Bangkok 2016

UNGEGN Norden Division Meeting, Bangkok, 28. April 2016

Present

Teemu Leskinen, Finland
Ulla Onkamo, Finland
Leila Mattfolk, Sweden
Staffan Nyström, Sweden
Annette Torensjö, Sweden, vice-chair

Agenda

1. Chairman’s welcome
2. Election of keeper of minutes
3. Acceptance of minutes agenda
4. Norden Division homepage
5. News from ELF, INSPIRE and EGN
6. Next Norden Division Meeting
7. Joint web-service project for the place names of minority languages
8. Any other business

Minutes

1. Chairman’s welcome

Annette Torensjö, the vice-chair, welcomed all participants. She also stated that the divisional meeting is unusual since only two countries are represented.

2. Election of keeper of minutes

Ulla Onkamo was elected as keeper of minutes.

3. Acceptance of minutes agenda

The title of the agenda item 7 was changed from joint database project for the place names of minority languages to joint web-service project for the place names of minority languages.

4. Norden Division homepage

Homepage: https://nordendivision.nfi.ku.dk/. Due to any recent changes, all member countries are advised to check their own information, details and links and send any additions, corrections or amendments to Peder Gammeltoft. Also the divisional and country information on the UNGEGN webpages should be checked, and possible updates communicated to the UNGEGN secretariat (Vilma Frani, frani@un.org).

Annette Torensjö suggested a news section to be added to the homepage. The section could contain organisational, technical and linguistic news within the Norden Division area (for example information on the new place name law established in Iceland in 2015). The idea of a news section on the homepage was supported.

5. News from ELF, INSPIRE and EGN

It was noted that EGN has become a part of the ELF-project. Sweden has contributed to the ELF-project on how to present Sweden’s place names in ELF-services. Current names presentation includes point symbols for named places and the names themselves are difficult to read. Teemu Leskinen reminded that the present ELF schema does not include information on names placement but only elements called named places, with place names as their attributes.

Teemu Leskinen informed that the EU has invited an expert pool to discuss possible amendments to the existing INSPIRE schemas, one of them being the GN schema (Geographical names). The ELF-project has suggested some additions to the original INSPIRE-schema, mainly for cartographic purposes. Both the proposal to add a new attribute preferred/not preferred for one of the parallel names in different languages, and the proposal to add a new attribute population for demographic information for the object named place were opposed by Finland, with statements of reasons.

Annette Torensjö added that in an an ELF-meeting in 2015 Sweden had noted that in Sweden none of possible parallel Swedish, Saami and Meänkieli can be marked as ”preferred” or ”not preferred”.

It was discussed that this kind of information should be additional data outside the schema itself. Original INSPIRE-schema should also be separated from the additional ones.

In the expert pool Teemu Leskinen had also commented, that the feature classification of the schema is poor, and improvements to it would be welcome.

Participants noted that these questions should be carefully followed in the forthcoming ELF-meetings.

6. Next Norden Division Meeting

Annette Torensjö told that the chair of the Norden Division, Peder Gammeltoft, had tentatively proposed a meeting to be held in autumn 2016. Teemu Leskinen suggested that instead of autumn 2016 the meeting could be organised in spring 2017 in order to better prepare for the meeting and the next conference in New York in August 2017 and find out the current situation and representatives in each member country. All participants agreed.

It was also noted that it would be of benefit to arrange the meeting as a joint meeting with some of the other divisions (e.g. Dutch and German-speaking division) or working groups (e.g. WG on Cultural Heritage, WG on Toponymic Data Files and Gazetteers). One of the issues to be discussed with the last named working group could be the relationship between UNGEGN and GGIM and preparations for the next conference.

Hønefoss in Norway was mentioned as a possible venue for the meeting.

7. Joint web-service project for the place names of minority languages

Norden Division has had an idea of promoting the development of a geographical names web-service for the indigenous and minority language groups of the Norden Division area.

Teemu Leskinen reminded that Nordic mapping agencies already hold the relevant names data for the service [see WP 34 of the 26th UNGEGN Session] and in a few years the data will be available through harmonised INSPIRE WFS-services. An idea would be to invite the Saami community to develop a ”Saami names service” (e.g. a Saami user interface) based on these harmonised INSPIRE services.

This issue will be discussed more closely in the forthcoming Norden Division meetings.

8. Any other business

Current situation of the Norden Division and UNGEGN representatives and their contact details was dicussed.

Denmark: The successor of Rune Lyngbo at the Danish Geodata Agency has not been decided yet.

Norway: There will not be teaching of toponymy in the university of Oslo anymore. Anne Svanevik and Kjetil Ringen will continue as the representatives of Norwegian Mapping Authority.

Sweden: The successor of Annette Torensjö (who is now working at the Institute of Language and Folklore) at the Lantmäteriet has not been decided yet. Staffan Nyström will stand aside after the conference in 2017; there is no information on the possible successor.

Finland: Teemu Leskinen continues as the representative of the National Land Survey of Finland. Sirkka Paikkala, Ulla Onkamo and Maria Vidberg are the representatives of the Institute for the Languages of Finland.

It was noted that the chairmanship of the Norden Division has been held by turns, each of the turns being five years. This tradition is considered to be practical and it has also been appreciated by the other divisions of UNGEGN. The change of chairmanship is due to happen during the conference in 2017. It would be Norway’s turn to take over.