Weights and measures
“And because it is so accepted in the entire country that the same steelyard and the equivalent weights and the equivalent scale weights and the equivalent measuring vessels and the equivalent measuring sticks are to be valid in the entire country, so that ignorant people are less likely to be fooled wherever they might arrive in the country.”
Trade section, chapter 29
The Trade section concludes with a regulatory framework for weights and measures used in trade. This was new compared to the trade sections in the older provincial laws. However, the Bjarkøy law, the first law for trade towns, written down sometime in the 12th century, mentions fines for using incorrect weights, scales, and measuring vessels. The challenge that King Magnus faced in his effort to ensure equality and justice for his subjects was that there must have been multiple divergent local units of measurement, often with the same names.
The Laws of the Land introduced standardized weights and measures that were to apply to the entire kingdom. The Trade section also describes control routines for the various measuring instruments used in trade to prevent cheating. The judge was to keep an official set of measuring vessels, scales, weights, and measuring sticks against which peasants had to check theirs annually at the regional assemblies. Deviating measuring instruments should be adjusted or destroyed, and incorrect use was to be fined. Although the units of measurement we know from the time of the Laws of the Land were used well into modern times, the values that they represented changed.
The Hanseatic League and the union with Denmark influenced Norwegian units of measurement. In the 1680s and 1690s, during the reign of Christian V (who also replaced the Laws of the Land), a permanent common system of weights and measures was established for Denmark–Norway. The metric system used today in Norway was introduced in 1875, shortly after it was internationally recognized to facilitate international trade. This uniform system for length, weight, and volume with a divisibility of 10 differed fundamentally from the weights and measures of earlier times.
