I want to exclude Islands because they are too often the obvious answer. So considering only the mainland, is there any region that feels somehow disconnected? Is it mostly because of geographical/morphological reasons or more because of cultural/historical reasons?

19 comments

  1. The county of [Donegal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_Donegal) is often referred to as the “Forgotten County” because of its location within Ireland. It is in the Republic but shares [93%](https://www.govisitdonegal.com/visitor-information/where-is-donegal-located) of its land border with Northern Ireland. It shares close ties with the neighbouring counties of Derry, Tyrone and Fermanagh but as they are in NI, they are all in a different jurisdiction which contributes to the feeling of isolation. A huge amount of people cross the border every day to work or study somewhere in Northern Ireland. Needless to say, Brexit has complicated these matters.

    The accent in Donegal is distinctive within Ireland and the dialect of Irish spoken there is much different to Irish spoken further south. Donegal Irish arguably sounds closer to Scots Gaelic than it does to Kerry/Cork Irish. Another example of the disconnect is that Donegal often votes in referenda in the opposite way to the rest of the Republic.

  4. Regional identity is strong in Italy, especially in the north people from border areas (but not only them) may feel disconnected from the rest of the country (cultural influences from neighbouring countries and geography contribute to this feeling). Also valleys usually form communities and strong identities, in this case geography plays a huge role.

  5. Trás-os-Montes has the saying “Depois do Marão, mandam os que lá estão”, meaning “After the Marão (a mountain chain), there rules those that live there”.

    It’s the furthest region in continental Portugal from Lisbon, and it’s cut off from the other regions by mountain chains and the river Douro. It’s also the only region in Portugal that speaks another language along with Portuguese, Asturian

    The Algarve also is kind of disconnected, as the sparsely populated areas of Baixo Alentejo serve as a barrier against the rest of the country. During centuries, it was included as a different kingdom in Portuguese kings’ titles, that styled themselves as rulers of Portugal and the Algarves

  7. For the Netherlands the obvious answer would be Friesland, since it has its own language.

    But I’d also vote for (Zuid-)Limburg, not so much for its different landscape but more for its identity: Some referring (incorrectly) to the *entire rest* of the country as “Holland”, so not just the Holland provinces, not the entire country, just anywhere except Limburg. *

    People from Noord-Brabant also have a strong connection to the Brabant identity (especially outside of Brabant), but I wouldn’t consider them so disconnected.

    On a smaller city/town scale I’d vote for Urk for religious reasons.

    * generalizing here, plenty of people in Friesland and Limburg probably feel plenty connected to the rest of the country.

  8. Maybe Alsace? We Alsaciens are often teased by people from other parts of France for being more German than French. I’ve had people jokingly ask me “who are you rooting for?” when France and Germany faced each other in sport matches, or simply “your country is playing tonight!”, referring to Germany.

    In some ways I feel the contrast too. We’re surrounded by German last names, and I’m sometimes surprised to meet people with typically French ones. It reminds me that there are names other than Meyer, Muller, Schmidt, etc.

    A lot of things culturally are still very distinctly reminiscent of our relatively close past as part of the German Empire along with Lorraine, there are some specific customs and laws from that era on certain issues that are still applied despite now being an integral part of France, so I can see how it could seem a bit disconnected.

  9. In Romania we have two districts in the center of the country where the biggest Hungarian minority resides. The dominant language there is Hungarian and many of their people and political representatives demand autonomy.

  10. Tunceli (or Dersim) is a city in the middle of Turkey. It’s almost always leading in statistics like most books read, education index even ahead of the metropolises, for no good reason.

    It’s also the only city to have a communist mayor at the moment.

  11. There’s two strong contenders, Frisia and Limburg. But I think I’d have to go with Limburg. Depending on your definition it has its own language, two of them even if you count the tiny pocket of Ripuarian, although Limburgish is thus far only recognised as a regional language and doesn’t have the status that Frisian has and has held for a while already. But it’s also one of only two provinces (the other one being neighbouring Noord-Brabant) that is historically Catholic in a historically Protestant country so it’s got different traditions and a somewhat different culture to most of the country.

