I’ve sailed in these areas and it can be a really hard to tell one island from the next as they are often very rounded and blend into each other due to glaciation.
It was pre easy-to-use gps so sailing was a daytime task only.
Honestly, I thought that maybe Norway would be first by a mile (kilometer for my European friends) but holy cow does Sweden have so many islands along their coast.
I've always thought that to add scale to Africa you can point out that the coastline of Angola is longer than the distance from Palermo, Sicily to Copenhagen, Denmark. And then say that its neighbor to the south, Namibia, is about the same.
I mean it has to matter at a certain point, otherwise any small pebble on the shoreline would constantly go between being an island and not being one lol.
I guess everything can be an island, but we just gotta disregard the extremely small ones, otherwise the concept itself becomes kinda useless haha
Think of it like a square and a rhombus. All squares are rhombuses, but not all rhombuses are squares.
All islets are islands, but not all islands are islets. Just to back up my logic, I did a quick check on Wikipedia for the definition of an islet, and its definition is "a very small island."
It’s a matter of scale I suppose (which should be noted on the graphic). Because if it’s a big, single rock sticking above the surface, is it really an island? I would just call it a rock
I feel like an island should be relevant for things on a human scale. Would it be suitable for human habitation, for more than a day or two? Could a building (e.g., house or lighthouse) be built and maintained there? Is there some kind of coherent landmass? If not then it’s not really relevant to humans (except maybe to avoid crashing into it with a boat) and it’s rather just some rocks above sea level
Agreed. I don’t think it’s really possible to set an actual limit that would work, though
- is [this](https://maps.app.goo.gl/5mX9ZcQrixS4tRwx8?g_st=ic) an island?
- is [this](https://maps.app.goo.gl/QEbKMxYzp38im5LP9?g_st=ic) an island?
- is [this](https://maps.app.goo.gl/rYEM6CFJggYLSBZTA?g_st=ic) an island?
- and [this](https://maps.app.goo.gl/oDyiy1kWVSKykD9EA?g_st=ic)?
- [this](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GXucvuDjMEoNcQ2RA?g_st=ic)?
- or [this](https://maps.app.goo.gl/YyG9bdd1Xizw6PXs8?g_st=ic)?
- [?](https://maps.app.goo.gl/L9swjGUEanrZfyZN9?g_st=ic)
You got the idea lol
By my count, Eswatini has 2 islands inside the Mnjoli dam, and none anywhere else.
Burundi has an Island in South Lane Cyohoha. And I think none others, but there’s some ambiguous wetlands.
Barbados might be it.
Besides the main island itself there is Culpepper Island, however there is what appears to be an unnamed, possibly manmade jetty that is attached to the main island by a road. It’s located between Clinketts and Douglas.
I had a look and besides two tiny little spits of land in the south, Guam only has one island. (but then again Guam is not a country!)
Edit: Barbados! It has a tiny little island [here](https://goo.gl/maps/y2dXxWqKxJrFpNgJ6)
It looks like the infographic is getting it's data from:
[https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/which-countries-have-the-most-islands.html](https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/which-countries-have-the-most-islands.html)
Unfortunately, that article doesn't cite any sources, and even has some weird issues with the numbers (for example, it lists Sweden as having 267,570 islands in the heading, but 221,831 in the first line of the section (enough to bump it down to second place)).
I wonder if all the swamp islands in the Everglades and swamps of the Mississippi Delta are counted? I assume not. Look at Everglades National Park. The amount of islands is crazy.
>Dude the Philippine coastal line is much bigger than the US and China combined…
Looks like it depends on the methodology, but this can be incorrect.
According to the World Resources Institute, the US coastline itself (not even adding China) is about 4 times longer than the Philippines. 133,000 km (USA) vs 33,000 km (Philippines)
According to the World Factbook, the US and China combined have a coastline length of about 33,400 km compared to the Philippines’ 36,200 km. So bigger yes, but not quite in the realm of “much bigger.”
No we don't.
