The Danes

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 started with a system of units based on a Greek pous ("foot") of 308.4 millimetres (1 ft) which they picked up through trade in the late Bronze Age

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...

/early Iron Age

Iron Age

The Iron Age is the archaeological period generally occurring after the Bronze Age, marked by the prevalent use of iron. The early period of the age is characterized by the widespread use of iron or steel. The adoption of such material coincided with other changes in society, including differing...

. Some early standards of measure can be recovered from measured drawings made of the 52.5 feet (16 m), which though dating to the early Iron Age exemplifies plank built vessels of the late Bronze Age and the 82 feet (25 m). Thwarts are typically spaced about 3 fod apart.
From May 1, 1683, King Christian V of Denmark

Christian V of Denmark

Christian V , was king of Denmark and Norway from 1670 to 1699, the son of Frederick III of Denmark and Sophie Amalie of Brunswick-Lüneburg...

 introduced an office to oversee weights and measures, a justervæsen, first led by Ole Rømer. The definition of the alen was set to 2 Rhine feet. Rømer later discovered that differing standards for the Rhine foot existed, and in 1698 an iron

Iron

Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...

 Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

 standard was made. A pendulum definition for the foot was first suggested by Rømer, introduced in 1820, and changed in 1835. The metric system was introduced in 1907.

Length

See also Danish rute (rod)

• mil – Danish mile
  Mile
  A mile is a unit of length, most commonly 5,280 feet . The mile of 5,280 feet is sometimes called the statute mile or land mile to distinguish it from the nautical mile...
  
  . Towards the end of the 17th century, Ole Rømer, Gerardus Mercator
  Gerardus Mercator
  thumb|right|200px|Gerardus MercatorGerardus Mercator was a cartographer, born in Rupelmonde in the Hapsburg County of Flanders, part of the Holy Roman Empire. He is remembered for the Mercator projection world map, which is named after him...
  
   and other contemporaries of the great Dutch cartographer Thisus began following Claudius Ptolemy
  Ptolemy
  Claudius Ptolemy , was a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the...
  
   in connecting the mile to the great circle of the earth, and Roemer defined it as 12,000 alen. This definition was adopted in 1816 as the Prussian Meile. The coordinated definition from 1835 was 7.532 km. Earlier, there were many variants, the most commonplace the Sjællandsk miil of 17,600 alen or 11.13 km (6.92 mi).
• palme – palm, for circumference, 8.86 cm (3.49 in)
• alen – ell
  Ell
  An ell , is a unit of measurement, approximating the length of a man's arm.Several national forms existed, with different lengths, includingthe Scottish ell ,the Flemish ell ,the French ell...
  
  , 2 fod
• fod – foot, about 313.85 mm (12.356 inches) in most recent usage. Defined as a Rheinfuss 314.07 mm (12.365 inches) from 1683, before that 314.1 mm (12.366 in) with variations.
• kvarter – quarter
  Quarter
  Quarter is one fourth, ¼, or 25%, and may refer to:*Quarter , a section or area, usually of a town*Quarter , valued at one-fourth of a U.S...
  
  , 1/4 alen
• tomme – thumb (inch
  Inch
  An inch is the name of a unit of length in a number of different systems, including Imperial units, and United States customary units. There are 36 inches in a yard and 12 inches in a foot...
  
  ), 1/12 fod
• linie – line
  Line (length)
  The line is a unit of measurement, one line being equal to of an English inch. It was defined as one-quarter of a barleycorn, which defined the inch even before 1066. The French ligne was simarly defined as of the pouce...
  
  , 1/12 tomme
• skrupel – scruple, 1/12 linie

Volume

• potte – pot, from 1683 1/32 fot³, about in 19th and 20th centuries
• smørtønde – barrel of butter, from 1683, 136 potter
• korntønde – barrel of corn (grain), from 1683 144 potter

  unit	relation to previous	metric value	Imperial Value
  potte		966 ml	2.04 Pt Pint The pint is a unit of volume or capacity that was once used across much of Europe with values varying from state to state from less than half a litre to over one litre. Within continental Europe, the pint was replaced with the metric system during the nineteenth century...

Weight

• pund – pound, from 1683 the weight of 1/62 fot³ of water, 499.75 g (1.1 lb)

Miscellaneous

• dusin – dozen, 12
• snes – score, 20
• ol – 4 snese, 80
• gros – gross, 144

See also

• Weights and measures
• Historical weights and measures
• SI
  Si
  Si, si, or SI may refer to :- Measurement, mathematics and science :* International System of Units , the modern international standard version of the metric system...