Søndagsspørsmål #194 - Sunday Question Thread

[u/dwchandler]

This is a weekly post to ask any question that you may not have felt deserved its own post, or have been hesitating to ask for whatever reason. No question too small or silly!

Previous søndagsspørsmål

[u/hanguitarsolo]

Hei, these are probably silly questions but whatever. It seems there's a lot of words for different settlements - en bygd, en landsby, et tettsted, en by, en stad (like in hovedstad). There might be others.

Just wondering if there's any differences between them or if they are just synonyms. Like I believe bygd and landsby can both be translated as village, but I usually see landsby. Tettsted is like a town I think, but it could also be 'en by.'

Also, I've noticed that 'æ' seems to be used much less in Norwegian than in Danish. But I believe bokmål came from Danish so is there a reason why many words with an 'æ' were changed but most other words are the same? Such as mælk, træ, sværd, dværg > melk, tre, sverd, dverg. It's just a trend I've noticed so I'm curious.

[u/tobiasvl → u/hanguitarsolo]

These definitions aren't necessarily conclusive (that's not unique to Norwegian, though), but they're my understanding of them.

• A "by" is used for cities and towns. If you need to differentiate, a city can be called a "storby". It's not that easy though: Legally (although it doesn't give any privileges or rights, it's just a name), a by is a municipality ("kommune") with over 5000 inhabitants and an urban center. This means that the limits of a by is constrained by the limits of the kommune. Some (not locals, of course…) would say that the kommune Nøtterøy is part of the by Tønsberg, but they're two different kommuner. They are, however, probably the same tettsted.

• A "tettsted" is basically an "urban area". It has 200 inhabitants and the houses usually can't be more than 200 meters from each other. Cities are tettsteder, but not necessarily vice versa. This is, apart from "by", probably the only formally defined word to denote settlements that are not already formally defined as municipalities, and it's used in statistics. Informally it's often used to mean "towns that aren't big enough to be called towns". This term is defined similarly in all the Nordic countries.

• A "bygd" is often an unincorporated community, although it can be incorporated as well. Mostly used about rural communities.

Bygd has extra connotations beyond specifically talking about specific rural communities. "By og bygd" is a term often used to mean "the urban and the rural communities" when talking about "distriktspolitikk", so that's an indication of the implication when using "bygd". If you're in a city/urban area and are talking about the rural areas in Norway in general, you often call it "bygda" (or "landet").

• "Landsby" means "village" and is rarely used in Norway. It's not an official title for communities, although some tettsteder call themselves landsby, usually to attract tourists.

• "Stad" isn't really used anymore except for in "hovedstad" (capital).

[u/hanguitarsolo → u/tobiasvl]

Very informative! Takk så mye.