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    Native English speakers, is Tromsø a city or a town?
    Norway

    Native English speakers, is Tromsø a city or a town?


    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.

    https://i.redd.it/xq7ajdd3309g1.jpeg

    Posted by Emergency-Sea5201

    View 32 Comments

    32 Comments

    4. ShardsOfTheSphere on

      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.

    5. Citizen_of_H on

      “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. Mizunomafia on

      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.

    9. Linkcott18 on

      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?

    11. RidetheSchlange on

      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.

    12. Hexdoctor on

      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.

    13. Egitlebob on

      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”.

    15. Organic_Tradition_94 on

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

    17. AsaTJ on

      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.”

    18. megacoinsquad on

      it’s a city. 

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

    20. rensd12 on

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

      Tromsø is 100% a city

    21. Zamnaiel on

      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.

    24. Noe_lurt on

      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.

    27. pinetree_guy on

      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.

    28. Skrim on

      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.

    30. flodnak on

      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.

    31. Violet604 on

      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 😂