Administrative divisions of Iceland

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Administrative divisions of Iceland" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Icelandic. (January 2022) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Icelandic Wikipedia article at [[:is:Stjórnsýsluumdæmi Íslands]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|is|Stjórnsýsluumdæmi Íslands}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Politics of Iceland
Government Constitution of Iceland Law Taxation Constitutional reform
Legislature Althing Speaker Þórunn Sveinbjarnardóttir (S) Members of Parliament Constituencies
Executive President of Iceland Halla Tómasdóttir (I) Prime Minister of Iceland Kristrún Frostadóttir (S) Cabinet
Judiciary Supreme Court of Iceland President Benedikt Bogason Justices of the Court
Elections Presidential Parliamentary 2012 referendum
Political parties List of political parties
Administrative divisions Regions (Landshlutar) Municipalities (Sveitarfélög) Localities (Kaupstaðir)
Foreign relations Diplomatic missions of Iceland in Iceland Iceland and the European Union Cod Wars (1950s / 1970s)
Iceland portal Other countries
v t e

This article shows the administrative divisions of Iceland.

Until 2003, the constituencies for the parliament elections were the same as the regions, but by an amendment to the constitution they were changed to the current six constituencies. The change was made in order to balance the weight of different districts of the country since a vote cast in the sparsely populated areas around the country would count much more than a vote cast in the Capital Region. The imbalance between districts has been reduced by the new system, but still exists.

There are eight regions which are primarily used for statistical purposes; the district court jurisdictions also use an older version of this division. Healthcare in Iceland is divided into 7 healthcare districts which correspond to the 8 regions of Iceland with the exception of the Northwestern Region and the Northeastern Region which are a single healthcare district.

As of 2024, there are 63 municipalities in Iceland.^[1] These govern most local matters like kindergartens, primary schools, waste management, social services, public housing, public transport, services to senior citizens and to disabled people. They also govern zoning and can voluntarily take on additional functions if they have the budget for it. The autonomy of municipalities over their own matters is guaranteed by the constitution of Iceland.

Historically, Iceland was divided into 23 counties. Currently, Iceland is split up amongst 24 sheriffs that represent government in various capacities. The jurisdiction of the Sheriff's Offices greatly resemble the historical county divisions. Amongst their duties are local police (except in Reykjavík, where there is a special office of police commissioner) tax collection, declaring bankruptcy and civil marriage.

Historically, Iceland was divided into farthings that were named after the cardinal directions. These were administrative divisions established in 965 for the purpose of organising regional assemblies called farthing assemblies and for regional courts called quarter courts. Each farthing contained three local assemblies (held in spring and autumn) except the Norðlendingafjórðungur which had four.

• List of cities and towns in Iceland
• ISO 3166-2 codes of Iceland
• FIPS region codes of Iceland (standard withdrawn in 2008)
• NUTS of Iceland
• Subdivisions of the Nordic countries