Talk:Reykjavík

Icelandic I (diacritic in the name)

Hi folks. It seems to me that the special Icelandic "í" should not be used in this name, as the name is used commonly in English without the diacritic (diagonal mark on top to differentiate it from the normal (in English) "i"), by sources from the academic to the mundane. I'm not going to try to make the change without some sort of consensus, but this seems to be a pretty clear case, to me. Feedback?AshleyMorton (talk) 23:11, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

No reason to. I'd bet that a lot of these people just don't want to bother with the extra steps to make diacritics on the keyboard. ~~ Lothar von Richthofen (talk) 13:22, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm against this move. In my opinion spelling it without the diacritic is simply incorrect. BodvarBjarki (talk) 13:55, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

In Icelandic, sure. But this is the English Wikipedia. — LlywelynII 12:43, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

The reason to, if you were unaware, is that this is the English Wikipedia and pages should be located at their most wp:common wp:english forms. — LlywelynII 12:43, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

I was surprised that the article's title contains the diacritic. We don't call Mexico City 'México City', etc. Is the form with the diacritic really the common name in English publications? 98.170.164.88 (talk) 19:39, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

No, although it's doubtless gotten an undeserved bump in use from the misplacement of the Wikipedia article. The Wiktionary entry was certainly misplaced on that basis. — LlywelynII 12:43, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

This is the English-language Wikipedia. We don't have that letter. You are free to use the Icelandic alphabet in the Icelandic Wikipedia. I won't go over there and object if you do. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.188.61.121 (talk) 12:12, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Support. You are, of course, completely correct. The page was moved mistakenly and should be restored to the wp:common wp:english form without the accent. — LlywelynII 12:43, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

I agreed with you and wondered why there doesn't seem ever to have been at least a move discussion, whether passed or failed. I was about to initiate one, but checked Google Ngrams first and found (see ) that while the accentless version prevailed in Google's corpus of books in English during this article's first 16 years, the accented version overtook it in 2017 and has exceeded it since then. That one statistic isn't enough to cause me to !vote one way or another in a discussion initiated by someone else, but it removes my drive to initiate one myself. Largoplazo (talk) 17:08, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Reykjavík with the í is quite common in English-language texts as well, as you point out. Per WP:DIACRITICS, "the policy on using common names and on foreign names does not prohibit the use of modified letters, if they are used in the common name as verified by reliable sources." Examples would be names like Besançon or León, Spain. And I think there has been a general trend in the last 10-20 years in English (and in other languages, too) to more often use original spellings with diacritics, which has been facilitated by electronic media. So, if "Reykjavik" today isn't massively more common in English than "Reykjavík", I would rather oppose such a move. Gestumblindi (talk) 19:50, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

No government currently?

Why is there nothing in the government section of the infobox? Is it anarchy? :) I assume it is either a mistake, or there has been some trouble in forming a city administration. Inspector Semenych (talk) 01:41, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Done. Stefán Örvar Sigmundsson (talk) 23:24, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

North American city

I've reverted the removal of the comment on Reykjavik being North American. If you read the comment on the source when I added it in you'll note that I acknowledged the source only discusses Reykjavik's location on the North American Plate, but that's the only source I was after. If someone can provide a more rock solid statement then by all means, edit it in, but Reykjavík is unambigulously located within the geological region of North America in an identical way to Greenland, where the lede is

"Greenland (Greenlandic: Kalaallit Nunaat, pronounced [kalaːɬːit nʉnaːt]; Danish: Grønland, pronounced [ˈkʁɶnˌlænˀ]) is a North American autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark."

There's no geographic or geological distinguishing between the two and both are functionally European nations, though obviously Greenland is neither independent nor culturally similar to the rest of Europe. There are plenty of sources mentioning this which themselves would wildly fail WP:RS so we're left with the geological plate sources (which, again, is basically the universal standard and is the reason we refer to Greenland as North American) in the absence of anything else, though I'm certain with digging a better source could be found. Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 21:00, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

The IP was correct. The fact that you say, "that's the only source I was after" doesn't mean other people have to accept it. Per WP:NOR, you need a source that says that Reykjavík is the only capital of a sovereign European state located in North America. You don't have that, so the claim can't go in the article.

The claim that geological plates are "the universal standard" for defining continents is false. The fact that you are referring to Europe in the first place demonstrates this, since there is no plate boundary between Europe and Asia. By your standard, Hanoi is as European as Paris and more European than Venice (which is on a separate microplate). Kahastok talk 22:18, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

@Kahastok WP:BLUESKY applies when the question is "what continent is this city in?", so no WP:NOR concerns. There is only one answer (North America) and the cited source provides that. Politically it is a part of Europe, but geographically it is indisputably outside of Eurasia and we run up against weirdness with the Greenland article if we pretend it's outside of North America.

