Jökull - 01.12.1960, Qupperneq 6

sailors and others, who had the closest contact
with these countries. But the clever Norwegian
author o£ the King’s Mirror has the honour
o£ being the first to commit this knowledge
to writing and he may have added something
to it.
On tlie Icelandic glacier rivers the King’s
Mirror lias this to say:
“There are also ice-cold streams which flow
from underneath the glaciers with such violence
that earth and rocks tremble; for when water
flows with such a swift and furious current,
the rocks will shake because of its vast mass
and overpowering strength. And no men can go
out upon these river banks to view them unless
long ropes be brought to be tied around those
who wish to explore, while farther away others
sit holding fast the rope, so that they may be
ready and able to pull them back if the tur-
bulence of the current shoulcl make them dizzy”
(pp. 130-131).
These words are indeed of greet interest.
Here we do not only have a fairly accurate
description of the sources of some of the Ice-
landic glacier rivers, where an enormous mass
of water wells up almost vertically in front of
the ice margin (Fig. 1). The last passage quoted
also may indicate that during the latter part
of the Commonwealth period there were men
in Iceland who were so curious about the
natural phenomena of their country that they
went out of their way or even ran some
risk in order to investigate them. And this
activity took place at a time when scholasticism
was firmly enthroned in most parts of the
Continent. In another passage the author of
the King’s Mirror says: “It is in man’s nature
lo toish to see and experience the things that
he has heard about and thus to learn whether
the facts are as told or not” (p. 142). These
words coulcl be chosen for a motto for all na-
tural science.
On the reasons for glaciers in Iceland the
King’s Mirror lias this to say:
“As to the glaciers that. are found in Iceland
I am inclined to believe that it is a penalty
which the land suffers for lying so close to
Greenland; for it is to be expected that severe
cold would come thence, since Greenland is
ice-clad beyond all other lands. Now since Ice-
land gets so much cold from that side and re-
ceives but little heat from the sun, it necessarily
has an overbundance of ice on the mountain
ridges” (p. 126).
This is most likely the oldest climatological
explanation o£ glaciers met witli in any litera-
ture. The same opinion is met with in a semi-
mythological Icelandic Saga, Bárðarsaga Snœ-
fellsáss, probably written down in the late 13th
or the early 14th century. It begins with the
following passage (Nordiske Oldskrifter XXVII,
Kiöbenhavn, 1869, pp. 1—2); “Dumbr (“The
Aíisty one”) was the name of a king who reign-
ed over the gulfs that lie to the north of
Hellulancl and which is now called Dumbshaf,
named after King Durnbr......... Frorn Ivvæn-
lancl he took with him by force Mjöll (“Fresh
Powdery Snow”), the daughter of Snær
(“Snow”) the Old, and made her liis wife.....
But when they had been together for one year
Mjöll gave birth to a boy. He was sprinkled
with water and given a name, being called
Bárdr. This boy . . . took after his mother, be-
cause she was so beautiful and fair of com-
plexion that the snow which falls in calm
weather and is whiter than any other is named
after her ancl called mjöll”. Bárdr Snæfellsáss
is a kind of personification of Snæfellsjökull,
but Dumbr, his father, is here a personifica-
tion of the North wind and the drift ice fog
that comes to Iceland frorn he North-West. We
also have here a sound meteorological explana-
tion of the formation of Snæfellsjökull, al-
though its presentation is in a figurative garb.
The author of the King’s Mirror states what
is quite correct in connection with the drift
ice, i. e. that it can also drift against the wincl
(p. 139), and he also makes the sensible com-
ment “if the earth were wholly without warmth
or heat it would be one mass of ice from the
surface down to its lowest foundation. Like-
wise if the ocean were without any heat it
woulcl be solid ice frorn the surface to the
bottorn” (p. 152). The author gives the fol-
lowing graphic account of the climate of Green-
land:
“In reply to your remark on the climate of
Greenland, that you think it strange that it is
called a good climate, I shall tell you sorne-
thing about the nature of the land. When
spells of rough weather come, they are more
severe than in most other places, both with
respect to keen winds, hard frost and snowfall.
But usually these spells of rough weather last
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