I just thought than when in Estonia we talk about “Eastern Estonia” – it’s actually in the North-East (or in “Kirre” in Estonian) and when talking about the South – it’s actually in the South-East. It’s the same in the US – “Southern US” is actually in the South-East. What about your country?
When people say ‘The North’ in England, they are referring to the northern half or third of England, rather than taking Scotland into account. So if you look at Britain as a whole, ‘The North’ is in the middle! We also have ‘The West Country’ which is the South-Western peninsula of England, not Wales as the name might suggest.
Northern Ireland is actually the North-East of Ireland, in fact, the Republic of Ireland is further north in places. Some people in England call the Republic ‘Southern Ireland,’ but this is just plain wrong.
People don’t really think too much about how illogical this all is, you just get used to it.
Like any country that isn’t shaped like a diamond, the distinction is pretty arbitrary (the most eastern point is north), but I think the shape of the country is regular enough that it makes sense.
Now that I think about it, we don’t really use cardinal directions in Romania. We usually use the name of the region (Transylvania, moldova). With the exception of the south, which is described as the south, because “tara romaneasca” is too archaic and too close to the name of the entire country. Also, the south can include Dobrogea too, which wasn’t in țara românească in the past, but is culturally similar with those regions.
We have the Big Rivers as a major North-South divide, but it’s really only a South divide. Divisions are made by province even though there will be some grey area in the borders
West: the Hollands and Zeeland, sometimes also the central Utrecht and Flevoland
North: the North-east. Groningen, Friesland, Drenthe
East: the Center-east. Overijssel and Gelderland
South: most of the South, just not the Western part. Noord-Brabant and Limburg.
In Spain when we talk about the North is usually the western half, the one that borders with the Cantabric sea. The eastern part of the north is referenced as the Pyrenees.
Abruzzo (or at least most of it) is part of Southern Italy in basically every sense of the word (cultural, linguistic, historical) but physical geography, as it stretches further nord than some parts of Lazio, which is definitely Central Italy. Accordingly, physical geography data such as weather reports has Abruzzo in Central Italy while Economic, Social, Historical data has it grouped within Southern Italy.
This causes some confusion among Italians as well, especially the Abruzzesi themselves, who like the idea of being part of a less maligned group (a bit like the Romania is in Central Europe crowd)
Similarly, Emilia Romagna is linguistically and culturally north-western but it is literally on the east coast.
Die Ostschweiz, Eastern Switzerland is the North-East (between Zurich and Lake Constance).
It’s the Alps that define North/South, so because the part of the country that is sticking out quite prominently straight due East, many parts of it are South of the Alps, so Südostschweiz it is. But the sticking-out part belongs all to the same Canton, Graubünden, so we call it that. The term Südostschweiz also encompasses parts within the “torso” of Switzerland that are not part of the canton of Graubünden, but culturally and historically closer to it, than to the Ostschweiz proper.
The other cardinal directions make more sense.
The canton Wallis is Südschweiz in the weather report, because South of the Alps, bordering Italy, but culturally more Westschweiz, because for the more populated part French-speaking. It’s often “Westschweiz and Wallis” in media, though. It’s isolated enough to be its own cultural sub-area.
There is also Nordwestschweiz, which is German-speaking cantons along the Jurassic mountains. Which makes sense! It’s in the North-West, but not French-speaking enough to be Westschweiz.
Actually, Südschweiz makes only sense geographically, but not culturally.
Mainland Portugal is pretty much a north-south rectangle, so north and south are quite accurate in terms of direction.
Though the country is divided into north, centre and south, with the Douro and Tagus rivers, which flow in from Spain, dividing the country in three. But this means that the north is smaller and the south is actually the whole southern half. Lisbon is south, centre or neither depending on who you ask.
There’s a small region along the coast between Lisbon and Leiria referred to as the West, but otherwise we don’t use east and west. We have instead littoral and interior, i.e. coastal and inland, which is a more useful division.
Nothing very surprising for Austria as a whole, but for the state of Styria: “Western Styria” (Weststeiermark) and “Eastern Styria” (Oststeiermark) are the regions east and west of Graz respectively, i.e. they’re really southwestern and southeastern Styria. The huge mountainous chunk in the north that extends a lot further west than Western Styria, i.e. the region where places like Leoben, Mürzzuschlag, and Liezen are, is called “Upper Styria” (Obersteiermark).