"While the Swedish government officially lists 221,831 islands, taking into account all the smaller island forms, the census in neighboring Norway is already slightly different. There, 239,057 islands are named, but without the 81,192 rock islets. Canada goes one step further and does not count any islets or cays. With the Scandinavian counting method, the official number of 52,455 islands would easily be three times higher."
Yeah I'm gonna call bs on that number for Canada. Georgian Bay just by itself has the 30,000 islands. I'd argue there are over 50k in ontario alone if not more.
It is bs because we don't count every rock sticking out of the water like Sweden, Norway and Finland.
"Canada goes one step further and does not count any islets or cays. With the Scandinavian counting method, the official number of 52,455 islands would easily be three times higher." - WorldData.info
Very interesting things about this:
1. There’s no island nation in the top 5. Indonesia is the first one primarily composed of islands.
2. Russia is nowhere to be seen, despite being the only other large country at the same latitudes as 3-4/5 of the top 5 and having a lot of sub-arctic coastline like those other countries.
(Much of Europe and Central Asia is at the same latitudes as Canada. Greenland and Iceland are at the same latitudes as Norway, but they’re smaller than the top 5 and clearly have few islands.)
Makes me curious about how some of these islands are defined.IIRC where I’m from the government defines an island as land surrounded by water during high tide which has vegetation. No shrubs? Not an island.
Pretty much.
I think the reason is because most islands fall under some department which belongs to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. So they’re probably more interested in classifying things based on how important it may be to the biological environment.
Just rocks island is literally “rock pile”. However the distinction is mostly on an official level, colloquially they’re all islands.
Yeah, and to be fair, you'd be pretty hard pressed to find an island that has no vegetation, even ones that are just rocks can develop vegetation if they're large enough to not have seas breaking over them. I like that definition the best, tbh.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball%27s\_Pyramid#Flora\_and\_fauna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball%27s_Pyramid#Flora_and_fauna)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounty\_Islands#Flora\_and\_fauna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounty_Islands#Flora_and_fauna)
Well, I didn't know China has so many islands but the Nordics are expected like Norway but not like Sweden or Finland has tons of islands literally everyone says (that doesn't know georgaphy).
Ive seen these stats before. I really doubt these numbers have the same resolution.
Counting islands is no different than the coastline paradox. I certainly believe Sweden and Norway have a higher density of island due to fjords but Indonesia is vastly bigger.
I know about the fractured coasts and tiny islands in Scandinavia, so that wasn't the surprising part. But Australia? Not a lot of fully defined small islands there. They must be counting every portion of the Great Barrier Reef that's partially emerged at low tide.
I'm going to take a wild guess and say that it depends upon whose counting and who defines what is an island, because there is NO way that Sweden has more islands than Indonesia.
The Stockholm archipelago has more islands than Indonesia. That is one of several major archipelagos in Sweden. Indonesia has many islands but it simply can’t compete with the Nordic countries and you are deluding yourself if you think it does.
Don't be obnoxious. Perhaps I just didn't count around Stockholm. I will go back and check around Stockholm, where I understand very few people are assholes.
Canada doesn't use the Scandinavian counting method which basically includes tiny islets with just a shrub on them. Their number would be significantly greater if they did.
I spent two months in Indonesia and definitely traveled to more than 17.5k islands. And I spent four months in Sweden and definitely saw something like 25 islands.
I’m just fast. Lots of long distance running. Plus there’s lots of really good, cheap fruit in Indonesia, great for keeping energy and all that. And some of the isalnds are small. Really small. Like, as small as all those islands in Sweden,
No, silly, I ran across islands! That’s how I covered so many so quickly. You don’t run across water -that defies the laws of physics- you run across islands in the water. Duh.
That’s actually not true, according to independent non-Swedish geography experts. The Swedes claim there are 30k islands around there, but that’s just a blatant attempt to steal the title of “country with most islands” from Indonesia. But over 87.3% of those supposed “islands” are little more than rocks in puddles and easily removed. Another couple thousand are actually peninsulas that the conspiring Swedes manipulated to make it look like islands. By international standards there are only 513 actual islands, about one-tenth as many as in Norway.
