Length
- skrupel – scruple, 1/12 linje or approx. 0.18 mm.
- linje – line, 1/12 tomme or approx. 2.18 mm
- tomme – thumb (inch), 1/12 fot, approx. 26.1 mm. This unit was commonly used for measuring timber until the 1970s. Nowadays, the word refers invariably to the English inch, 25.4 mm.
- kvarter – quarter, 1/4 alen.
- fot – foot, 1/2 alen. From 1824, 313.74 mm.
- alen – forearm or ell, 627.48 mm from 1824, 627.5 mm from 1683, 632.6 mm from 1541. Before that, local variants.
- favn – fathom (pl. favner), 3 alen, 1.882 m.
- stang – rod, 5 alen or 3.1374 m
- lås – 15 favner, 28.2 m
- fjerdingsvei – quarter mile, alt. fjerding, 1/4 mil, i.e. 2.82 km.
- mil or landmil – Norwegian mile, spelled miil prior to 1862, 18,000 alen (36,000 feet, 7.018 miles or 11.295 km). Before 1683, a mil was defined as 17600 alen or 11.13 km. Another old land-mile, 11.824 km. The unit survives to this day, but in a metric 10 km adaptation
- rast –lit. "rest", the old name of the mil. A suitable distance between rests when walking. Believed to be approx. 9 km before 1541.
- Kaffekok, a similar term to rast used in the north by the indigenous Sami people.
- steinkast – stone's throw, perhaps 25 favner, used to this day as a very approximate measure of a short distance.
Read more about this topic: Norwegian Units Of Measurement
Famous quotes containing the word length:
“It is the vice of our public speaking that it has not abandonment. Somewhere, not only every orator but every man should let out all the length of all the reins; should find or make a frank and hearty expression of what force and meaning is in him.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within,
That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of
Glynn
Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore
When length was failure, and when breadth was but bitterness sore,
And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain
Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain,—
Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face
The vast sweet visage of space.”
—Sidney Lanier (1842–1881)
“They raise their minds by brooding over and embellishing their sufferings, from one degree of fervid exaltation and dreary greatness to another, till at length they run amuck entirely, and whoever meets them would do well to run them thro’ the body.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)