Iceland makes quite a big deal of which continent you're in when you cross the rift zone fully, but it's not like this detail is covered by a ton of sources which meet WP:RS. You have technical sources which simply refer to Reykjavík as located in the North American plate (which I went with) or a whole plethora of travel guides which we can't use to go off of. You're right in pointing out that the division of Eurasia itself is arbitrary, but Eurasia to North America decidedly isn't. As we don't cite that France is a European capital, the purposes of a geological citation was to counter incredulity, which it appears failed. Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 22:32, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

WP:BLUESKY is that you don't need to cite that the sky is blue - i.e. obvious facts known to all. You do need a cite if you want to say that the sky is orange - even though it sometimes is. There are few if any topics where WP:BLUESKY applies across the board, no matter what the claim is or what the context is.

The conventional distinctions between Eurasia and North America rely on locations of the oceans, not locations of the plate boundaries. Otherwise, Los Angeles and San Diego are definitely not in North America, but a large chunk of north-eastern Russia is. When it comes to islands, in the real world all division between continents depends on cultural and political factors as well as geology and geography.

The claim that Reykjavík is the only capital of a sovereign European state located in North America requires a source that says that, in so many words. Drawing your own conclusion from plate tectonics is WP:OR. Kahastok talk 10:02, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

@Kahastok You're right about the issue with Los Angeles/San Diego, but that is again an example where there's larger geopolitical considerations a lá Eurasia vs. Europe. I'm fine doing an RFC on this; it feels like a pretty big wiff to have an article about a city physically if not geopolitically in North America without mentioning the continent it's in. Note that while I invoked WP:BLUESKY I did actually cite the claim I made with a source that discusses Reykjavík's location relative to the North American plate, since we can't exactly cite tourism companies on this topic. Note that the main article for Iceland does a decent job of discussing its position relative to both continents.

"Iceland is generally included in Europe for geographical, historical, political, cultural, linguistic and practical reasons. Geologically, the island includes parts of both continental plates."

There's two fundamental questions, here:

1) Is Reykjavík physically located in North America?

2) If so, does this meet WP:N to include in the article on Reykjavík or do we go with the general convention?

The notion that Reykjavík is physically on the North American pretty easily meets WP:VERIFY, and general convention isn't verifiability. For example:

"The site REYK shows a large (expected) relative velocity because it is located on the North-American plate."

At some point It doesn't feel like pedantry or pointless trivia to me to include the continent the city is located in, but also it feels important not to treat that bit of information with a WP:UNDUE approach. i.e., "just because this little fact is very obscure and sort of a technical detail does not make it unreal and therefore not worth mentioning, but it doesn't necessarily need more than a mention regardless." Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 02:21, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I think it is worth reminding ourselves your proposal is. It is not that we should say in a relevant part of the article that Reykjavik is geologically on the North American plate (a claim that your sources would support and that I would not have objected to). It is that we should claim, in the first paragraph of the article, that Reykjavík is the only capital of a sovereign European state located in North America - a conclusion that neither of your sources reach, on a topic that is not discussed in the rest of the article at all.

You acknowledge that your definition of the continents produces odd results, and then ignore that fact entirely in the rest of your comment. If Reykjavik is in North America, then Los Angeles and San Diego aren't. You say "larger geopolitical considerations", but your own quote above - shoot, your own proposal for the article - applies those same considerations to put Iceland in Europe. If the larger geopolitical considerations are irrelevant here, then they are also irrelevant in the cases of Los Angeles and Hanoi. And it would be just as valid for the first paragraph of the lead of Los Angeles to refer to it as the largest US city not in North America, or for the first paragraph of the lead of Hanoi to put its ranking as one of the largest cities in Europe. Kahastok talk 17:17, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

What is going on

I believe there is tons of misinformation on this page. "The land of fire and ice" is a nickname for Iceland as a whole, but is never used when talking about Reykjavík. As for "Reykjavik loves" being the motto, that is simply not true (or is never used outside of certain events). As for the discussion above, which talks about whether Reykjavik is in North America or not: Reykjavik is on the North American tectonic plate and is therefore considered, geographically, to be in North America. Logiston (talk) 18:01, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Agree on those two examples, there is no official motto and the city is not referred to as a 'land' anyway. The rest of the page is mostly adequately cited and correct. As for Europe vs. NA, plate tectonics happens on a large scale: there is no defined boundary, especially within Iceland - a large part of the country is in a rift zone. Drumstick21 (talk) 20:24, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

A continent is just a cultural and political concept, originating in the classical world where Europe was here, Asia was over there and Africa was across the sea. Plate tectonics have nothing to do with it and wasn't even settled science until the mid-20th century. Iceland seems to be the only place in the world where plate boundaries are even brought up in this context, which is probably a testament to how successful the Icelandic tourism industry has been at marketing the idea of Iceland as the boundary between continents. Bjarki (talk) 11:17, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Hell, the name is miswritten. There are several issues arising from native Icelanders being the people primarily interested in editing the page. Sure, go ahead and fix as many as you feasibly can. — LlywelynII 12:49, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Laugardalsvollur 4.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 19:36, 18 December 2025 (UTC)