I think in Lithuania it fits the directions pretty well. Taking Kaunas as the middle point (which it is, more or less) we would mostly refer to north, south, west and east.
North starts a bit further than Kaunas, but it’s actually not a very practical reference since Skuodas to Visaginas is all north but it’s the whole width of the country.
West Lithuania is northwest sort of, but south west doesn’t really exist due to the shape of the country. It’s just south.
Historically East Hungary did actually kind of mean North-East, but South meant more of a central, cardinal south and North meant cardinal North. Since Hungary lost 72% of its historic territory East has shitted to cardinal East, South shifted South-East and North remsined cardinal North.
In France the north would be the région Haut de France which is actually up north, the west is mostly Bretagne, the east is everything from champagne to alsace, but the south is more tricky.
I feel like in general when we say south it’s mostly the south east, and even then you have to specify whether it’s côte d’azur or languedoc or Var, etc. as it’s very varied.
If you want to talk about Toulouse or the basque country you would usually specify south west
Sweden is a long but narrow country so the north basically is the north and the south is the south. However the border isn’t exactly a straight line, and what we call the north takes up more than half of the country.
Central Finland is significantly south from the center point of Finland and Northern Finland encompasses entire northern half of the country. Oulu, the largest city in Northern Finland is actually somewhat close to the middle point of Finland.
Finnish population is heavily concentrated to the southern part of the country.
The North is Nordland, Troms and Finnmark county, very much what it says, given the elongated shape of Norway, although stretching east of Istanbul, at its extreme end, due to polar convergence.” The Southland” is Agder county, but as a concept rather new, , from around 1900. The West and the East is divided by the watershed, it stretching north along the spine of the central mountains, until we muddle our way out of compass directions and fall back on historic region and gnarly dialects in Trøndelag,
The north (Nord-Norge) is a lot more than half of Norway in length and stretches far eastwards because of how our country is located. The south can both be said about the entire southern part of Norway (Sør-Norge) or the specific southernmost part (Sørlandet). West (Vestlandet) is the western coastal part of the southern part, divided from the east by the mountains and highlands. The east (Østlandet) is the southeastern part, but can also be meant more specifically as the areas closer to Oslo.
Belgium’s big north/south divide is both linguistic and political. Dutch-speakers live in Flanders in the north, and French-speakers live in Wallonia in the south.
The Brussels-Capital Region is technically on the northern side of the line, but we’re 90%+ French-speaking, so it’s a big exception to the rule. For the record, the Brussels Region is only 3.5 km away from Wallonia at its closest point.
The “east” always gets forgotten – many people would associate it with Ostbelgien, our tiny German-speaking area, but you might find some Limburgers who look more eastwards towards Germany.
Belgium also has sort of an east-west divide too: it separates (historical) Flanders from (historical) Brabant in the north, and in the south, you find the province of Hainaut (Charleroi/Pays Noir/Borinage…) in the west versus the greener, leafier east (Namur/Liège provinces).
Basically, southern Sweden is just the southern tip with Skåne and Blekinge, and maybe some parts of Halland and Småland included.
Western Sweden is Västergötland, Bohuslän and Dalsland (we usually forget about that one though), plus maybe the northern parts of Halland.
Northern Sweden (Norrland) covers more over 60 percent of the country and includes everything north of Gästrikland and Härjedalen. I know the climatological definition of Norrland starts north of the river Dalälven in Dalarna, hence I didn’t draw the line at the exact border (though I didn’t draw the exact line of the river either, sorry if I offended someone).
I didn’t draw it on the map, but if someone was talking about central Sweden I’d assume they were talking about the area around the lakes Mälaren and Hjälmaren, meaning Uppland, Södermanland, Närke and Västmanland.
If someone was talking about eastern Sweden, I’d assume they were a time traveler from the 18th century talking about Finland.
I live in East-Flanders, which is the second most Western province of Flanders.
The ‘Flanders’ in the province’s name refers to the historical County of Flanders, which only covered the Western half of the modern Region of Flanders.
In Portugal its said that Lisbon is “the south”. The north-south dynamic is somewhat similar to England’s if you’re familiar with that, and both countries’ capitals are in the south. But as someone from the Algarve it confuses me that Lisbon is considered to be in the south because to me it very much feels like its in the center of the country. The so-called center region of Portugal encompasses far too much of the north of the country in my opinion, but that’s purely from a geographic standpoint as in terms of culture there is a noticeable distinction between the north and center regions. The south for me is the Algarve and Alentejo regions though the latter actually goes up beyond Lisbon.
