Talk:Oslo

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Contents 1 Population 2 K and / versus Ch 3 Oslo, Oslo, Minnesota, Oslo, (disambiguation) 4 25 biggest cities of Norway 5 Oslo -meaning of... 6 Answar to Barend 7 Population numbers Oslo metropolitan area and Oslofjord area 8 Not A Beautiful City? 9 New category for the nordic/scandinavian capitals? 10 Name section 11 MALAYSIA 12 MALAYSIA

[edit] Population

I think the population figures have been messed up by 83.108.248.222's edits. Could someone look into this?

I believe you're right.

[edit] K and / versus Ch

Writing "K" instead of "Ch" began in the (late?) 19th century. It is virtually impossible that King Christian[!] IV should have chosen to call the city "Kristiania".
S.
Of course he did not. And in fact, we started to write his name Kristian IV at the same time as we started to write Kristiania. Kristian IV's gate is not far from Karl Johans gate (Was it ever Carl Johans gate?)
G.

If I'm not mistaken, the spelling of Christiania was changed to Kristiania in 1875.

The original name of Oslo was restored in 1925 but it doesn't say why.

The reason was that Kristiania was named after a king of Denmark. With the independence, the Norwegians wanted to rid themselves of the Danish and Swedish influence, hence renaming a number of towns and cities throughout Norway: Fredrikshald became Halden, Fredriksvern became Stavern and Victoriahavn became Narvik. All these names are the original ones. Don't forget that Oslo was called Oslo for more than 600 years before Christiania came around.

In fact 'Oslo' continued to be the name of the part where the old city was situated before the fire in 1624 and the development of the new city across the bay named 'Christiania'. In 1925 'Oslo' became the name of the hole ciy while the former district of Oslo was renamed 'Gamle Oslo' mening 'Old Oslo'.

None of the mentioned names are "original". Basically, they're reconstructions of supposed Old Norse or local dialect names of the places were towns were erected. The towns themselves had their Danish (or more seldom Swedish) names from the start. These days some of the renamed towns are trying to get rid of the anhistoric, nationalist names, and get the old town name back. Oslo is a special case: The mediaeval city by that name was abandoned in 1624, what was left of stone buildings were used as quarries, and the grounds were levelled and used for pastures. Christiania was a brand new city, to which the citizens of Oslo were partly encouraged, partly forced to move. Official city history has always focused on the "national heritage" aspects, merging the history of the mediaeval city and the modern one. Only lately the historians have recognized that it's actually a matter of two different cities. There was a parallell case one generation earlier, when the mediaeval town of Sarpsborg was abandoned after being destroyed by the Swedish army, and the citizens were moved to the new town of Fredrikstad, which was easier to defend. The man behind this plan, King Frederik II, wanted to do the same thing with Oslo (also destroyed in the war and needing better protection), but the citizens rebuilt the city before the King could act. Only after the city fire in 1924, his son Christian IV, visiting Norway at the time, managed to put the plan into effect. As for Christian, there was no fixed orthography in his days. The spelling of a person's name - even the King's - would differ from writer to writer. I think Kristiern was still a rather common spelling back then, though the international form "Christian" might already have become the most common one. The fixed spelling of kings' names dates from later times anyway. Though it's still common in most countries to translate the names of royalty – thus "Christian" would be the correct spelling in English. Same thing goes for city names: They're usually translated as far as larger and/or internationally known cities goes. Finally: The name "Gamle Oslo" is a recent construction, connected with the administrative reforms of the 1980's/2000's. This administrative unit is much bigger than the mediaeval city. The area until 1924 known as Oslo was called "Gamlebyen" (Old Town) from 1925, and still is.

[edit] Oslo, Oslo, Minnesota, Oslo, (disambiguation)

• Should there be also Oslo, (disambiguation)?
• See Special:Allpages/Oslo. Best regards Gangleri | Th | T 02:59, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)

[edit] 25 biggest cities of Norway

I've been asked to explain my deletion of Template:25 biggest cities of Norway from Oslo. The City of Oslo has not suddenly gained almost 300 000 inhabitants. See also Talk:Cities of Norway about a page that uses the same erroneous numbers. For example, Stavanger and Sandnes seem to have been merged for the purpose of statistics, yet for Bergen it seems to have been reversed: they "lost" more than 25 000 inhabitants. Some of the numbers cannot possibly be for cities of Norway, but perhaps for conurbations of Norway. Tskoge 10:44, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I recommend you put the template back in. What you've done is basically vandalism. If you disagree with the numbers, the source for which is given in the template itself, the appropriate steps are (1) find a better source and then (2) fix the template accordingly. Tomer^talk 01:55, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

No I'll remove the template from all of the remaining pages instead. But it's a boring job, so it'll take a while. In the meantime pages on many of Norway's largest cities will display erroneous information.

