Jökull - 01.12.1993, Síða 19

Figure 2. Surface currents of the Arctic Ocean and surroundings. Current pattern from Strubing (1968) and
Bearman (1989). — Yfirborðsstraumcir íNorður-íshafi.
history ofarctic driftwood research
The occurrence of driftwood on the Arctic shores
has been known for thousands of years by the people
of the Arctic cultures. The first Europeans to notice
the wood in Iceland were the Norwegian vikings when
they colonised the island in the 9th century. The Arc-
tlc "trees" have probably saved many early explorers
from freezing to death, since driftwood was their main
source of fuel and was also useful for building huts
(Haggblom, 1983).
Willem Barents, the discoverer of Spitsbergen and
Novaya Zemlya, used driftwood as the main fuel
source when he was forced to spend the winter of
1596-97 on Novaya Zemlya. Hudson found driftwood
°n Spitsbergen in 1607, as didBaffinin 1613, whoalso
estimated the quantity of the wood (Eurola, 1971).
The earliest systematic investigation of driftwood
was made by Olavius (1780) when he travelled around
Iceland on behalf of the Danish crown on an economi-
cal survey. He described the type, amount, usefulness
and origin of the driftwood.
The Swede I. G. Agardh (1869) is generally con-
sidered the pioneer of driftwood research because his
work was the earliest that involved the determination
of wood species by applying the wood anatomical
method. In apaperpublishedin 1869he demonstrated
that his material, 18 samples collected from Spitsberg-
en, was probably of Siberian origin. Because no sys-
tematic research into the anatomical structure of wood
had been carried out at that time, Agardh must have
made all the comparisons himself (Eurola, 1971). He
also studied the tree rings in the driftwood, in order
to estimate the climatic conditions under which the
JÖKULL, No. 43, 1993 17