The terms “west” and “east” aren’t really used in Portugal, perhaps due to the country’s shape? Instead you have the litoral (aka the coast) and the interior. The litoral has a larger population density and urban development, whereas the interior is more rural.
Since Denmark is made up of islands and a peninsula, generally it’s more common to refer to specific islands than to regions. If anything, the east-west distinction is more important than the north-south one, with “west” referring to the Jutland peninsula and “east” to everything else.
South Denmark exists as an administrative region, but it’s a bit of a mess that just slaps together sparsely-populated parts of Jutland with Funen and the small islands to its south. It’s not a very organic term, is what I’m trying to say.
What does organically exist is distinctions of north and south within specific islands/peninsulas. The quirkiest ones are probably North Sealand, which only refers to the northeastern part north of Copenhagen (this is the traditional home of the rich) and the historically significant distinction between South Jutland (Sydjylland) and Southern Jutland (Sønderjylland). Essentially, Southern Jutland is the part of the peninsula that was historically part of the duchy of Schleswig and was under German rule until 1920, while South Jutland is the part of the peninsula NORTH of that line but still south of an obsolete administrative border. They are culturally and historically seperate, but the nomenclature is a bit of a mess.
Everything is named in relation to the western part of the country, so The South is actually southwest.
The official Southern Federal Region isn’t even the most southern part of the country because North Caucasus (actually northeast Caucasus since the mountain range goes from northwest to southeast) is it’s own region.
There is a region in the southeast that goes just as far to the south, but it’s just a part of the Far East.
The Extreme North / Far North spans the entire country but it’s mostly northeast. The western end is an actual far north, but on the east coast the Far North starts at about the latitude of Moscow. So, more than half of the Far East is also the Far North.
Russia is very asymmetrical, so the western third of Russia consists of the Russian North, Central Russia in the west, the Volga in the east and Southern Russia. The central third of Russia is Siberia, and the eastern third of Russia is finally appropriately named the Far East.
I think the distinction in Bulgaria is quite clear. The mountain Stara planina serves as a natural border between North and South.
East vs West is a bit more complex, since it’s based mostly on linguistic features. Mainly the so called “ѣ border”. Western dialects pronounce it as “e” and easterna as “я”. But once again the country is split almost perfectly in half in most people’s view.
My town is located at the geographical centre of the country, but everyone will tell you it’s in the northern and eastern parts thanks to those borders.
Germany: Cardinal directions are fine. North-South is very clear, East-West influenced by history, but mostly clear. Although you might be confused if someone from Trier (10 km to Luxembourg) says that Hof (15 km to Czechia) is in the West.
Fruitless debates happen about whether Frankfurt-Main is already in the North of if Göttingen is already in the south. We cannot use “middle”, as “Middle Germany” is mostly the former GDR because of 1937 borders.
Sweden’s west coast is a little bit like the american yankee. Where non american call americans yankees and american calling yankees the far north east and the north east is calling yankees a very specific part of the north east.
The west coast imo is the part north of Gothenburg to the norwegian border the west coast. Some account for Halland, the middle province part of the west coast and then there are people calling even Skåne part of the west coast.
Some people don’t differentiate on the western coast of Sweden (Västra kusten) and the west coast (västkusten)
In Iceland if you say you’re “going south” it means you’re going to the capital, Reykjavík, doesn’t matter if you’re coming from the north, east, west or even the south.
Also besides the cardinal directions there’s the highlands in the middle, and the Westfjords, which is sometimes lumped in with western Iceland but it’s usually it’s own area.
Northern Norway: Everything north of Trøndelag county (Trondheim)
Eastern Norway: Oslo-area and east, up to around Dombås/Oppdal.
However, the easternmost point is Vardø which is VERY far north and east. In fact, Vardø is further east than Kiev and Cairo. So when someone say they live in “Eastern Norway”, they really mean southeast. If they live in Vardø, they would say Northern Norway.
In the Netherlands. South really means South. Generally we talk about below the rivers (cut through the country horizontally) that split the country in half. This makes sense because the rivers have had quite the influence on our history. For example the North was Protestant and the South Catholic and during WWII liberation of the North was delayed after the bridges were blown up.