I do not dispute the numbers. However, the numbers are obviously not for the mentioned cities' populations. Perhaps for conurbations or urban settlements, but not the claimed cities. Where are the cities of Asker, Bærum, Porsgrunn or Sandnes on that list? How are you going to find these cities? Why stop at 25? Isn't city number 26 or 27 just as interesting as number 25? How is this template useful?

It is not my job to fix all sorts of nonsense. If I see nonsense I will either delete it, or perhaps correct the claimed information, depending on the amount of work and amount of nonsense. The curse of Wikipedia is that it is easy to add all sorts of nonsense, but then it gets difficult to get the nonsense removed just because the nonsense was first. Tskoge 19:59, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

You have my support on this topic. While "watching" the page with Sandefjord, I did not like this template in the article. Keep up the good work with removing this type of nonsense! To avoid conflicts, perhaps a vote for removal of the template is in order? --Nordby73 21:57, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Statistics Norway does not count inhabitants in cities, but rather in regions. This is why there doesn't exist a good list of Norwegian cities sorted by population size. Many Norwegian cities have unclear city borders, since a city's border isn't measured by its population density per square kilometer. An example is the city of Tromsø, which in square kilometres alone should be the largest city, but of course is not the largest city measured by population. Therefore a Top 25 Largest Norwegian Cities list would at best be an approximation.

Further more the list in question is based on flawed interpretation of statistics from Norway Statistics, since the population sizes clearly suggest that the numbers are taken from "grand regions" rather then city regions, giving a better view of how population is spread accross Norway, rather then the actual sizes of cities. --82.148.167.103 02:45, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Statistics Norway do list the largest cities (urban settlements) in Norway, see Statistical yearbook of Norway . See also: Population and land area in urban settlements . Urban settlement is here defined as "An agglomeration having at least 200 residents and where the distance between houses as a rule does not exceed 50 metres. An urban settlement is delimited independent of administrative boundaries.". --84.208.198.182 16:05, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Oslo -meaning of...

There seems to be different opinions of what the name is derived from, another suggestion I was told at school where "os" -the place where a river runs into the sea, and "Lo" name of river, thereby "Oslo" - where the river Lo runs into the the sea (or fjord as is the case here)

Reply:

According to Språkrådet the name derives from Áslo or Óslo explenation below:

Oslo:

Truleg frå gammalnorsk áss ('gud') og *ló ('eng', 'slette'). I eldre tolkingar har førsteleddet vore knytt til gammalnorsk óss ('os', ::'elvemunning') og áss ('ås'). I gammalnorsk finn ein formene Áslo og Óslo.

Oslo:

Most likely from old norse áss('god') and *ló ('field of some sort, (someone find me a english equilant)).

In older translations(lack of better term) the prefix was connected to óss (os, mentioned above) and áss (hill). in old norse

we find the terms Áslo and Óslo.

(by this I suggest the "history of the name" to be altered)

The interpretation "Mouth of the River Lo" was launched by a 16th century writer who did not know that the river name of his days was a new one, not existing when the city got its name. Anyway, putting the "mouth" (óss") before the river's name is not known in Norwegian (as far as I know). Still this false ethymology was tought in Norwegian schools into modern times. The equilant of -ló" in English place names would be "-ley". More famous are Flemish -loo, like in Waterloo. The meaning of the word is probably "moist meadow". In the case of Oslo, the alternative interpretation "grove" has also been suggested.

[edit] Answar to Barend

First admit: That the Icelandic saga writed about the 12 century, about Harald Hardråde founded Oslo is fiction. As it says: According to the Norse sagas, Oslo was founded around 1048 by king Harald Hardråde. Recent archaeological research has uncovered Christian burials from before 1000, evidence of a preceding urban settlement. This called for the celebration of Oslo's millennium in 2000.