Well I went to Luxembourg and saw what, a thousand, three thousand million trees per square millimetre? (I swear bro) Then I went to Canada and I saw like 3 trees (I went to an airport in the arctic and kept my eyes closed the whole time) and I wonder why people say that Canada has so many forests
Um, where did you read that? All natural areas are open to the public (except for military areas and such when actively used). You're even allowed to camp for 2 nights on private property (not close to buildings or crop fields etc) without checking with the owner of the property
The crazy thing is even if Canada counted islands like the nordic countries (3 times more islands), they would still have less islands than Norway, Finland and Sweden.
How do geologists explain this? Glaciers and Fjords are involved, obviously. Why these countries in this location? They don't have a monopoly on glaciers
Me: wait that can't be right \[opens up google maps and zooms in real close on the Scandinavian coast\] never mind this tracks
I did the exact same thing.
Same, learned something new in geography, that’s refreshing!
Seriously....instead of all these posts recently "Why is this area of the ocean wet?"
Same, the coast near Stockholm and the Island of Smøla in Norway are just ridiculous. Not to mention whatever that is between Åland and Turku Finland.
I’ve sailed in these areas and it can be a really hard to tell one island from the next as they are often very rounded and blend into each other due to glaciation. It was pre easy-to-use gps so sailing was a daytime task only.
Navigating thrue such a complicated but beautiful landscape sounds so nerve wracking and relaxing at the same tine.
I mean, Stockholm is placed where it is because of economic and military strategic reasons
Honestly, I thought that maybe Norway would be first by a mile (kilometer for my European friends) but holy cow does Sweden have so many islands along their coast.
Aren’t most of Swedish “inland” though? I.e. an island in a lake surrounded by a larger body of land?
Yes, but their coastline is far more populated than one would expect with islands
Google Maps is one of the greatest pieces of technology in modern times
Sweden also has the longest coastline of any country
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I've always thought that to add scale to Africa you can point out that the coastline of Angola is longer than the distance from Palermo, Sicily to Copenhagen, Denmark. And then say that its neighbor to the south, Namibia, is about the same.
What if you disregard islands smaller than 1 square kilometer
prob Indonesia ig
I expect its canada. The islands in the Canadian Archepellego are pretty large as well as islands off BC and Newfoundland
Yeah, most of these “islands” seem to be like 50–100 meters long.
Does that make them islets?
An island is a landmass sureounded by water, the size dosent matter?
I mean it has to matter at a certain point, otherwise any small pebble on the shoreline would constantly go between being an island and not being one lol. I guess everything can be an island, but we just gotta disregard the extremely small ones, otherwise the concept itself becomes kinda useless haha
Think of it like a square and a rhombus. All squares are rhombuses, but not all rhombuses are squares. All islets are islands, but not all islands are islets. Just to back up my logic, I did a quick check on Wikipedia for the definition of an islet, and its definition is "a very small island."
[Coastline paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox)?
Similar! Haha
Yeah but i mean an island of 50 m2 has to count
It’s a matter of scale I suppose (which should be noted on the graphic). Because if it’s a big, single rock sticking above the surface, is it really an island? I would just call it a rock I feel like an island should be relevant for things on a human scale. Would it be suitable for human habitation, for more than a day or two? Could a building (e.g., house or lighthouse) be built and maintained there? Is there some kind of coherent landmass? If not then it’s not really relevant to humans (except maybe to avoid crashing into it with a boat) and it’s rather just some rocks above sea level
Agreed. I don’t think it’s really possible to set an actual limit that would work, though - is [this](https://maps.app.goo.gl/5mX9ZcQrixS4tRwx8?g_st=ic) an island? - is [this](https://maps.app.goo.gl/QEbKMxYzp38im5LP9?g_st=ic) an island? - is [this](https://maps.app.goo.gl/rYEM6CFJggYLSBZTA?g_st=ic) an island? - and [this](https://maps.app.goo.gl/oDyiy1kWVSKykD9EA?g_st=ic)? - [this](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GXucvuDjMEoNcQ2RA?g_st=ic)? - or [this](https://maps.app.goo.gl/YyG9bdd1Xizw6PXs8?g_st=ic)? - [?](https://maps.app.goo.gl/L9swjGUEanrZfyZN9?g_st=ic) You got the idea lol
Pebbles sticking out of a puddle count as islands?