I guess sometimes we forget Zeeland exists (located in the South-West). So that often when people talk about “het zuiden” they’re referring to the provinces of Brabant and Limburg.
Everything north of Stockholm is Norrland (the northern lands). The west coast of Sweden is the in the south of Sweden. The south of Sweden is everything south of Stockholm. For the most part Sweden is quite Stockholm centric, though this is very dependent on where in Sweden you come from.
Western Norway is the western part of South Norway; Eastern Norway is also just the Eastern part of South Norway; Central Norway is the northern part of South Norway; Southern Norway is the southern part of South Norway. That’s what you get when your country is shaped like a spoon.
One thing that throws people is that they think England is directly south of Scotland, and Scotland directly north of England. Go from London in a straight line up and you end up in Edinburgh. But that’s not so; people forget that England is further in the east, and Scotland is further west. Look at a map and you see that Edinburgh is as far to the west as Cardiff, Wales. Basically the easternmost parts of England stretch out toward the Low Countries (Belgium/Netherlands) while the westernmost parts of Scotland stretch out toward Ireland. If you went directly north of London in a straight line you’d end up in the North Sea!
In Cyprus, it’s contentious and you can’t come up with any terminology that won’t make at least someone extremely upset.
But ignoring all of that, usually “north” and “south” are used mostly in the political sense when they are standalone. That usually denotes either a moderate centre to centre-left Turkish Cypriot or a social liberal or extraparliamentary leftist Greek Cypriot political leaning. Or it’s used by non-Cypriots without any intentional political statement behind it.
Cyprus is too small for a meaningful need for geographic descriptions outside of weather forecasts. In weather forecasts it will be suffixed with “coast”, e.g. “southern coastal regions” and then it’s purely geographic. It wouldn’t make sense to just say “in the south” in a weather forecast because mountains.
Denmark being a peninsula and a bunch if islands is difficult to divide like that. But a try would be something like:
West is Jutland.
North is Northern Jutland and a couple of islands.
South is Fyn island, surrounding islands, and also Jutland from about the Middle and down.
Centre is the eastern coastal areas of Jutland plus Fyn and surrounding islands.
East is Sjælland island and surrounding islands and also includes Bornholm island which is far more to the east.
It also includes all the medium-sized islands south of Sjælland even though the southernmost tip of one of them is the southernmost point of Denmark.
Oh, amd North-East is the one little island of Anholt.
Yes, there are several mentioned twice. I said it was difficult to divide the country like that.
I don’t think we are as, litterally, twisted as you, but we do warp the geography, mainly lengthwise.
So Sweden is very long, but most people live in the southernmost 1/3. This has the consequence that many people view “northern sweden” as anything north of that, including the parts that are actually south of the centre point.
And when talking about east/west we do, in my experience, mostly talk about the two coasts, the west coast and the east coast. People do to an extent say “västsverige” (western Sweden) but mainly when referring to the area around Göteborg.
Other than that most of the time we use named regions to describe what we talk about. The country is because of historical reasons divided into three unevenly sized parts north to south, Norrland, Svealand and Götaland. These are then divided into smaller parts with cultural significance.
Other than that people often say “the [some large city] region”.
In France, the region Grand Est is actually in the north-east. When people use est, they actually mean this area.
The Nord département is one of the two northernmost départements, son it checks out!
Sud (South) is broad and often requires more detail. The south east and south west of France are very different in many aspects, and people sometimes disagree on where the south begins.
In Sweden West means south-west and East means south-East. South means southernmost and north means everything in the northernmost 2/3 of the country no matter if it is on the eastern och western side. Mid-sweden is totally in the eye of the beholder and can mean anything between Östersund and Jönköping, but never anything in the northern half of the country.
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The East in reality is only the North-East.
The West is everything except the North-East.
The North, if you ask a Northerner, is North of the Elbe river.
The North if you ask a Southerner is North of the Danube river.
When people say ‘The North’ in England, they are referring to the northern half or third of England, rather than taking Scotland into account. So if you look at Britain as a whole, ‘The North’ is in the middle! We also have ‘The West Country’ which is the South-Western peninsula of England, not Wales as the name might suggest.
Northern Ireland is actually the North-East of Ireland, in fact, the Republic of Ireland is further north in places. Some people in England call the Republic ‘Southern Ireland,’ but this is just plain wrong.
People don’t really think too much about how illogical this all is, you just get used to it.
