Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1944, Blaðsíða 332

LE NORD
292
words, we do not know the length
of his unit of measurement.
Norlund’s investigations show
that we dare not count on Johannes
Mejer everywhere using miles of the
same length. In principle he deter-
mines a mile as the distance between
two points with a latitudinal di-
stance of four minutes of arc, but
he also mentions miles of five or
six minutes of arc. The great unit
of length a rrnle therefore is not an
unambiguous quantity, and further
the small unit of length a foot is
not so either. An Eiderstedt foot
thus in modern measure must be put
at 298 mm., while a Sealandish foot
must be equalled to 316 mm., and
Norlund further points out that
Tycho Brahe used a particular foot
with a length of 259 mm. The con-
fusion is increased by the fact that
Mejer at any rate only at a late
stage discovered that the Tychonian
foot is shorter than the Sealandish
foot, and thus could not obtain
agreement between his own mea-
surements and those of Tycho
Brahe’s.
In this way we thus find the fact,
which seems strange to the present,
that Johannes Mejer’s relations be-
tween mile and foot are not con-
stant quantities, as we must reckon
with the following connexions:
1 mile — 25,600 feet
1 mile — 30,720 feet
1 mile — 32,000 feet.
It is of course important for any
use of Johannes Mejer’s maps that
these facts have been elucidated.
It is easy to point out errors in
Johannes Mejer’s maps, but it
should not be forgotten on which
basis and with which possibilities
the work was done. His instruments
were primitive, he had to do the
work alone, without any assistants,
and he worked with quite in-
adequate funds. But one cannot
study Johannes Mejer’s maps with-
out being struck with admiration
of his will and energy, his rare fa-
culties and his mastering of the
methods of the time. His scientific
ability is unusual, and so are the
results of his work. For more than
a century his maps of Denmark
were the best in existence, and only
about 1800 we obtained a mapping-
out of Denmark of a materially
higher quality.
The first volume of Johannes
Mejer’s maps besides the introduc-
tory text includes a reproduction of
118 handmade maps, comprising
Sealand and the adjacent islands,
Bomholm, Skáne, Blekinge, Gott-
land, and the Faeroes, and maps on
a large scale of small but important
areas, and finally “general maps”
of larger areas on a smaller scale.
The contents of the maps thus de-
pend on the scale. Coasts, lakes
and watercourses, towns, villages,
churches, manors, water-mills,
roads, parish and district bound-
aries, sometimes wood and in the
sea fairways and shallows and in