Farthings of Iceland - Contemporary Use of The Term

Contemporary Use of The Term

Later administrative divisions of Iceland (notably the voting districts established with the Constitution of Iceland in 1874) were based on the division of counties and municipalities and the farthings gradually lost any official significance although they are still used in common parlance to refer to parts of the country.

Currently there is only one form of local government in Iceland, the municipalities, the counties themselves having lost any official significance in the 1990s. Several times during the 20th century there have been regional organisations, societies, cooperation venues at the municipal level etc. based on the farthings. The farthings were also mentioned e.g. when one long wave-antenna was built for each farthing in the 1950s and in 1980 one Jóhannes Árnason suggested reinstating the farthing assemblies as means of distributing power from the state to the regions, but this was not seriously considered. A more common way of dividing Iceland nowadays is the eight regions (landshlutar).