The North is only the North-East
The West is everything West of the Danube
The East is everything East of the Tisza
The South is just the Southern part of the Great Plains
Like any country that isn’t shaped like a diamond, the distinction is pretty arbitrary (the most eastern point is north), but I think the shape of the country is regular enough that it makes sense.
And then I consider:
North and Soluth in Belgium are achtually mostly straight up and down, which is accidental as the language border is the devide.
Now that I think about it, we don’t really use cardinal directions in Romania. We usually use the name of the region (Transylvania, moldova). With the exception of the south, which is described as the south, because “tara romaneasca” is too archaic and too close to the name of the entire country. Also, the south can include Dobrogea too, which wasn’t in țara românească in the past, but is culturally similar with those regions.
We have the Big Rivers as a major North-South divide, but it’s really only a South divide. Divisions are made by province even though there will be some grey area in the borders
West: the Hollands and Zeeland, sometimes also the central Utrecht and Flevoland
North: the North-east. Groningen, Friesland, Drenthe
East: the Center-east. Overijssel and Gelderland
South: most of the South, just not the Western part. Noord-Brabant and Limburg.
In Spain when we talk about the North is usually the western half, the one that borders with the Cantabric sea. The eastern part of the north is referenced as the Pyrenees.
And I learned some time ago that a good part of Tenerife island is above what islanders call “the north”
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Abruzzo (or at least most of it) is part of Southern Italy in basically every sense of the word (cultural, linguistic, historical) but physical geography, as it stretches further nord than some parts of Lazio, which is definitely Central Italy. Accordingly, physical geography data such as weather reports has Abruzzo in Central Italy while Economic, Social, Historical data has it grouped within Southern Italy.
This causes some confusion among Italians as well, especially the Abruzzesi themselves, who like the idea of being part of a less maligned group (a bit like the Romania is in Central Europe crowd)
Similarly, Emilia Romagna is linguistically and culturally north-western but it is literally on the east coast.
Die Ostschweiz, Eastern Switzerland is the North-East (between Zurich and Lake Constance).
It’s the Alps that define North/South, so because the part of the country that is sticking out quite prominently straight due East, many parts of it are South of the Alps, so Südostschweiz it is. But the sticking-out part belongs all to the same Canton, Graubünden, so we call it that. The term Südostschweiz also encompasses parts within the “torso” of Switzerland that are not part of the canton of Graubünden, but culturally and historically closer to it, than to the Ostschweiz proper.
The other cardinal directions make more sense.
The canton Wallis is Südschweiz in the weather report, because South of the Alps, bordering Italy, but culturally more Westschweiz, because for the more populated part French-speaking. It’s often “Westschweiz and Wallis” in media, though. It’s isolated enough to be its own cultural sub-area.
There is also Nordwestschweiz, which is German-speaking cantons along the Jurassic mountains. Which makes sense! It’s in the North-West, but not French-speaking enough to be Westschweiz.
Actually, Südschweiz makes only sense geographically, but not culturally.
Mainland Portugal is pretty much a north-south rectangle, so north and south are quite accurate in terms of direction.
Though the country is divided into north, centre and south, with the Douro and Tagus rivers, which flow in from Spain, dividing the country in three. But this means that the north is smaller and the south is actually the whole southern half. Lisbon is south, centre or neither depending on who you ask.
There’s a small region along the coast between Lisbon and Leiria referred to as the West, but otherwise we don’t use east and west. We have instead littoral and interior, i.e. coastal and inland, which is a more useful division.
Nothing very surprising for Austria as a whole, but for the state of Styria: “Western Styria” (Weststeiermark) and “Eastern Styria” (Oststeiermark) are the regions east and west of Graz respectively, i.e. they’re really southwestern and southeastern Styria. The huge mountainous chunk in the north that extends a lot further west than Western Styria, i.e. the region where places like Leoben, Mürzzuschlag, and Liezen are, is called “Upper Styria” (Obersteiermark).
I think in Lithuania it fits the directions pretty well. Taking Kaunas as the middle point (which it is, more or less) we would mostly refer to north, south, west and east.
North starts a bit further than Kaunas, but it’s actually not a very practical reference since Skuodas to Visaginas is all north but it’s the whole width of the country.
West Lithuania is northwest sort of, but south west doesn’t really exist due to the shape of the country. It’s just south.
