The regions of

Iceland Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...

are eight areas of Iceland that roughly follow the arrangement of parliamentary constituencies as they were between 1959 and 2003. These regions are not incorporated polities but rather recognized groupings of municipalities. Iceland only has two levels of administration, the national government and 62

municipalities A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality' ...

. The municipalities have organized themselves into eight regional associations and those boundaries are also recognized by Statistics Iceland to report statistics. Since 2014,

police The police are Law enforcement organization, a constituted body of Law enforcement officer, people empowered by a State (polity), state with the aim of Law enforcement, enforcing the law and protecting the Public order policing, public order ...

and commissioner ('' sýslumaður'') districts have followed the eight region model with the exception that Vestmannaeyjar forms a special district and not part of the Southern Region. The divisions of Iceland for the purposes of health care and district courts diverge more from the commonly used eight region model. The

postal code A postal code (also known locally in various English-speaking countries throughout the world as a postcode, post code, PIN or ZIP Code) is a series of letters or numerical digit, digits or both, sometimes including spaces or punctuation, inclu ...

system also roughly corresponds with the regions with the first digit of the three digit codes usually being the same as on the map below.

Overview

Differences from the 1959-2003 constituencies

Until 1957, the parliamentary constituencies used in Iceland had been based on its counties and market towns. The reform of constituency borders in 1957 would group these counties and towns together into eight larger areas that form the basis for the modern regional division of Iceland. The differences between the 1957 boundaries and the modern ones are: * The southwestern part of the country was previously divided into Reykjavík on one hand and Reykjanes on the other which encompassed all other municipalities in the vicinity of Reykjavík and on the Reykjanes peninsula. The same area is currently divided into the Capital region on one hand and the Southern Peninsula on the other * The municipality of Hornafjörður decided in 2008 to leave the association for municipalities in the Eastern region and join the Southern region. Statistics Iceland updated its definition of the statistical regions to reflect this on 1 December 2020. * The area of the former town of Siglufjörður was transferred from the Northwestern region to the Northeastern region when the town merged across the regional boundary with Ólafsfjörður to form Fjallabyggð in 2006. * The area of the former municipality of Skeggjastaðahreppur was transferred from the Eastern region to the Northeastern region when the municipality merged across the regional boundary with Þórshafnarhreppur to form Langanesbyggð in 2006. * The area of the former municipality of Bæjarhreppur was transferred from the Westfjords region to the Northwestern region when the municipality merged across the regional boundary with Húnaþing vestra under the name of the latter in 2012.

References

{{Articles on first-level administrative divisions of European countries Iceland, Regions Iceland 0 Iceland geography-related lists

Overview

Differences from the 1959-2003 constituencies

See also

References