Culture of the Virgin Islands

Virgin Islander culture reflects the various peoples that have inhabited the present-day British Virgin Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands throughout history. Although the territories are politically separate, they maintain close cultural ties.

Like much of the English-speaking Caribbean the Virgin Islands culture is syncretic, deriving chiefly from West African, European and American influences. Though the Danish controlled the present-day U.S. Virgin Islands for many years, the very dominant language has been the Virgin Islands Creole, a creole that is English-based, since the 19th century, and the islands remain much more receptive to English-language popular culture than any other. The Dutch, the French, and the Danish also contributed elements to the islands' culture, as have immigrants from the Arab world, India, and other Caribbean islands. The single largest influence on modern Virgin Islander culture, however, comes from the Africans enslaved to work in cane fields from the 17th to the mid-19th century. These African slaves brought with them traditions from across a wide swathe of Africa, including what is now Nigeria, Senegal, both Congos (the RotC and the DRC), Gambia, and Ghana.^[1]

Virgin Islands culture continues to undergo creolization, the result of inter-Caribbean migration and cultural contact with other islands in the region, as well as the United States. Migration has altered the social landscape of both countries to the extent that in the British Virgin Islands, half of the population is of foreign (mostly Caribbean) origin and in the U.S. Virgin Islands, most native-born residents can trace their ancestry to other Caribbean islands.