Talk:Fell

Untitled

In my opinion, these two pages should be merged into the Fell article, which is one of the terms commonly used to translate the word tunturi from Finnish into English. The Tunturi article does not contain enough information to warrant its own article and could instead be made into a subsection of the Fell article. In addition, the word fjeld should disambiguate to this article and not Scandinavian Mountains as it does now. I'm still debating as to whether these pages should all just be merged into the Mountain article under local definitions. -Yupik 08:16, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I tend to agree. This article is really just a dicdef. --Mais oui! 08:43, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I certainly agree that they should be merged. This page is a bit of a mess which I've been meaning to tackle for some time, but don't have the knowledge to do so without some research. As I understand it, in the Lake District the original meaning of fell (before it was hijacked by fellwalkers) is uncultivated grazing land above the intake wall, and each valley or community would have its own Fell (called Coniston Fell, Torver Fell, Seathwaite Fell etc) for common grazing. Wainwright has a bit of a discourse about it in The Southern Fells I think. If the article could be expanded along these lines it would have more grounds for existence than it does at the moment. --Blisco 12:31, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I've added a little along these lines; I hope it's reasonably clear. The article needs more information about the Scandinavian meaning though; I tried to glean a little from the German article but my German's not nearly good enough. --Blisco 13:46, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I've changed the paragraph breaks to keep the fell-words from Scandinavia away from the tundra-words. I'm not sure how the tundra words are relevant to the article title, but maybe the title is wrong or maybe (as said above) it should be merged into mountain. I'd personally prefer to see more material on the uncultivated grazing land. That's the connotation when villages have a "fell gate" that leads from the enclosed farmland of the village to the common grazing on the fells. That's not about mountains at all. --Northernhenge (talk) 12:25, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I can try to explain the meaning of the Norwegian word "fjell". It can have (at least) three different meanings:

1. 'fjell' could be equivalent to the English word "rock"

2. 'a "fjell"' is a mountain, were the highest peak is above the alpine treeline (most common use)

3. it can refer to all area above the alpine treeline

A few dialects also use the word "fjell" as a general word for mountain.

How this relates to grazing lands: The Norwegian mountains have often been used as grazing lands for animals. Grazing tends to lower the treeline, and thus creating more "fjell" area

How this relates to thundra: Scientists sometimes use the word 'tundra' to refer to the area above the alpine treeline and north of the arctic treeline. Reconfirm2 (talk) 08:13, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

What is the difference between a Fell and a Fellfield? Reconfirm2 (talk) 15:17, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Strange Section on Fennoscandia

The whole section on Fennoscandia is rather confusing to me, as a Scandinavian (Norwegian). Particularly the following sentence: "Without a tree line, it would generally be referred to as simply a mountain." The word "fjell" in Norwegian (and its equivalent in the other Scandinavian languages) means simply "mountain", using the following definition of mountain from Collins English Dictionary: "a natural elevation of the earth's surface rising more or less abruptly to a summit, and attaining an altitude greater than that of a hill, usually greater than 2000 feet (610 meters)". As such, it is unclear to me what word the author has in mind.

The definition "any mountain or upland high enough that forest will not naturally survive at the top" simply does not match common usage in Norway. The simple reason for this is that the altitude of the alpine tree line varies greatly from north to south in Norway. Using a definition strictly dependent on the alpine tree line would result in practically any hill in Northern Norway being defined as a "fjell", which is simply not the case. As the word "fjell" is used in contemporary Norwegian, it refers to "a natural elevation of the earth's surface rising more or less abruptly to a summit, and attaining an altitude greater than that of a hill". I am aware that some Norwegian dictionaries base their definition on the alpine tree line, but I also know that the authors themselves would never refer to a 300 meter hilltop in Northern Norway as a "fjell", even though there are no trees at the top.

To clarify the different meanings given by Reconfirm2: 1. "Fjell" on its own can be equivalent to the English word bedrock (not 'rock' in all its English meanings) if it is obvious from the context that the intended meaning is bedrock. Otherwise a Norwegian speaker would use the more specific term "grunnfjell". 2. "Fjell" can mean a mountain where the highest peak is above the alpine tree line. This is common usage in southern Norway, where the alpine tree line is more or less equivalent to 2000 feet, which, incidentally, is also the altitude given in the English definition of a mountain above. As you go north and the alpine tree line drops steadily, until it is more or less down to sea level in northernmost Norway, common usage of the term "fjell" is based primarily on altitude, rather than the alpine tree line. This is not simply a question of varying regional uses of the term, or dialects, as Reconfirm2 suggests, as southerners visiting Northern Norway apply the same definition when describing Northern Norwegian topography. 3. Finally, it is true that "fjell" can also refer to "all area above the alpine treeline". However, when used in this sense, Norwegians will invariably refer to "fjellet" (meaning literally "the mountain"), which any native Norwegian speaker will interpret as different from "et fjell" ("a mountain"). "Vidde" is an alternative term when specifically describing a mostly flat area above the alpine treeline.

In any case, I guess my main objection is that this article, or at least the content relating to Scandinavian usage, could very well be merged into the mountain article. The regional English usage of the term "fell" may warrant a separate article, but there is no justification for claiming that the Scandinavian word "fjell" has some fundamentally different meaning from the English word "mountain". Maitreya (talk) 15:01, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

"Fjäll" almost never means mountain in Swedish, and has a separate article on the Swedish Wikipedia. The fact that sv:Fjäll is a long featured article should show that this article is more than necessary.

The difference is highlighted in this quote from that page: "Dialektalt och i norskan och isländskan kan fjäll (fjell respektive fjall) syfta på alla typer av berg oavsett geografiskt läge, höjd och utseende". Fells are simply the type of mountain that are most prevalent in Scandinavia. Riagu (talk) 15:11, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, in that case (and as your quote from Swedish Wikipedia suggests), the main problem seems to be that the Swedish definition of fjäll has been presented as "Scandinavian". "Berg", while listed in Norwegian dictionaries (because of our Danish past), is practically never used in Norwegian and would be understood by Norwegians as simply an old-fashioned or poetic synonym for "fjell". I would suggest a rewriting of the section on Fennoscandia to take into account the differences in Norwegian and Swedish usage. Maitreya (talk) 09:38, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Venetz-Sitten Peak in the South Pole should be listed. The aforesaid is known as an 'fjelltopp' in Norwegian...

...and Sitten Peak in English.