That mean that Harald Hardråde NOT founded Oslo because he was born in 1015. Oslo was proberly founded in ca. 950, the time when Harald Bluetooth should invade Norway, -arcording to the Jelling stones from the late 900. And since there has been found Christian burials from before 1000. I can only see it could be from Harald Bluetooth, since he should had Invaded Viken and converted to Christanity, as it is writed on the Jelling stones.

http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_Bl%C3%A5tand

--Comanche cph 16:34, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Both theories are speculative. Basically, cities were not founded by kings in Viking Age Scandinavia. Market places grew up in places where goods could easily be sold to visiting merchants. At a later stage the most important of these market places developed into permanent cities. Buildings, and even burials are not decisive signs of a permanent city - they might very well be connected to major annual markets. It's possible that Oslo was a market place already in the time of Harald Bluetooth, and it's possible that the King gave this market place some sort of patronage - though there's nothing to prove this. It's not unlikely that Harald Hardråde built a primitive castle at Oslo to defend his claim on Viken, but this doesn't mean he founded a city. Some historians seems to think that we cannot speak of "cities" in Norway until the 12th century, when the bishops and the kings stopped travelling the countryside to consume their incomes locally. A system of royal sanctioning of city right or privileges is not probable before the 14th, or even perhaps 15th century. The sagas were written before this, but still a couple of centuries after the major towns first seems to have occured. But at the times of the saga writers, at least a king (as well as a bishop) was supposed to recide in a city, so a king's name could easily be associated with a city. The idea that King Harald (the one or the other) founded Oslo is probably highly anachronistic.

[edit] Population numbers Oslo metropolitan area and Oslofjord area

1.5 million people seems a very high number for the metropolitan area. That would imply a large area, with considerably distances involved. Also, the claim that 2 million people live around Oslofjord seems as a too large estimate. If you count all counties bordering the fjord - Oslo, Akershus, Østfold, Buskerud and Vestfold (Telemark is not in this region and does not border the fjord), you get just over 1.7 million people, and that includes all people in those counties - even though some of them, as in Buskerud, lives far from the fjord, up in the valleys. Orcaborealis 13:00, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

According to Oslo Teknopol: "1 524 412 av dem bor i Osloregionen. Dette tallet inkluderer innbyggerantallet i Oslo og de 55 kommunene som er med i Samarbeidsalliansen Osloregionen" (English translation: 1,524,412 of them lives in the Oslo region. This number includes the population figures for Oslo and the 55 communes/counties that participates in the Oslo region Cooperative Alliance.). I could partially agree that it might be a little overboard to include this full number in the metropolitan area of Oslo, but at the same time this does include mostly people that might have Oslo as a place of work/important city centre, so it might also be justifiable. -- A-ixemy 23:36, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

To quote my edit on the Bergen page, "Is it at encyclopedia level to use the concept of metropolitan area at all as long as there's no tradition for using it in Norway, and no clear definition of what it's supposed to include"? Narssarssuaq 20:09, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

That there's no tradition, as in like older than year 1800, may be correct. But tradition is not relevant for 2006. What I'm referring to/talking about, is the fact that there has been talk of "Stor-Oslo" since at least 1980, I believe. This is old enough to warrant such a definition, which in english would be "Oslo region" or "Oslo metropolitan area." So, in my opinion, yes, it is at encyclopedia level. --A-ixemy 13:54, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

You could be right. If there exists a consensus of what "Stor-Oslo" includes, do include the figures. If not, an interval could be included, though effort of course should be but into making the article as brief as possible on this point. Narssarssuaq 21:02, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Statistics Norway use the term "tettsted" / urban settlement instead of metropolitan area. --84.208.198.182 16:15, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

There is a definition used by Statistics Norway that is called Stor-Osloregionen (Greater Oslo Region). It has an area of 6 920 km² and a population of 1 121 020 (051231). This definition included the area around Drammen earlier but defined Drammen as a separate area from 2005. Probably the best official definition of Stor-Oslo so I will add this figure to the article. --Pjred 10:13, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

22% of the population are immigrants? I will assume this to be false, until somebody backs it up with a good, trustworthy link. Maybe if one considers all children of immigrants, and children of these people again to be "immigrants". But that's a definite maybe! And furthermore, they ain't immigrants if they're born in the country. I think this link should be removed if somebody doesn't provide hard facts that support it very soon...

