Talk:Localities of Iceland

Comments

The word 'city' is not defined anywhere, it can mean a urban nuclei of any size depending on the context. Thinking about the Icelandic word "borg" as a translation af a city is not entirely correct. There is absolutely no need to split up this list of Icelandic urban nucleis, the only thing it does is to complicate matters. Besides, having a "list" of Icelandic cities containing one name is just plain dumb. --Biekko 21:44, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

No it is'nt, because there is just one city, having a list of 'Cities' that have the population of 800-2000 and have not been called cities in any language or written material except by people such as the ones that made the map i removed, who have misinterpreted icelandic maps in such a way that they thought towns to be cities.

I agree that it looks kind of dumb to have a list of cities in iceland with only once city, however there is a good reason for that: there is only one; --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 22:39, 2004 Apr 8 (UTC)

The World Gazetteer (the website with the map) is perfectly aware of the population of Icelandic localities, they are not misinterpreting anything and yet they use the word city. That is because the word city in that context like the context it's used in for this article simply means a significant urban locality. A urban locality of 800 people is a significant one on Icelandic scale and thus surely can be called a city. If we really want to complicate matters by fragmenting this article we probably should make articles about the villages and hamlets of Iceland as well since many of the entries on the city list can't be considered towns either according to some definitions. We should just keep this in one list and not get lost in defining words that have no definition. Hvammstangi is an Icelandic city. ---Biekko 22:58, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

List of cities in Alaska and such pages as Unalaska and Seward show how the word city is often used for places that are not exactly sprawling metropolis. --Biekko 23:22, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I have noticed that, however does that mean it's right? would you tell a foreigner that you're taking him to the City of Hvammstangi, one of the main metrapolitan areas of Iceland if you were to give him a tour of the country, or would you say town?.

The only reason something so small would be called a city would be for historical reasons, such as it being an ancient city or something else, which is not the case.

If indeed you insist on calling every fisherman village a city what do you propose a town to be? surely City>Town>Village are in some sort of context of ascending order with largest first? and therefor if you have one of them you must have the other two somewhere.

I think the right thing to do here would be to follow tradition which is to call these places towns, historically that is what has been done both in english and in icelandic and i think it's disinformatin and something likely to cause confusion to list everything on the city page. --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 23:34, 2004 Apr 8 (UTC)

I've never taken a foreigner to Hvammstangi but somehow I don't feel anything wrong about referring to it as a city though. The words: city, town, village are simply words without definition, it's up to each induvidual to decide what is appropriate in each and every case. For a encyclopedia article however one should avoid making these distinctions because they simply do not mean anything. I think the people who come to this page do realize that we are not talking about huge cities. Yes I insist on calling every fishermen village a city and keep it all on the city page since it just isn't neccesary to complicate things. ---Biekko 23:42, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

How about moving this list to another page like List of urban centers in Iceland (or something better than that) and annotating the list to point out which one is a city, or which are considered towns in Iceland, etc. Since there aren't many places to list it makes sense to have them all on one page, even if you need to change the title of the page to do it comfortably.  :) fabiform | talk 00:07, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I've changed the list now, it now gives an idea about the population of the places in question so there should be no disinformation about that. I hope this is something everybody can live with. :) ---Biekko 00:09, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This looks very good to me, it includes a lot more information that a simple alphabetised list would. :) fabiform | talk 13:25, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)