A Scandinavian mile (

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

and sv, mil, [], like "meal") is a unit of length common in Norway and Sweden, but not Denmark. Today, it is standardised as 1 being , but it had different values in the past.snl.no
/ref> The word is derived from the same Roman source as the

English mile The mile, sometimes the international mile or statute mile to distinguish it from other miles, is a British imperial unit and United States customary unit of distance; both are based on the older English unit of length equal to 5,280 English ...

. In Norway and Sweden, the

international mile The mile, sometimes the international mile or statute mile to distinguish it from other miles, is a British imperial unit and United States customary unit of distance; both are based on the older English unit of length equal to 5,280 English ...

is formally called "English mile" (), although it is generally just referred to by the English word ''mile''. However, in situations where confusion may arise it is more common for Scandinavians to describe distances in terms of the official

SI unit The International System of Units, known by the international abbreviation SI in all languages and sometimes pleonastically as the SI system, is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most widely used system of measurement. ...

kilometre. This modern definition of 10 kilometres (km) is equivalent to the obsolete myriametre, which was once used in France.

History

In Norway and Sweden, the old "land mile" or "long mile" was 36,000

feet The foot ( : feet) is an anatomical structure found in many vertebrates. It is the terminal portion of a limb which bears weight and allows locomotion. In many animals with feet, the foot is a separate organ at the terminal part of the leg made ...

: because of the different definitions of foot then in use; in Norway this was and in Sweden . There was also a ('forest mile') that was half as long as the normal '. i.e. a bit over , and equal to an even older unit of measurement, the ('rest', 'pause'), so named since it was seen as the distance a man would normally be able to walk between rests, corresponding to the league in other countries. When the

metric system The metric system is a system of measurement that succeeded the decimalised system based on the metre that had been introduced in France in the 1790s. The historical development of these systems culminated in the definition of the Interna ...

was introduced, the ' was redefined to be exactly . The metric system was introduced in Norway in 1875 and Sweden in 1889, after a decision by the parliament in 1876 and a ten-year transition period from 1879. In 1887 the metric system was introduced to

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

. The traditional Finnish , called ' in Swedish (that defined the same length), was then redefined to be exactly . In Finland, however, it has been much less in use than in Sweden.

Usage

The ' is currently not used on

road signs Traffic signs or road signs are signs erected at the side of or above roads to give instructions or provide information to road users. The earliest signs were simple wooden or stone milestones. Later, signs with directional arms were introduce ...

, and kilometre is the standard for most formal written distances. However, it is very common in colloquial speech, including 5 km, which is referred to in Swedish as "half a '" (). The ' has however not lost all formal uses. Various tax deductions, for example regarding distance travelled for business purposes, are measured in ' by the Swedish Tax Agency (). It is also used in the most common unit for measuring vehicle fuel consumption – "litres per '" – and in second-hand car advertisements, where odometer readings are often quoted in ' though the car itself records kilometres.

In literature

Naomi Mitchison, in her autobiographic book ''You May Well Ask'', relates an experience during a walking tour in Sweden: "Over in Gotland I walked again, further than I would have if I had realized that the milestones were in old Swedish miles, so that my disappointing three-mile walk along the cold sea edge under the strange ancient fortifications was really fifteen English miles". Naomi Mitchison, You may well ask", London, 1979, Part I, Chap 7.

References

{{reflist Units of length Science and technology in Norway Science and technology in Sweden Decimalisation 1889 introductions

History

Usage

In literature

See also

References