Norfolk County

Norfolk County may refer to one of several counties:

Norfolk

Norfolk /ˈnɔːrfək/ is a county in East Anglia. It borders Lincolnshire to the west and north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea and, to the north-west, The Wash. The county town is Norwich.

With an area of 2,074 square miles and a population of 859,400, Norfolk is a largely rural county with a population density of 401 per square mile. Forty per cent of the county's population live in four major built up areas: Norwich (213,000), Great Yarmouth (63,000), King's Lynn (46,000) and Thetford (25,000).

The Broads is a network of rivers and lakes on the county's east coast, extending south into Suffolk. The area is a National Park and is protected by the Broads Authority.

History

Norfolk was settled in pre-Roman times, with camps along the higher land in the west where flints could be quarried. A Brythonic tribe, the Iceni, inhabited the county from the 1st century BC to the end of the 1st century AD. The Iceni revolted against the Roman invasion in 47 AD, and again in 60 AD led by Boudica. The crushing of the second rebellion opened the county to the Romans. During the Roman era in Norfolk roads and ports were constructed throughout the county and farming took place widely.

Massachusetts

Massachusetts ⁱ/ˌmæsəˈtʃuːsᵻts/, officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, Vermont and New Hampshire to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Massachusetts is the 7th smallest state by land area, but the 15th most populous and the 3rd most densely populated of the 50 states. With an estimated 6.8 million residents in 2015, it is the most populous of the six New England states and has the nation's sixth highest GDP per capita. The capital of Massachusetts, as well as the state's largest city, is Boston. The state features four separate metropolitan statistical areas: the Boston-Cambridge-Quincy metropolitan area in the east, the Worcester metropolitan area in the center, the Springfield metropolitan area in the west, and the Barnstable metropolitan area in the southeast. Over 80% of Massachusetts' population currently lives in the Greater Boston Combined Statistical Area.

County

A county, abbreviated Cnty. (US) or Co. (UK and Ireland), is a geographical region of a country used for administrative or other purposes, in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French conté or cunté denoting a jurisdiction under the sovereignty of a count (earl) or a viscount. The modern French is comté, and its equivalents in other languages are contea, contado, comtat, condado, Grafschaft, graafschap, Gau, etc. (cf. conte, comte, conde, Graf).

When the Normans conquered England, they brought the term with them. The Saxons had already established the districts that became the historic counties of England, calling them shires (many county names derive from the name of the county town with the word "shire" added on: for example, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire). The Vikings introduced the term earl (from Old Norse, jarl) to the British Isles. Thus, "earl" and "earldom" were taken as equivalent to the continental use of "count" and "county". So the later-imported term became a synonym for the native English word scir ([ʃiːr]) or, in Modern English, shire. Since a shire was an administrative division of the kingdom, the term "county" evolved to designate an administrative division of national government in most modern uses.