to 4.5 kilometres (2.8 mi) of shelved materials in two locations.
Digitisation is a high priority; online access is also available to visitors to the National Archives, and in 2007 a project began to create an electronic database of genealogical data on the inhabitants of the islands, drawing on records from the past 200 years.