Talk:Counties of Iceland

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This article has a wrong premise[edit]

As stated clearly in the respective articles in English and German about counties in English-speaking world, a 'county' is an administrative division lead by a nobleman entitled a count, hence the name.

Thus the German translation correctly reads 'Grafschaft'. There is the corresponding term 'Grevskap/Grevskab' in Norwegian/Danish, which is however by no means a county.

This article has a flawed premise. "Amt" is to be translated as "province", since shire is already another Norwegian-Danish term ("herred") and hence cannot be used. So far for the Danish-Norwegian period.

The article about "Sysselmann" clearly states that "The English version of this word is sheriff". The article "Sýsla" clearly states that a "Sýsla" is a "police district". This has to be coherent - but under no circumstances can it be "county", since neither amts nor sýslur are or were governed by counts or anything close to counts, but by magistrates.

In France, Italy, Spain, Austria-Hungary, etc., similar divisions existed, all based upon the direct translations of the nobleman who ruled the territory, the count (from Latin Comitatus, variations in Romance languages such as Comté, Contado, or the Hungarian Komitat (Gespanschaft).

THE SAME IS THE CASE IN NORWAY AND DENMARK: These articles need to be fixed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.156.126.230 (talk) 15:28, 12 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You make a fair point. I think the more coherent English translation of sýsla and sýslumaður would be shire and sheriff but since there is ample evidence for county being the accepted and official translation I don't think it would pass Wikipedia guidelines for original research to change this here. --Bjarki (talk) 12:57, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]