Related Directory Categories
- Storstrøms Amt (110)
- Århus Amt (48)
- Viborg Amt (42)
- Roskilde Amt (41)
- Vestsjællands Amt (31)
- Storstrøms Amt (30)
- Københavns Amt (30)
- Frederiksborg Amt (29)
- Fyns Amt (28)
- Rejser og turisme (26)
Sources
Help build the largest human-edited directory on the web.
Submit a site - Become an editor
Wikipedia. Licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Are you an expert in this subject? Join the discussion and share your knowledge at Wikipedia.org.
Amt (country subdivision)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Amt" is a name for subnational administrative units used in some northern European countries. It is generally larger than a municipality, and the term is thus roughly equivalent to "county".
Contents |
The Amt (plural, Ämter) is unique to the German Bundesländer (federal states) of Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg. Other German states had this subdivision in the past. Some states have similar administrative units called Samtgemeinde (Lower Saxony), Verbandsgemeinde (Rhineland-Palatinate) or Verwaltungsgemeinschaft (Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia).
An amt, as well as the other above-mentioned units, is subordinate to a district, and is subdivided into municipalities. Normally it consists of very small municipalities; larger municipalities do not belong to an amt, and are called "Amt-free municipalities" (amtsfreie Gemeinden).
The amt (plural, amter; English, "County") used to be an administrative unit in Denmark (and, historically, of Denmark-Norway), and was composed of one or more municipalities ((Danish, kommuner). See Counties of Denmark for more information about the Danish usage of the term.
The Danish Municipal Reform of January 1, 2007 created five administrative regions to replace the traditional 13 amter. At the same time, smaller municipalities were merged into larger units, cutting the number of municipalities from 270 to 98. The counties were established by royal decree in 1662.
Ambacht can be seen as Dutch equivalent to amt. Ambachten existed in Holland, Zeeland and Flanders up to about 1800.
From 1662 to 1919, the counties of Norway were called amter. They are now referred to as fylker.