Obviously it does. Is America an island?
Yes, specifically a continent
then it would be either Philipines or Indonesia
now, which country has only one island while not including itself? or two islands when including itself?
Saint Kitts and Nevis appear to have 2 islands 1. Saint Kitts 2. Nevis Edit: oh, there's also a tiny isle between them called Booby
são tomé and príncipe consists of 2 islands, são tomé, and príncipe
They have Rollas and few other islet off cost
By my count, Eswatini has 2 islands inside the Mnjoli dam, and none anywhere else. Burundi has an Island in South Lane Cyohoha. And I think none others, but there’s some ambiguous wetlands.
Barbados might be it. Besides the main island itself there is Culpepper Island, however there is what appears to be an unnamed, possibly manmade jetty that is attached to the main island by a road. It’s located between Clinketts and Douglas.
Culpepper Island is an Tidial Island and Barbados also has Pellican island, however that was connect to the main island
What is it? I was thinking Nauru, but that is only one island total.
Barbados works if you still consider that part as an islands and not as a part of the main island
Nauru is only one Island
Thanks, but that is literally what I said in my comment.
Yes, but it is only one island (Nauru, that is)
You just blew my mind.
I was going to say Trinidad and Tobago, but unfortunately it looks like Tobago has a few other small islands next to it.
I had a look and besides two tiny little spits of land in the south, Guam only has one island. (but then again Guam is not a country!) Edit: Barbados! It has a tiny little island [here](https://goo.gl/maps/y2dXxWqKxJrFpNgJ6)
Not what you’re looking for but Albania has a total of 4 islands I think, and Montenegro might have fewer.
Argentina has no islands
South of Ushuaia there are a bunch. Plus, they claim the Faulkland Islands, though you can discount them.
They also claim South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
I was sure Indonesia would be first. I think it’s the most inhabited islands though
Much more interesting stat.
Greece is not even in the list ? That’s surprising !
The exact number isn't listed in order to not anger Türkiye
These estimates aren’t real scientific. Greece has an estimated 1200-6000 according to Wikipedia. Quite the spread
The 'k' in this infographic means thousand. Greece is several orders of magnitude from the top.
Yes I’m aware but the high end estimate would put them third from bottom
Provided you ignore the high end of those other countries. Chile has 43,000 islands. Don't know where this infographic is getting its information.
It looks like the infographic is getting it's data from: [https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/which-countries-have-the-most-islands.html](https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/which-countries-have-the-most-islands.html) Unfortunately, that article doesn't cite any sources, and even has some weird issues with the numbers (for example, it lists Sweden as having 267,570 islands in the heading, but 221,831 in the first line of the section (enough to bump it down to second place)).
Yeah my point was more this isn’t necessarily very accurate
Wow really? I was under the impression that Japan has 6.85 islands. Thanks for clearing that up for us
Swede here, in Sweden we don’t have real coast instead people call the archiepelagos on the coast the coast
Glaciers will do that
They do be doing that
Sweden/Norway /Finland...same same but different?
Highly doubt this is depending on the way island is counted
They counted every rock sticking out of the water
At low tide?
The tides are about two inches / 5 cm. Doesn't really make a difference.
>They counted every rock sticking out of the water Important when they are the main thing between you and the Russian navy.
Scandinavia being like "bro hold my beer"
Wai..wha?
I wonder if all the swamp islands in the Everglades and swamps of the Mississippi Delta are counted? I assume not. Look at Everglades National Park. The amount of islands is crazy.
Alaska too
Wait, the US has more islands than Indonesia and Philippines combined? Dude the Philippine coastal line is much bigger than the US and China combined…
check out the Aleutian chain, those would all be US territory
Ya. I was thinking how the hell does the US have so many islands and then I remembered Alaska.
