The story of measurement in Iceland offers a window into everyday life, trade, and international influence. Before adopting the metric system in the early 1900s, Icelanders used a variety of homegrown and Danish-based units to calculate everything from farmland to fish, across categories like length, mass, area, and volume.
Old measures and their daily use
Units of length in historic Iceland might seem unusual today but were vital to daily activity. The foot (fet) was a standard length, measured as about 0.31385 metres. Larger dealings called for the fathom (faðmur), equivalent to six feet, and an Icelandic mile (míla á landi) reached 24,000 feet, roughly 4.5 kilometres. Journeys to parliament at Þingvellir gave rise to Þingmannaleið, an epic length of 20,000 fathoms, or 120,000 feet, about 37.5 kilometres.
Measuring mass involved a range of terms. The pound (pund) was defined as half a kilogram, and various multiples marked agricultural and fishing yields: the mark (mörk) stood at half a pound, a skippund at 320 pounds, while the barrel of butter (tunna smjörs) weighed in at 224 pounds. Even today, some of these units survive in Icelandic conversation, especially when weighing newborn babies (with the mark), or describing catch size in angling (in pounds).
Land, trade, and metric reform
In agriculture and land management, measuring area involved the square fathom, about 3.546 square metres. Common field units like the túndagslátta (900 square fathoms) and the engjateigur (1,600 square fathoms) structured land allocation and farming. When measuring grain, liquids, or butter, Icelanders turned to the pottur (almost a litre), counting up to 144 pots for a barrel of grain (korntunna).
The drive for standardisation was not unique to Iceland; units paralleled those used in Denmark, the Faroe Islands, and Norway, all then under the Danish crown. A royal decree in 1781 called for all commercial transactions across the Danish realm to use harmonised measures, establishing the Danish ell (alin) as a reference point.
The metric system’s formal introduction began in 1907, taking effect on New Year’s Day 1910. This shift brought Iceland in line with much of Europe, especially after a 1912 law applied across the Danish territories. While the new system steadily took hold, vestiges of earlier units linger. Inches (tommur) remain familiar for describing nails or screen sizes, and pounds (pund) persist in weighing fish and newborns. The legacy of these measures hints at the enduring intersection of traditional practice and modern reform in Icelandic life.
Sources
- Wikipedia
- Wikipedia (Icelandic) in Icelandic
