Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1939, Page 192
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LE NORD
the interglacial rocks. There is very good reason to believe that
the study of these rocks in Iceland would yield evidence regarding
the history of the Ice Age, because interglacial deposits, which
are usually removed by succeeding glaciations, are in Iceland in
many places preserved beneath a covering of lava.
In various other ways, I am certain, investigations into the
glacial phenomena of Iceland could provide very important in-
formation about several unsolved problems. I remember well
with what delight I followed the explanations of the Swedish
geologists last summer at the 3rd “Nordiska Geolog Mötet” of
the glacial phenomena in their country and how, under their
guidance, I seemed to recognize various fossil phenomena known
from my own country in a more recent form. I remember the
sand and gravel sediments deposited once by a burst from an
ice-lake, now vanished, and how strong the resemblance was to
the "jökulhlaup” from the lake Grænalón which burst in the
autumn of 1934 and which I had the opportunity of observing
immediately after the event. I shall not soon forget the de-
monstration of the Swedish Geologists of “ravines” and land
slides, phenomena which I realized were of a more recent forma-
tion in my own country.
Among other geological problems of great interest which,
in my opinion are perhaps more likely to be solved in Iceland
than in most other places, because of the position and other local
conditions of the country, there is for instance that of the trans-
Atlantic extension of the Swedish Time-scale. After I had the
pleasure, last summer of examining the varve sediments in
Sweden, I feel certain that in Iceland there are to be found varve
deposits which it would be desirable to measure, the more so
after such encouraging results as have already been obtained in
this field. When there is talk of a connection between the Late-
Glacial ice-retreat on both sides of the Atlantic and how valuable
similar investigations in Iceland might be, I should like to point
out one thing I have hardly ever seen mentioned in Icelandic
geological writings, namely the traces of retardations, halts and
even of moderate re-advances of the margins of the Late-Glacial
ice-sheet. Although these traces have in some places in the island,
chiefly where they are situated below the highest marine limits,
been subject to enormously destructive influences in Post-Glacial
Time and, therefore, no longer appear in their original distinct
form, they are in other places, for instance in the valleys of