Jökull


Jökull - 01.12.1960, Blaðsíða 10

Jökull - 01.12.1960, Blaðsíða 10
nicht zu Geniige untersuchen können” (pp. 18 -19). This story — and there is no reason to doubt it — tells us of a rather remarkable enterprise of an Icelandic farmer about the middle of the 17th century or somewhat earlier, an at- tempt to explore Vatnajökull. From the travel account it seems likely that he crossed the eastern part of Vatnajökull and that the moun- tain he saw was the extinct volcano Snæfell. Vídalín’s treatise, which is dated July lst, 1695, was not published until 1754, and then in the German translation quoted here, done by a relative of his, Páll Bjarnason Vidalin, and printed in Hamburgisches Magasin, Ham- burg und Leipzig 1754, pp. 9—27 and 197—210. The translator adds some comments of his own and among other things discusses the annual stratification of the ice (op. cit. pp. 211—212), clearly without knowing J. H. Hottingers paper of 1703 (Montium glacialium helveticorum de- scriptio) where the annual stratification of the firn on Grindelwaldgletscher is correctly ex- plained. In a note book called Chorographica Islandica (AM 213 8°) the famous founder of the Arna- magnæan Collection in Copenhagen, Arni Magnússon (1663—1730) has written down a lot of memoranda on the topography and general geography of Icelancl during his travels of in- spection through the country 1702—1712. The note book contains some interesting particulars on glacier changes. It also contains a sketch map of Sólheimajökull (Fig. 4) and a very full description of glacierbursts (jökulhlaups) caused by a lake dammed by that glacier. The fol- lowing is quoted from that description: “Sól- heimajökull is a flat, low outrunner from Mýr- dalsjökull, extending in a bend southwards from the glacier and then to the W. When in the beginning it was growing towards the west it met and filled a canyon, continuing after- wards towards the W......A glacier river runs through this canyon under the N margin of the glacier, subsequently appearing from its S mar- gin, where it flows out as through a tunnel.'Fhis tunnel is occasionally blocked, making the river smaller than usual. The reason for this is the stoppage of that part of the river which other- wise runs underneath the ice from Mýrdals- jökull itself. When the tunnel is stopped up, the water, which otherwise would have run out of tlie canyon mentioned above, forms an enormously deep lake. When the ice blocks stopping up the tunnel can no longer with- stancl the pressure of the water, the tunnel is opened cum impetu, and everything inside it 8

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Jökull

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