There lots of ways to define "immigrant". The most common one have been "a person born abroad, or with at least one parent born abroad". This is a very wide definition, that very well might result in numbers like the one mentioned. Most immigrants in Oslo are Scandinavian anyway, and hardly distinguishable from the native population. Anyway, the statistical definition of the "Greater Oslo Region" is said to be "dynamic", so numbers migh change dramatically if a couple of houses decreases a gap between what's until then is considered inside and outside...

[edit] Not A Beautiful City?

"...the city as a whole is not usually considered beautiful, even by most of its own residents." – I have rescearched this a fair bit, and neither I, nor those who I´ve questioned agree to this quote. Oslo is indeed considered beautiful, at least by most of its own residents. Mostly due to Oslo´s vast areas of "green zones", which is quite unique compared to other capitals of Europe. – Martinor Wed. 26.07.06

Agreed, and it's definitely POV. For example, in my opinion and with my tastes in architecture and city planning, it could actually be the most beautiful city in Norway. Narssarssuaq 10:12, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

It might be a reference to the trash problem in the city. Unfortunately, it is common a common problem that people throw away trash on the street and elsewhere... [1] --Jambalaya 22:23, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Removed this claim as it was unsourced, definitely POV, and didn't add anything to the article. jax 11:59, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

It's not really POV, littering IS a problem in the city. --Jambalaya 21:19, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think info like this is usually added elsewhere on Wikipedia. Narssarssuaq 07:14, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Oslo is generally considered a terrible place in every way - looks, culture, people etc - by everyone in Norway who isn't actually from Oslo, including most outsiders who have moved there. I think this has a lot to do with Oslo symbolizing central authority in a country where people loathe central authority, and have always done so. It's more or less a part of Norwegian culture (outside Oslo) to hate Oslo.

In my opinion, Oslo is a beautiful city - though the "gateway area" around the railway station, the first place people see, is so terribly soulless as to confirm all prejudices outsiders have against the city. --Misha bb 17:35, 18 November 2006 (UTC)(Who's an outsider that have moved to Oslo)

Yeah I pretty much agree with that sentiment, Misha. The area around the central 'square,' Jernbanetorget, isn't exactly the most inspiring cityscape in the world (to put it mildly). But there are many more charming environments to be found outside of it. I also think most 'native' Oslo people try to stay out of the most central area (i.e. around Jernbanetorget) as much as possible - I certainly do. There are even a few fairly hidden nice places in Oslo, which I'm sure tourists never see. Telthusbakken/Fredensborg, Ullevål Hageby to name just a couple. Problem is, there is usually nothing outside of a few nice buildings or a nice sight to see on such places, so there isn't really a reason to go there for most, including tourists. -- A-ixemy 03:43, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New category for the nordic/scandinavian capitals?

I would like to suggest a new category for the capital cities of Scandinavia/the Nordic, including Copenhagen, Helsinki, Oslo, Reykjavik and Stockholm. (I've posted this message on the talk page for each city.) Comments, anyone? /M.O (u) (t) 15:23, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Name section

I broadened the heading from "meaning of name" so that I could move the Dahl quote and some of the other naming information out of the history section, where it mostly seemed out of place. If you think this change was unhelpful, by all means revert. Many cities have a naming section like this, so it's not out of place. I also renamed the Communications section as Transport, since the former usually refers to things like telephone network, and the section was entirely about modes of transport. Walkerma 06:02, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] MALAYSIA

MOHD BAHARUDIN BIN YAHYA
NO 1 LORONG 4 JALAN BUNGA RAYA MAJIDEE BARU
81100 JOHOR BAHARU
JOHOR BAHRU TAKZIM

LAHIR-------- 4-5-1987 LABUAN

 YAHYA BIN KASTARI

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 60.49.115.41 (talk) 11:52, 27 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] MALAYSIA

MOHD BAHARUDIN BIN YAHYA
N0 1 LORONG 4 JALAN BUNGA RAYA MAJIDEE BARU
81100 JOHOR BAHRU
JOHOR BAHRU TAKZIM

4-5-1987  LABUAN        870504-49-5035

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 60.49.115.41 (talk) 11:55, 27 March 2007 (UTC).