Talk:Farthings of Iceland

Latest comment: 1 year ago by Akigka in topic title

title edit

This is an interesting, nice and informative article, but it does not explain the title. It states that its subjects are called "landsfjórðungar" in Icelandic, but nowhere whether or how they have acquired a recognised name in English. I had never heard of them before stumbling across this article, and to my knowledge the term "farthing" in the sense used here was coined by the author J. R. R. Tolkien to refer to the divisions of his fictional "Shire", on the basis of the parallel "ridings" in Yorkshire and the Parts of Lindsey – and has nothing to do with Iceland. Deipnosophista (talk) 15:40, 22 February 2019 (UTC)Reply

Farthing is an Old English term meaning a quarter. See [1]. It was commonly used for coinage, but has also been used in English as a translation for the Icelandic fjórðungur at least since the 19th century. --Akigka (talk) 10:09, 2 November 2022 (UTC)Reply