Norfolk Island 🇳🇫

Norfolk Island belongs to Australia and New Zealand, and it is a dependent territory rather than a country in the political sense. The long form of the name is Territory of Norfolk Island. The capital is Kingston.

Its territory runs to 36 km², which ranks it 239th of the 250 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind the Pitcairn Islands and just ahead of the United States Minor Outlying Islands. For scale, it is around a quarter larger than Tuvalu.

Its recorded population is just 2,200, among the smallest anywhere. Among the 5 entries in Australia and New Zealand it ranks 4th by area and 3rd by population.

Norfolk Island does not hold a United Nations seat of its own. It is administered as a dependency or overseas territory rather than as a sovereign state, which is why it sits outside the 193 member states while still appearing among the 250 entries on this site.

Not holding a UN seat is not the same as having no self-government, and the administrative details make that clear. Norfolk Island has 5 of the five markers of separate administration tracked on this page — its own currency, its own dialling code, its own internet domain, its own iso codes and a designated capital. In day-to-day terms it is run substantially as its own jurisdiction.

• Its own currencyAUD
• Its own dialling code+672
• Its own internet domain.nf
• Its own ISO codesnf / NFK
• A designated capitalKingston

Its reference point sits at 29.0° south and 167.9° east, which puts it in the southern hemisphere, roughly 3,232 km from the equator, in what geographers would call subtropical latitudes.

Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include South Africa, Chile and Lesotho.

It shares no land border with anyone. That puts it among the 85 entries of 250 here with no land neighbours, so everything and everyone arrives by sea or by air.

Norfolk Island has no land border with any country, which changes what "nearby" means. Measured centre to centre in a straight line, the closest other entry on this site is New Caledonia, roughly 870 km away. These are approximate distances between representative points, not the shortest crossing between two shorelines, so treat them as a sense of scale rather than a sailing chart.

No land border also means no land crossing: everything and everyone arrives by sea or by air. That single fact drives a lot of what follows on this page, from how goods reach the shops to why Norfolk Island's dialling code and internet domain are worth knowing before you travel.

Density comes out at around 61 people per square kilometre, which makes it less crowded than the typical entry on this list. The median across all 250 entries here is about 90 per square kilometre.

People from Norfolk Island are called Norfolk Islanders.

It recognises 2 languages: English and Norfuk. Norfuk is listed for no other entry in this dataset, which makes it effectively unique to Norfolk Island. English, the first listed, is shared with 90 other entries worldwide.

Inside Oceania it places 22nd of 27 by population, and it accounts for under 1% of everyone living in Australia and New Zealand.

Norfolk Island does not have the Australian dollar to itself. It is one of 7 entries on this site that use the currency, whose code is AUD, and the others include listed below. A shared currency usually points at something real — a monetary union, a currency board, a former colonial administration, or a small economy pegging itself to a large neighbour's money — and it means a price quoted in AUD travels further than you might expect.

Language reaches wider still. English is listed for 91 entries here, Norfolk Island among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

Zoom in from the world to Australia and New Zealand and Norfolk Island sits 3rd of 5 by population and 4th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is New Zealand just above and Christmas Island just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

Australia is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Australia and New Zealand has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇳🇿 New Zealand
• 🇨🇽 Christmas Island
• 🇦🇺 Australia

It uses the Australian dollar ($, AUD). That is a shared currency: 6 other entries use it, including Australia, Christmas Island, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Kiribati and Nauru.

Kingston is the seat of government and the answer most quizzes are looking for.

The top-level domain is .nf. Calls from overseas start with +672. Its ISO codes are nf and NFK, which is what most databases and flag files use.

On the UN list it does not appear as a member. It uses Australia's currency and issues none of its own, which is the usual mark of a dependency. Of the 250 entries here, 57 are territories or observers rather than member states.