Greinar (Vísindafélag Íslendinga) - 01.01.1977, Page 44

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intercalated glacial beds, and such beds are common in some-
what younger rocks in Iceland. On this basis some of our younger
enthusiasts in Quaternary geology have claimed the occurrence
of tens of glaciations during the Pleistocene, and want to ex-
tend the duration of the Pleistocene some 3—5 million years
back in time (25). Uninformed foreign Quaternary geologists
have been given the impression that Iceland is thus the very
country, where to count most of the Pleistocene glaciations,
and in addition, some of the foreign colleagues pay me tribute
for this great revelation, which I consider a questionable honour,
as all this is in my opinion pure nonsense.
An historical note seems here appropriate. The largely self-educated
Icelander Þorvaldur Thoroddsen, who kept his common sense clear off
university doctrines1) <he finished the “First Part”, a three years course
in geography and geology at the university of Copenhagen. He dropped
the “Second Part” (perhaps fortunately) to apply for and get the then
only available position in Iceland as teacher in natural history, at a 2-
years’ secondary school. Later he got the position of teacher of natural
history at the only Gymnasium.
He got stipendia to travel on horseback through most of Iceland, to
be able to give a first well-founded general picture of the geography and
geology of the country, which might serve as the basis for later special
studies. “Hypotheses non fingo” was his motto, he wanted significant solid
facts. On the basis of O. Heer’s famous studies of the lignite of Iceland
and other higher-latitude countries, and on the basis of the immense
erosional work evidenced by the dissection of the main pile of basalt lavas,
he had no doubt that the pile was of Tertiary age. This conclusion seemed
as free of any doubtful doctrine as it could be — plain common sense.
But just when Thoroddsen was finishing this observational work, the
first Icelander to finish the full course of a geologist at the university
of Copenhagen, Helgi Pjetursson (who later changed his name to
Pjeturss) appeared on the scene. He used the “correct” geological pro-
cedure, i.e. to study individual sections and interprete them (often)
ca;refully one by one, and then generalize. Pjeturss immediately found
obvious glacial beds, intercalated in the upper parts of Thoroddsen’s Ter-
tiary Plateau basalts, and “consequently” declared this to mean Pleistocene
age, and an “unavoidable” revolution of the geology of Iceland and re-
1) By university doctrine I mean well-meant didactic summaries or con-
traction, i.e. mnemotechnical simplifications for the benefit of the students.
With the years these simplifications grow to dogmas, and hamper progress
like a poisonous apple, until by some accident a dwarf stumbles and the
poisonous apple comes out of the throat of Snow White. In later chapters
we shali deal with one or two of these dangerous dogmas.