Jökull - 01.12.1972, Page 3

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JOKULL
An Outline of Sea Ice Conditions in the Vicinity
of Iceland
HLYNUR SIGTRYGGSSON,
THE ICELANDIC METEOROLOGICAL OFFICE, REYKJAVIK, ICELAND
ABSTRACT
Sea ice recorcls from Iceland are very old,
some mentioning of sea ice is made in the
carliest historical accounts of settlement in the
country. Reference is made to summaries of
these accounts, one by Thoroddsen (1916—1917)
and the other by Koch (1945).
In a discussion of the historical data, evi-
I dence is presented to the effect that at least
j until 1600 only major occurrences can be ex-
pected to have found their way into the record,
but a mere chance may dictate whetlier mode-
rate occurrences were reported or not. Occur-
rences of light ice are not reported until aftcr
1800. A table is given which presents thesc
circumstances in detail.
The pictorial summaries of Koch are con-
tinued through 1971.
The sliaded portions on the monthly charts
indicate areas where ice was reported the whole
or a part of that month, based on available
data. A chart marked with an asterisk indicates
that no reports of ice were received during that
month, but that the reports icere too scanty to
| exclude presence of ice within the chart area.
Historical accounts of the sea ice near Iceland
exist from the time of settlement by Norsemen
on the island, in the seventh or eighth decade of
the 9th century, although they were not written
until two to three centuries later. At first these
tales were not written in order to become a
source of the climatological and economical
history of the nation, but only to explain and
amplify details of stories pertaining to indi-
viduals or certain localities.
Chronicle writing began several centuries aft-
er the settlement, but in the beginning it was
far from continuous, notably in the fifteenth
and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries,
from which time one can hardiy find accounts
of sea ice or other natural events such as vol-
canic eruptions, which did happen at that
tirne however, according to other evidence. In
the seventeenth century the accounts of sea ice
became more numerous, and since then most
of the severe ice years are probablv recorded,
although some may be missing. But in spite of
some omissions it may most likely be claimed
that written records of sea ice do not extend
farther back in any other region than in Ice-
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