ear-shot (13. 652)

Just when we thought we had exhausted the quirky and confusing subject of courtesy and conventional measurements (see previously), we discover the mil (via Futility Closet) which was used as a common unit of distance among the countries of Scandinavia. Ultimately derived from the same Roman source as the mile (mille passus, a thousand paces), it is now standardised as ten kilometres—the same as the obsolete myriametre (ten-thousand metres) once used in France with the inception of the metric system, and likewise is only used in informal contexts with no representation on maps or traffic signs, though still used colloquially and by Swedish tax authorities for calculating deductions for business travel and as the usual way to measure fuel consumption and efficiency, litres per mil, but historically varied widely by local surveying. In its final form, the Danish mil was reckoned as just over seven and a half kilometres as the equivalent of four minutes of latitude though a lot of regional variations persisted through the nineteenth century and endure in common parlance, halvmil being a widely used term for five kilometres, from skogsmil or rast, a Forest Mile or the distance that traveller on foot would be able to cover between breaks, like a league representing the pace of the average gait in the course of a hour. Synchronised along with the rest of the adoption of SI units ultimately, the Finnish, Suomi native term for mil, peninkulma, originally closer to those neighbouring shorter conventions between four and seven kilometres away came from how far removed one could hear a dog’s bark.