    Plus it’s only been a part of the Netherlands for 150 years or so where all the other provinces have already been together for more like 400. For the period in between only bits and pieces were part of the Netherlands and other bits and pieces belonged to multiple other nations. Things got shuffled around a bit after the defeat of Napoleon, Belgium got stuck to the Netherlands and a new province of Limburg was created. Belgium didn’t like being stuck to the Netherlands (rude) so revolted 15 years later in 1830 and most of Limburg tried to go with it. Didn’t quite succeed and in the end it was decided that half of Limburg would go to Belgium and the other half would be in the Netherlands. Which is why there’s now a Belgian Limburg and Netherlandic Limburg, both just called “Limburg” in their respective countries. Dutch Limburg tried to scamper off a few more times but didn’t succeed and is still stuck with the rest of us whether they like it or not. Might be majority the latter.

  12. London.

    It’s a disproportionately powerful force, and far too much of the governance of this country is based on what works in London rather than elsewhere. Our entire transport network is nothing but one big hub and spoke stem which utterly fails to serve most of the country. Regional development is an afterthought.

  13. Vorarlberg, it‘s the westernmost Bundesland (state) of Austria. Their dialect is alemannic, which is kind of odd since the rest of Austria speaks bavarian dialects.
    They are a bit different in their mentality and culturally close to Switzerland/Southern Baden-Württemberg (Germany)

    Also Vienna is kind of different. But that‘s just like anywhere else where there‘s one highly populated city with a primate status in a country. Some might say Vienna is overdimensioned for a small country like Austria since it grew as the capital for the habsburg empire. We‘ve got this saying about Vienna: Wasserkopf Wien, which roughly translates to hydrocephalus Vienna, just meaning it‘s kind of bloated.

  14. Maybe somewhat ironically, our only mainland part, Jutland, is “disconnected” like an island. Our capital is on an island, and a lot of people live on islands, so Jutland is geographically apart. Furthermore, there are regional identities based on where you come from, and the Jutes have a pretty strong one (both collectively as Jutes, but also local). There is also a sense that Jutland and the islands besides Zealand are forgotten, when public money is allocated, so the Jutes have a term for all the money and attention being focused on Copenhagen or Zealand

  15. Throughout history, Paphos district, especially the rural part, has always been the “backwater” of the island. During Ottoman and British occupation, it has been the most difficult region to control, mostly due to the more mountainous geography and the distance from more important parts of the island. Rebel and anarchist/anti-government presence has therefore been higher here than than the rest of the country. This is still reflected today in the local culture/mentality.

    In the last few decades this disconnect is mostly gone. But there are still jokes made about how Paphos is the backwater/most rural region of the country. Or that it isn’t even part of the country at all (Pafexit). The only tunnel on the island is on the highway, just before entering Paphos district. Jokes are made that you need to show your passport after the tunnel, since you are entering a different country (ironically this area is on UK territory).

    In modern days, the most disconnected part of the country is the turkish occupied north, wich is only de jure under the control of the Republic of Cyprus. There is literally a UN border separating the northern and southern parts of the island. People CAN cross this border, but since it is de facto a differnet government that controls it, it is obviously very disconnected from the south. Furthermore, the majority of people in the north are turkish speaking muslims, while in the south the majority are greek speaking christians.

  16. Spanish country side its like a void of development, apart from a bunch of main cities, everything in between Madrid and the coast its just vast empty land. Sparse tiny villages completely detached from the rest. Back in Christmas I drove through Soria and no gas station in nearly 80 km, driving through a considered ‘main’ road.

  17. I’d probably say Skåne (Scania), the southernmost region. It has a very distinct dialect, a strong regional identity and a landscape that differs quite a lot from the rest of Sweden. They are often jokingly referred to as Danes by people from other parts of Sweden, mostly because of the geographical proximity and their shared history.

  18. Polish city of Szczecin, maybe. Not terribly so, as Poland is centralized, but it’s in the north-west corner of Poland and closer to Berlin than any other major Polish city, so flying, attending events, even shopping is done there. It also gets lots of German shoppers. It’s probably the only place in Poland where learning German is treated somewhat seriously. The area around it is quite sparsely populated, so it feels a bit isolated. There’s a joke that whenever a character in a soap opera needs to be written out, they move to Szczecin. The region is also the least religious in Poland, due to communist resettlement after WWII.

  19. I feel like Dobruja fits the bill. Full of wetlands/marshes in the north, small mountains, thick forests and of course, the seaside.

    It is certainly much different than the rest of the country, both geographically and population-wise.

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