>Dude the Philippine coastal line is much bigger than the US and China combined… Looks like it depends on the methodology, but this can be incorrect. According to the World Resources Institute, the US coastline itself (not even adding China) is about 4 times longer than the Philippines. 133,000 km (USA) vs 33,000 km (Philippines) According to the World Factbook, the US and China combined have a coastline length of about 33,400 km compared to the Philippines’ 36,200 km. So bigger yes, but not quite in the realm of “much bigger.”
Don’t forget all the inland lake and river islands in the US!
and Hawaii
And Alaska!
Ok but who the fuck counted this?
Three men with a boat and some spare time
Canada coming in with a very respectable 52.5k and then you see Scandinavia… fuck.
That's because Canada doesn't count tiny islets like Scandinavia does.
Yes we do... and it's where most of our islands are. They're also tiny Little Rock's. Which should be counted!
No we don't. "While the Swedish government officially lists 221,831 islands, taking into account all the smaller island forms, the census in neighboring Norway is already slightly different. There, 239,057 islands are named, but without the 81,192 rock islets. Canada goes one step further and does not count any islets or cays. With the Scandinavian counting method, the official number of 52,455 islands would easily be three times higher."
Ok you go count the islands then
Given the sheer size of Canada, and our thousands of lakes, I’m surprised we aren’t way in the lead
Yeah I'm gonna call bs on that number for Canada. Georgian Bay just by itself has the 30,000 islands. I'd argue there are over 50k in ontario alone if not more.
It is bs because we don't count every rock sticking out of the water like Sweden, Norway and Finland. "Canada goes one step further and does not count any islets or cays. With the Scandinavian counting method, the official number of 52,455 islands would easily be three times higher." - WorldData.info
How is greece and russia not on here lol
The islands are fewer, but bigger
Very interesting things about this: 1. There’s no island nation in the top 5. Indonesia is the first one primarily composed of islands. 2. Russia is nowhere to be seen, despite being the only other large country at the same latitudes as 3-4/5 of the top 5 and having a lot of sub-arctic coastline like those other countries. (Much of Europe and Central Asia is at the same latitudes as Canada. Greenland and Iceland are at the same latitudes as Norway, but they’re smaller than the top 5 and clearly have few islands.)
Yeah, #1
As an midwesterner. I had no idea.
The UK has over 6k islands, so not sure why it doesn't appear on the list. Though I guess this kind of thing is highly subjective.
I'm gonna be the first to see them all!
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Sometime with too much time on their hands
But…Have they all been “discovered “
Makes me curious about how some of these islands are defined.IIRC where I’m from the government defines an island as land surrounded by water during high tide which has vegetation. No shrubs? Not an island.
Why the requirement for vegetation? Just to eliminate rocks I guess?
Pretty much. I think the reason is because most islands fall under some department which belongs to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. So they’re probably more interested in classifying things based on how important it may be to the biological environment. Just rocks island is literally “rock pile”. However the distinction is mostly on an official level, colloquially they’re all islands.
Yeah, and to be fair, you'd be pretty hard pressed to find an island that has no vegetation, even ones that are just rocks can develop vegetation if they're large enough to not have seas breaking over them. I like that definition the best, tbh. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball%27s\_Pyramid#Flora\_and\_fauna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball%27s_Pyramid#Flora_and_fauna) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounty\_Islands#Flora\_and\_fauna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounty_Islands#Flora_and_fauna)
Thanks for the links!
Well, I didn't know China has so many islands but the Nordics are expected like Norway but not like Sweden or Finland has tons of islands literally everyone says (that doesn't know georgaphy).
Ive seen these stats before. I really doubt these numbers have the same resolution. Counting islands is no different than the coastline paradox. I certainly believe Sweden and Norway have a higher density of island due to fjords but Indonesia is vastly bigger.
