Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1944, Qupperneq 341

REVUE LITTÉRAIRE
301
sible, and weather conditions are as
a rule highly unfavourable for
surveying purposes. It is therefore
nevertheless a great advantage to
be able to limit work in the field
to the selection of fixed points and
various less laborious operations.
The task of photographing from the
air, on the other hand, presents
very difficult problems of its own
because it can only be performed
in absolutely clear weather, and this
very rarely occurs in Iceland. Dur-
ing the summer of 1937, however,
the airmen succeeded, by seizing
every chance that offered itself, in
getting 123.5 hours in the air. This
proved sufficient to obtain the 1884
exposures which were to form the
material for the mapping of the
interior.
Another six years of intensive
work in drawing maps from the
air photographs, providing them
with place names, and printing
them, completed the task of pro-
ducing a complete map of Iceland
on the scale of 1 :100.000, for the
older maps had to be redrawn to
the new scale.
The possession of a set of ac-
curate and detailed maps of its ter-
ritory is an indispensable requi-
site of every civilized country, for
maps of this kind are necessary for
the solution of many practical pro-
blems. For such practical purposes
the new map of Iceland will be
found to fulfill all reasonable de-
mands. But it will also prove of
inestimable value in the solution
of a large number of scientific pro-
blems, for the study of which Ice-
land is of the greatest importance.
For anybody who has worked in
the interior of that country before
these maps were made, it is indeed
a remarkable experience to study
them and to note the accuracy
with which they describe tracts
whose geographical features he him-
self once had to put down on pa-
per, stumblingly and laboriously, in
order to provide himself with those
rough sketch maps without which
his geographical research work
could not even begin. Future in-
vestigators will work under much
more favourable conditions than
their predecessors in the period
1920—1940, and there is every
reason to look forward to a period
of great activity in Icelandic geo-
graphical research during the com-
ing years.
The newly published account of
the mapping of Iceland consists of
three main parts: there is a detailed
account of the history of Icelandic
cartography from its earliest begin-
nings till 1944. There are repro-
ductions of all the older types of
maps, including a considerable
number of maps not hitherto pub-
lished. And finally there is the
complete collection of the 1:100.000
maps, covering the whole of Ice-
land. The book is a model in its
kind, both from a scientific point
of view and as a piece of book-
production. The old maps have been
reproduced with extreme care, and