Historically East Hungary did actually kind of mean North-East, but South meant more of a central, cardinal south and North meant cardinal North. Since Hungary lost 72% of its historic territory East has shitted to cardinal East, South shifted South-East and North remsined cardinal North.
You’re not ready for French geography.
Never say to a French that Lyon is in the south.
Same if you say Normandy/Brittany is in the north.
What is actually northeast and southwest is often included in southeast. Culturally similar.
In France the north would be the région Haut de France which is actually up north, the west is mostly Bretagne, the east is everything from champagne to alsace, but the south is more tricky.
I feel like in general when we say south it’s mostly the south east, and even then you have to specify whether it’s côte d’azur or languedoc or Var, etc. as it’s very varied.
If you want to talk about Toulouse or the basque country you would usually specify south west
In the US they call “Midwest” some areas that are clearly east
Sweden is a long but narrow country so the north basically is the north and the south is the south. However the border isn’t exactly a straight line, and what we call the north takes up more than half of the country.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norrland#/media/File%3ASverigekarta-Landsdelar_Norrland.svg
People often refer to Northern Ireland as “the north” despite the most northerly point on the island being in the Republic of Ireland in Donegal.
Similarly people in the north would refer to the Republic of Ireland as “the south”.
I think people just forget Donegal exists.
We also say weird stuff like “driving up to Dublin” despite it being very much below us.
Central Finland is significantly south from the center point of Finland and Northern Finland encompasses entire northern half of the country. Oulu, the largest city in Northern Finland is actually somewhat close to the middle point of Finland.
Finnish population is heavily concentrated to the southern part of the country.
The North is Nordland, Troms and Finnmark county, very much what it says, given the elongated shape of Norway, although stretching east of Istanbul, at its extreme end, due to polar convergence.” The Southland” is Agder county, but as a concept rather new, , from around 1900. The West and the East is divided by the watershed, it stretching north along the spine of the central mountains, until we muddle our way out of compass directions and fall back on historic region and gnarly dialects in Trøndelag,
The north (Nord-Norge) is a lot more than half of Norway in length and stretches far eastwards because of how our country is located. The south can both be said about the entire southern part of Norway (Sør-Norge) or the specific southernmost part (Sørlandet). West (Vestlandet) is the western coastal part of the southern part, divided from the east by the mountains and highlands. The east (Østlandet) is the southeastern part, but can also be meant more specifically as the areas closer to Oslo.
Belgium’s big north/south divide is both linguistic and political. Dutch-speakers live in Flanders in the north, and French-speakers live in Wallonia in the south.
The Brussels-Capital Region is technically on the northern side of the line, but we’re 90%+ French-speaking, so it’s a big exception to the rule. For the record, the Brussels Region is only 3.5 km away from Wallonia at its closest point.
The “east” always gets forgotten – many people would associate it with Ostbelgien, our tiny German-speaking area, but you might find some Limburgers who look more eastwards towards Germany.
Belgium also has sort of an east-west divide too: it separates (historical) Flanders from (historical) Brabant in the north, and in the south, you find the province of Hainaut (Charleroi/Pays Noir/Borinage…) in the west versus the greener, leafier east (Namur/Liège provinces).
Added some rough lines myself to a map of Sweden.
https://i.imgur.com/7IrjIVP.png
Basically, southern Sweden is just the southern tip with Skåne and Blekinge, and maybe some parts of Halland and Småland included.
Western Sweden is Västergötland, Bohuslän and Dalsland (we usually forget about that one though), plus maybe the northern parts of Halland.
Northern Sweden (Norrland) covers more over 60 percent of the country and includes everything north of Gästrikland and Härjedalen. I know the climatological definition of Norrland starts north of the river Dalälven in Dalarna, hence I didn’t draw the line at the exact border (though I didn’t draw the exact line of the river either, sorry if I offended someone).
I didn’t draw it on the map, but if someone was talking about central Sweden I’d assume they were talking about the area around the lakes Mälaren and Hjälmaren, meaning Uppland, Södermanland, Närke and Västmanland.
If someone was talking about eastern Sweden, I’d assume they were a time traveler from the 18th century talking about Finland.
I live in East-Flanders, which is the second most Western province of Flanders.
The ‘Flanders’ in the province’s name refers to the historical County of Flanders, which only covered the Western half of the modern Region of Flanders.
