Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1944, Qupperneq 339

REVUE LITTÉRAIRE
299
the archives from the period 1600
__1800 also bear witness to the in-
terest taken by Danes in the carto-
graphy of Iceland. Thus Hans
Poulsen Resen drew a map of Ice-
land as early as 1605, and Bagge
Wandel is known to have under-
taken a surveying expedition to Ice-
landic waters in 1651, though the
results of his investigations have
been completely lost. The great Da-
nish cartographer Johannes Meyer
made several maps of Iceland
about 1650, 9 of them in all,
some of which were included in his
“Northem Atlas”. Meyer seems to
have known and utilized GuSbran-
dur Þorláksson’s determinations of
latitude, and to have drawn on
information received from Hans
Nansen, the celebrated burgomaster
of Copenhagen, who as a young
man had undertaken many jour-
neys to Iceland.
In the 18th century too, Danes
contributed extensively to Icelandic
cartographical research, but their
results were largely kept secret, and
were stowed away in the files of
the archives as military documents.
It is only in recent times that their
work has been disinterred by Pro-
fessor Norlund. Among the docu-
ments thus brought to light are
seven maps by F. H. H. Knoff and
others, which, together with a set
of maps prepared by the Icelander
Magnús Arason, cover most of the
coastal area. Though they were un-
known to the general public of the
time, they came to form the basis
of the maps accompanying Eggert
Ólafsson’s and Olavius’ great de-
scriptions of travel from the last
half of the century, and thus the
work of Knoff and Arason indirect-
ly obtained a wide publicity.
A new marine survey was com-
menced in 1776 by the skipper
Hans Minor, and in 1786 the Di-
rector of the Royal Danish Hydro-
graphic Office, Poul Lowenorn,
conducted a surveying expedition
during which he supplemented Mi-
nor’s results. Later on, about the
middle of the century, Poul Lowen-
om took the initiative in starting
a systematic survey of the waters
about Iceland. In the years 1801 —
1815 cairns were erected at a large
number of points on the coast, and
these were incorporated in a tri-
angulation covering the whole of
the island, on the basis of which
surveys were made of the coast line
and the adjacent settlements. Base
line measurements and astronomical
determinations of the sites of Rey-
kjavfk and a few other places were
also undertaken, and in this way
a cartographic picture of the Ice-
landic coast was obtained which
was excellent judged by the stan-
dards of that time. The maps based
on these results, published during
the years about 1820, are the first
to give a picture of the coasts of
Iceland which is correct in its main
features, and throughout the 19th
century they formed the basis of
many successive maps.
All maps of Iceland from be-
20*