Please help settle this once and for all.

Only relevant if you visited.

I hear people say germans calls it a Dorf or Ortschaft, but not Stadt.

Is Tromsø intuitively a city or a town if you were gonna make a sentence about it.

by Emergency-Sea5201

44 comments

  5. I’d say it’s a city. Only people from big cities would consider it a town, but that doesn’t mean they’re correct. I live near a city of 300k people, and still some people call that a town, which is a bit silly.

  6. “Dorf” is the German word for a village. That cannot be seriously meant by a German. There are places with just a fraction of the population of Tromsø that is called Stadt in Germany 

  8. It’s conspiracy theory. Actually Tromsø is boat where people built around 👍

  9. Brits consider something a city when it has a University and a Cathedral.

  10. In this case I think the definition must take into account the remote location of Tromsø. You won’t find a bigger city on the same latitude anywhere in the world bar Russia afaik.

    Context and customs, unofficial and official, leads to a city.

  11. It’s a city, obvs. It has a cathedral (and I mean the proper one, not the white thing over the bridge). And that makes it a city.

  12. We don’t really distinguish in Norwegian. Both are ‘by’.

    In English, the definition of the difference between town and city varies by country, so…. I don’t think it really matters?

  14. Knowing what a Dorf and an Ortschaft is, Tromso is not a town. It’s a small city where people are concentrated into a few municipal areas on the islands and the larger Tromso area is actually pretty big.

  15. By Norwegian standards it’s a city, at the low end of that range. It has a clear downtown and multiple districts, while being the focal point of the 1st and second degree subdivisions it is in.

  16. American here. Moved to Norway 3 years ago and have been to Tromsø twice. I refer to Tromsø as a city in conversation. As well as places like Ålesund, or even Arendal. Places like Lillesand or Grimstad are probably the upper limit of “town” for me. Any bigger than that and I’d start using “city”.

  18. Considering Oslo is around 600 thousand people, Tromsø is definitely a city by Norwegian standards.

  19. Depends if the king has done his setting and town to a city (idk if your monarch does that )

  21. I learned from my English (British linguistic) teacher that a city has a cathedral.

  22. Less than 100k people to me would be a big town, not quite a small city. But among native English speakers you are going to get different answers for this based on where someone grew up. If you’re from a very rural area that would definitely be “the city.”

  23. it’s a city. 

    many US states call every town a “city” by the way, no matter the population! 

  24. town for sure, it’s got one small main street. I come from a town bigger than tromsø

  25. Population is only relevant in proportion with the province / region or even country
    Amenities and institutions are what counts.

    Tromsø is 100% a city

  26. It is one of the bigger conurbations in its country, which makes it a city. It is relative to its country and area.

    If it was in the US, it would not be a city of it was located in California, but it would be in Wyoming.

  30. In the context of Norway it’s a city. And this is coming from someone who jokingly refers to Oslo as “capital village” to friends and family.

  31. There’s no need to discuss the subjective view on whether it is a city or not. City status has a list of criteria, and needs to be applied for.

  34. I’d say it is a small town. For comparison: bergen, trondheim and stavanger are towns, and oslo a small city

    Not going only by size/inhabitants here, but also mindset, cultural offering, infrastructure,

  35. In Switzerland we draw the line at 10’000 inhabitants. With more than 10’000 inhabitants we call it City (Stadt) instead of Town (Dorf)
    So I would call Tomsø a City.

  36. Tromsø holds city status. How people choose to define cities abroad is entirely irrelevant. It’s been a while since the Germans were in charge of Norway.

  38. Tromsø is a city because of its regional importance.

    Also…. I grew up in Pennsylvania in the US. Pennsylvania has places much smaller than Tromsø which are officially called cities. It just doesn’t seem strange to me to have a city of close to 80K people.

  39. City for me. Maybe it’s because I studied Latin and the root word is “civis” which means citizen.

    So city is more about people organized under laws and not about size or buildings.

    “Town” root is from old English and I think it’s about settlements and farmsteads that are fenced in.

    Maybe too literal 😂

  40. Very much a city. Towns are missing city things that Tromsø is not

  41. This reminds me of the time we ate at the restaurant at the top of a radio tower in Trondheim. When an Indian family exited the elevator, their kid ran to the window and exclaimed «Mom! We can see the entire village!»

  42. City. Smaller/Mid-size , to be sure, but it has the population (80k +/-) and infrastructure to qualify IMO.

    Certainly not a Dorf, which means village. Ortschaft or Gemeinde could be accurate in German, but Stadt is also accurate (it can mean town or city)

  43. Not sure native English speakers are any guidance here.

    UK it is traditionally the crown that grants city status. The city of St David has a population of 1,800 while Reading (pop 355k) is a town.

    US is also fairly haphazard. Some states it’s the state government that can appoint them as cities. Some places it depends on the articles of incorporation. So there as well there are tiny cities and huge towns.

    Truth is, it’s not really about language – Norwegian, English or German – but most often about what status is granted (if any).

  44. I’m not a native speaker, but Tromsø is a city. It’s the seat of the Bishop of Nord-Hålogaland.

    But no-one with any sense at all spends any time there. It’s way to far north to be a sensible place.

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