In Portugal its said that Lisbon is “the south”. The north-south dynamic is somewhat similar to England’s if you’re familiar with that, and both countries’ capitals are in the south. But as someone from the Algarve it confuses me that Lisbon is considered to be in the south because to me it very much feels like its in the center of the country. The so-called center region of Portugal encompasses far too much of the north of the country in my opinion, but that’s purely from a geographic standpoint as in terms of culture there is a noticeable distinction between the north and center regions. The south for me is the Algarve and Alentejo regions though the latter actually goes up beyond Lisbon.
The terms “west” and “east” aren’t really used in Portugal, perhaps due to the country’s shape? Instead you have the litoral (aka the coast) and the interior. The litoral has a larger population density and urban development, whereas the interior is more rural.
When we talk about “East Norway”, we mean the eastern part of southern Norway.
Up north, Norway bends eastwards, and both Troms and Finnmark is way east of “Eastern Norway”.
Since Denmark is made up of islands and a peninsula, generally it’s more common to refer to specific islands than to regions. If anything, the east-west distinction is more important than the north-south one, with “west” referring to the Jutland peninsula and “east” to everything else.
South Denmark exists as an administrative region, but it’s a bit of a mess that just slaps together sparsely-populated parts of Jutland with Funen and the small islands to its south. It’s not a very organic term, is what I’m trying to say.
What does organically exist is distinctions of north and south within specific islands/peninsulas. The quirkiest ones are probably North Sealand, which only refers to the northeastern part north of Copenhagen (this is the traditional home of the rich) and the historically significant distinction between South Jutland (Sydjylland) and Southern Jutland (Sønderjylland). Essentially, Southern Jutland is the part of the peninsula that was historically part of the duchy of Schleswig and was under German rule until 1920, while South Jutland is the part of the peninsula NORTH of that line but still south of an obsolete administrative border. They are culturally and historically seperate, but the nomenclature is a bit of a mess.
Everything is named in relation to the western part of the country, so The South is actually southwest.
The official Southern Federal Region isn’t even the most southern part of the country because North Caucasus (actually northeast Caucasus since the mountain range goes from northwest to southeast) is it’s own region.
There is a region in the southeast that goes just as far to the south, but it’s just a part of the Far East.
The Extreme North / Far North spans the entire country but it’s mostly northeast. The western end is an actual far north, but on the east coast the Far North starts at about the latitude of Moscow. So, more than half of the Far East is also the Far North.
Russia is very asymmetrical, so the western third of Russia consists of the Russian North, Central Russia in the west, the Volga in the east and Southern Russia. The central third of Russia is Siberia, and the eastern third of Russia is finally appropriately named the Far East.
I think the distinction in Bulgaria is quite clear. The mountain Stara planina serves as a natural border between North and South.
East vs West is a bit more complex, since it’s based mostly on linguistic features. Mainly the so called “ѣ border”. Western dialects pronounce it as “e” and easterna as “я”. But once again the country is split almost perfectly in half in most people’s view.
My town is located at the geographical centre of the country, but everyone will tell you it’s in the northern and eastern parts thanks to those borders.
Germany: Cardinal directions are fine. North-South is very clear, East-West influenced by history, but mostly clear. Although you might be confused if someone from Trier (10 km to Luxembourg) says that Hof (15 km to Czechia) is in the West.
Fruitless debates happen about whether Frankfurt-Main is already in the North of if Göttingen is already in the south. We cannot use “middle”, as “Middle Germany” is mostly the former GDR because of 1937 borders.
Sweden’s west coast is a little bit like the american yankee. Where non american call americans yankees and american calling yankees the far north east and the north east is calling yankees a very specific part of the north east.
The west coast imo is the part north of Gothenburg to the norwegian border the west coast. Some account for Halland, the middle province part of the west coast and then there are people calling even Skåne part of the west coast.
Some people don’t differentiate on the western coast of Sweden (Västra kusten) and the west coast (västkusten)
In Iceland if you say you’re “going south” it means you’re going to the capital, Reykjavík, doesn’t matter if you’re coming from the north, east, west or even the south.
Also besides the cardinal directions there’s the highlands in the middle, and the Westfjords, which is sometimes lumped in with western Iceland but it’s usually it’s own area.
Northern Norway: Everything north of Trøndelag county (Trondheim)
Eastern Norway: Oslo-area and east, up to around Dombås/Oppdal.
