Jökull - 01.11.1998, Qupperneq 32

tions] in the Icelandic mountains. The barometer on
the aforementioned hill had fallen from 28' 4.25” [768
mm]2 at Kvísker to 25’ 11.5” [703 mm], and the tem-
perature read 8.5°R3 [10.6°C]. The margin of the
glacier had obviously pushed up against the upper
part of this little hill and formed a kind of a gravel
wall4 half way up the middle of the slope, but the
glacier had now receded by a few fathoms.
After all three of us had tied ourselves together
with our rope, with a two-fathom distance separating
each of us, so that we could give the other a hand in
case he should fall into a crevasse, we continued our
ascent of the glacier. No sooner had we advanced
more than 40 paces, however, than we heard what
sounded like a loud thunderclap a short distance to the
west of us. The loud noise seemed to travel through
the entire glacier from south to north and lasted for
over a minute. We could feel very distinctly how the
ice kept shaking and rumbling under our feet, after
which my two companions would have been only too
happy to tum back. Although the shudder caused us to
stop our advance for a few seconds, my innate desire
to climb this alpine glacier compelled me to continue
to my intended destination and not let anything stop
me. Later on, we saw what caused the ice to shudder
was a so-called “jöklabrestur” [glacier thunder].
Glacier ice along the approximately 0.5 mile-long
[Danish miles; about 2.5 statute miles] narrow moun-
tain gorge, which I mentioned earlier in this section
[Section 14] and from which the rivers Kvíár5 have
their source, had split on either side of the gorge and
collapsed. We continued on our way farther up the
southeastern slope of the glacier, where it was less
steep, past some black tuff cliffs jutting up through the
ice, and across a great many crevasses, the bottom of
which we could not see. As is usual at such altitudes,
the air started getting thin and breathing became more
labored. One of my companions became so anxious
and drowsy that he finally had to be left behind; he
stretched out on the uncovered snow and fell asleep
immediately. The other of my companions, whose
physique was marred by palpitation of the heart and
melancholy in addition to being ill-tempered and
crude, became happier and more jocular the higher up
we climbed without feeling any particular sign of fa-
tigue or unpleasantness on account of the air. Finally,
we reached the southeastem summit of the mountain
at 1145 hr, which, together with the three or four peaks
farther to the west and north, is nothing more than the
rim of an immensely large volcanic bowl6; they form
between them a broad and level valley. These peaks or
nooks atop the glacier are so steep that the glacier
mass is crevassed in places or has subsided down
away from them. The black and scorched peaks pro-
tmde, but they have nevertheless a glacier hat on their
summits. The majority of these peaks are inaccessible,
because by taking a single wrong step one could fall
down into the bottomless crevasses at the foot of them.
The barometer here had fallen to 22' 6”7 [609 mm] - or
altogether a decrease of 5' 10.25” [159 mm] from the
reading at Kvísker. The temperature reading was
11.25°R [14.1°C]. The air was clear with a brisk and
cold northwesterly wind; the compass appeared to be
correct, and the declination was just about two points8.
The view was marvelous, of course. We could see over
towards all of the northeastem and Homafjörður [out-
let] glaciers9 in addition to the location of the Máfa-
byggðir [Esjufjöll nunatak] a short distance to the
northwest of Breiðamerkurfjall both of which are with-
in the glacier [Breiðamerkurjökull]. Máfabyggðir
[Esjufjöll nunatak] looks pretty black and charred.
From Máfabyggðir [Esjufjöll nunatak] run two gravel
bands10, which, however, soon merge into one, toward
the southeast over toward the location where the river
Jökulsá gushes out from Breiðamerkurjökull. To the
north of the Homafjörður [outlet] glaciers we could see
the summit of Snæfell; to the west we could see Eyja-
fjallajökull11 in its entirety, but the elevation caused
the level and distant land to appear as if enveloped in
twilight; to the north we had no view because of the
previously mentioned summits. I became particularly
interested in the appearance of the nearest [outlet]
glacier, to the east of Kvísker '2, the same outlet glacier
mentioned before that had slid down. Its surface, par-
ticularly all the way to the main glacier, seemed to
consist of nothing but semicircles running right across
it [ogives], whose convex arches pointed downward to
the level land, exactly as though the previously noted
outlet glacier had flowed down in a semi-melted or
thick and viscous state. I wonder whether this phe-
nomenon might not prove in part that glacier ice, with-
out actually melting, has some kind of fluidity '3, like
30
JOKULL, No. 46, 1998