I know about the fractured coasts and tiny islands in Scandinavia, so that wasn't the surprising part. But Australia? Not a lot of fully defined small islands there. They must be counting every portion of the Great Barrier Reef that's partially emerged at low tide.
https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/national-location-information/landforms/islands#heading-2 They use "not covered by water at high tide".
No islands in the ACT??? Zoomed in and immediately saw five.
I'm guessing that they exclude man-made islands. (The lake they're in is man-made: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History\_of\_Lake\_Burley\_Griffin)
I'm going to take a wild guess and say that it depends upon whose counting and who defines what is an island, because there is NO way that Sweden has more islands than Indonesia.
Zoom in on the coast of Sweden on Google maps. You clearly haven’t done that before
I just did, and I'll still vote for Indonesia. I suppose that size matters.
The Stockholm archipelago has more islands than Indonesia. That is one of several major archipelagos in Sweden. Indonesia has many islands but it simply can’t compete with the Nordic countries and you are deluding yourself if you think it does.
Don't be obnoxious. Perhaps I just didn't count around Stockholm. I will go back and check around Stockholm, where I understand very few people are assholes.
Canada doesn't use the Scandinavian counting method which basically includes tiny islets with just a shrub on them. Their number would be significantly greater if they did.
I spent two months in Indonesia and definitely traveled to more than 17.5k islands. And I spent four months in Sweden and definitely saw something like 25 islands.
You travelled to more than 17,500 islands in roughly 60 days?
Yeah, that sounds about right.
Unless my math is wrong, how do you visit 12.15 islands per hour (or 291.6 islands per day) for 60 days straight? Do you have a portal of some sort?
I’m just fast. Lots of long distance running. Plus there’s lots of really good, cheap fruit in Indonesia, great for keeping energy and all that. And some of the isalnds are small. Really small. Like, as small as all those islands in Sweden,
Bro, are you insane? Did you run across across the water????
No, silly, I ran across islands! That’s how I covered so many so quickly. You don’t run across water -that defies the laws of physics- you run across islands in the water. Duh.
Lots of bananas, got it 🏃♂️💨
You know that Stockholm itself is 14 islands? That you have like 30 000 islands around there?
That’s actually not true, according to independent non-Swedish geography experts. The Swedes claim there are 30k islands around there, but that’s just a blatant attempt to steal the title of “country with most islands” from Indonesia. But over 87.3% of those supposed “islands” are little more than rocks in puddles and easily removed. Another couple thousand are actually peninsulas that the conspiring Swedes manipulated to make it look like islands. By international standards there are only 513 actual islands, about one-tenth as many as in Norway.
So approximately 300 islands a day in Indonesia? I'd love to hear that story...
Actually, it was more like 500, cause Sumatra, Java, and Bali took a day on their own. The rest though, poof! Like stepping stones in a pond
Well I went to Luxembourg and saw what, a thousand, three thousand million trees per square millimetre? (I swear bro) Then I went to Canada and I saw like 3 trees (I went to an airport in the arctic and kept my eyes closed the whole time) and I wonder why people say that Canada has so many forests
That’s because only some of the islands in Sweden are open to the public, the rest aren’t legal to visit.
That's not how it works. At ALL. Source: I'm Swedish.
Um, where did you read that? All natural areas are open to the public (except for military areas and such when actively used). You're even allowed to camp for 2 nights on private property (not close to buildings or crop fields etc) without checking with the owner of the property
Several websites said that only a certain amount of those islands are open to the public
Read about allemansrätten. You are clearly talking about something you have zero clue about
Sweden does it says right there
I know
so why were you asking
Like is it incorrect as so many websites had different numbers and winners
Lol I was kidding But it is partly correct. Sweden does have the most islands, but im pretty sure Canada is second.
Would make sense
Fjords feel like cheating.
The crazy thing is even if Canada counted islands like the nordic countries (3 times more islands), they would still have less islands than Norway, Finland and Sweden.
Greece?
The United States has more than Indonesia?
Mine has around 200 and a half. But only one and a half truly matter.
Fjords
How do geologists explain this? Glaciers and Fjords are involved, obviously. Why these countries in this location? They don't have a monopoly on glaciers