However, the easternmost point is Vardø which is VERY far north and east. In fact, Vardø is further east than Kiev and Cairo. So when someone say they live in “Eastern Norway”, they really mean southeast. If they live in Vardø, they would say Northern Norway.
In the Netherlands. South really means South. Generally we talk about below the rivers (cut through the country horizontally) that split the country in half. This makes sense because the rivers have had quite the influence on our history. For example the North was Protestant and the South Catholic and during WWII liberation of the North was delayed after the bridges were blown up.
I guess sometimes we forget Zeeland exists (located in the South-West). So that often when people talk about “het zuiden” they’re referring to the provinces of Brabant and Limburg.
Everything north of Stockholm is Norrland (the northern lands). The west coast of Sweden is the in the south of Sweden. The south of Sweden is everything south of Stockholm. For the most part Sweden is quite Stockholm centric, though this is very dependent on where in Sweden you come from.
As a European, always visualized Japan being north-south and I was a bit surprised to learn that Japanese think their main islands being east-west.
Western Norway is the western part of South Norway; Eastern Norway is also just the Eastern part of South Norway; Central Norway is the northern part of South Norway; Southern Norway is the southern part of South Norway. That’s what you get when your country is shaped like a spoon.
One thing that throws people is that they think England is directly south of Scotland, and Scotland directly north of England. Go from London in a straight line up and you end up in Edinburgh. But that’s not so; people forget that England is further in the east, and Scotland is further west. Look at a map and you see that Edinburgh is as far to the west as Cardiff, Wales. Basically the easternmost parts of England stretch out toward the Low Countries (Belgium/Netherlands) while the westernmost parts of Scotland stretch out toward Ireland. If you went directly north of London in a straight line you’d end up in the North Sea!
In Cyprus, it’s contentious and you can’t come up with any terminology that won’t make at least someone extremely upset.
But ignoring all of that, usually “north” and “south” are used mostly in the political sense when they are standalone. That usually denotes either a moderate centre to centre-left Turkish Cypriot or a social liberal or extraparliamentary leftist Greek Cypriot political leaning. Or it’s used by non-Cypriots without any intentional political statement behind it.
Cyprus is too small for a meaningful need for geographic descriptions outside of weather forecasts. In weather forecasts it will be suffixed with “coast”, e.g. “southern coastal regions” and then it’s purely geographic. It wouldn’t make sense to just say “in the south” in a weather forecast because mountains.
Denmark being a peninsula and a bunch if islands is difficult to divide like that. But a try would be something like:
West is Jutland.
North is Northern Jutland and a couple of islands.
South is Fyn island, surrounding islands, and also Jutland from about the Middle and down.
Centre is the eastern coastal areas of Jutland plus Fyn and surrounding islands.
East is Sjælland island and surrounding islands and also includes Bornholm island which is far more to the east.
It also includes all the medium-sized islands south of Sjælland even though the southernmost tip of one of them is the southernmost point of Denmark.
Oh, amd North-East is the one little island of Anholt.
Yes, there are several mentioned twice. I said it was difficult to divide the country like that.
I don’t think we are as, litterally, twisted as you, but we do warp the geography, mainly lengthwise.
So Sweden is very long, but most people live in the southernmost 1/3. This has the consequence that many people view “northern sweden” as anything north of that, including the parts that are actually south of the centre point.
And when talking about east/west we do, in my experience, mostly talk about the two coasts, the west coast and the east coast. People do to an extent say “västsverige” (western Sweden) but mainly when referring to the area around Göteborg.
Other than that most of the time we use named regions to describe what we talk about. The country is because of historical reasons divided into three unevenly sized parts north to south, Norrland, Svealand and Götaland. These are then divided into smaller parts with cultural significance.
Other than that people often say “the [some large city] region”.
In France, the region Grand Est is actually in the north-east. When people use est, they actually mean this area.
The Nord département is one of the two northernmost départements, son it checks out!
Sud (South) is broad and often requires more detail. The south east and south west of France are very different in many aspects, and people sometimes disagree on where the south begins.
In Sweden we have the province Västerbotten which lies in the northeast. It’s west of Österbotten, formerly a part of Sweden.
In Sweden West means south-west and East means south-East. South means southernmost and north means everything in the northernmost 2/3 of the country no matter if it is on the eastern och western side. Mid-sweden is totally in the eye of the beholder and can mean anything between Östersund and Jönköping, but never anything in the northern half of the country.
The Republic of Ireland is further north than Northern Ireland