Jökull - 01.01.2014, Page 123

Upprifjun um Grímsvatnajökul, Vatnajökulsveg og Holuhraun
of the glacier, people had a reasonably accurate idea
of the location of the Grímsvötn volcano. The earliest
written record of the name Grímsvötn dates from
about 1600, after which it appears frequently in annals
and other writings in the 17th and 18th centuries. The
name Grímsvatnajökull occurs in the description of
Iceland compiled by the Danish scholar P. H. Resen
in 1684–87; the form Vatnajökull, which first appears
in written sources about a century later, could be an
abbreviation of this. The glacier was generally cal-
led Klofajökull in the 18th century, with Vatnajökull
replacing it in the 19th century.
Iceland’s climate cooled in the 17th and 18th cent-
uries. Valley glaciers advanced, conditions for ve-
getation in the interior deteriorated and the stand-
ard of living fell. Travelling by horse across the
interior became less and less common and on the
Sprengisandur route it more or less stopped entirely in
the 18th century. In 1770 the Danish authorities appo-
inted a ’national commission’ (landsnefndin) to exam-
ine ways of stimulating the economy and improving
conditions in Iceland. These included improvements
in the transport system in the inhabited areas and find-
ing and marking the lost mountain tracks that linked
separate regions together. One of these was named
Vatnajökulsvegur (the ’Vatnajökull route’) and was
supposed to shorten the journey between the eastern
and southern regions by several days. The regional
officer in charge of the northern and eastern regions
offered grants for finding and marking these routes,
including that from Jökuldalur in the east north of
Vatnajökull across to Sprengisandur at Kiðagil. In
1831 a society, Fjallvegafélag, was founded with sim-
ilar aims in mind, and it functioned for some years.
An account is given here of three attempts by people
from the eastern region in 1794, 1797 and 1833 to find
a good route to the north of Vatnajökull. Sources prin-
ted here include an important map dating from 1833
with routes followed on the last two trips marked in.
With others, Björn Gunnlaugsson, a surveyor and
cartographer, followed part of the ’Vatnajökull rou-
te’ in 1838, continuing through the Vonarskarð pass
in 1839. He marked it on his maps, which appeared
in 1844 and 1849. At the beginning of July 1840
an expedition by J. C. Schythe ran into bad weather
on the route, and no further attempts were made to
use it for decades. Then in the late 19th century and
the 20th century scientists and explorers, Icelandic
and foreign, appeared there with greater frequency,
sometimes in connection with eruptions in the Ódáða-
hraun lavafield (e.g. in Askja in 1875) and elsewhere
and, from about 1970 and onwards, to make surveys
and do preparatory work on hydroelectric schemes on
the glacial rivers north of Vatnajökull. This produced
geological and vegetation maps of these regions and
studies of individual events such as eruptions and
lava flows since last Ice Age. One such lava field is
Holuhraun, on the northern edge of Dyngjujökull in
between the source rivers of Jökulsá á Fjöllum. It has
been thought that this lava might have flowed in the
winter of 1796–97, but sources cited in this article
indicate that it is probably of later date. It has now
disappeared under a new and larger flow of lava from
the same vent system on the fissure swarm extending
north from Bárðarbunga. This eruption began in Aug-
ust 2014.
HEIMILDIR
Annálar 1400–1800 II,3. Fitjaannáll. Reykjavík 1929, s.
271.
Björn Gunnlaugsson 1839. Félagsins ástand og athafnir.
Skírnir 13. árg., s. 74–75.
Björn Gunnlaugsson 1840. Vatnajökulsvegur. Skírnir 14.
árg., s. V.
Brynjólfur Sveinsson. Lbs. 1088 4to, 374. Saga Íslands
VII. Reykjavík 2004, 366 s.
Eggert Ólafsson. Ferðabók Eggerts Ólafssonar og Bjarna
Pálssonar 2. bindi. Steindór Steindórsson þýddi.
Reykjavík 1974, 296 s.
Gísli Oddsson 1942. Íslenzk annálabrot og Undur Íslands.
Akureyri, s. 45.
Guttormur Sigbjarnarson 1993–1995. Norðan Vatna-
jökuls. Náttúrufræðingurinn 63 (1–2), s. 109–124; 63
(3–4), s. 201–217; 65 (3–4), s. 199–212.
Halldór Stefánsson 1958. Fundinn Vatnajökulsvegur. Safn
austfirzkra fræða V. Akureyri, 351 s.
Haraldur Sigurðsson 1978. Kortasaga Íslands frá lokum
16. aldar til 1848. Reykjavík, 279 s.
Hartley, M. E. and T. Thordarson 2013. The 1874–1876
volcano-tectonic episode at Askja, North Iceland:
Lateral flow revisited. Geochem. Geophys. Geosyst.,
14, 2286–2309. doi; 10.1002/ggge. 20151.
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