Greinar (Vísindafélag Íslendinga) - 01.01.1977, Qupperneq 45

43
futation of Thoroddsen’s picture. (The papers of Thoroddsen and Pjeturss
are too well known to need detailed quoting here).
Pjeturss was an ambitious man. He was unaware of much evidence on
the meaning of his tillites in the basalt plateau, as we shall see. He ignored
the morphology of the Basalt Plateau also completely. He ceased working
on geology after a decade, satisfied with his "great victory” and his fame,
while Thoroddsen devoted all his life to natural history, doing an immense
pioneering historical work after his period of field observations.
Every new generation of fully educated geologists, Icelanders
and foreigners alike, convinced themselves of the reality of the
tillites, and their correct interpretation by Pjeturss. Only a
master of mathematics, physics, and astronomy at the college
in Akureyri (the present author), who had found pleasure in
reading Kayser’s very thick volume of Lehrbuch der Geo-
logie (edition 1923, I believe) and Emile Haugs admirable
volumes of Traité de Geologie, — was not satisfied, first and
foremost on the basis of own studies of morphology of the
Eyjafjörður valley system, but without study of Pjeturss’ til-
lites (31, my first geological paper), cf. also (32). Only much
later, I got thoroughly acquainted with these tillites, — after
a too long period of trial and error — those of the Esja—Hval-
fjörður area being especially important, just those which so
many geologists had visited.
I might first remark that for some strange reason, the ap-
parently fresh basalts of the Esja and Hvalf jörður region which
abound with intercalated glacial signs, have been found unfit
for K/Ar-dating. I wonder whether the trouble is that they
have been rather deeply buried at some time previously.
One thing is certain: These intercalated glacial signs simply
do not fit with Pleistocene glaciations. The glacial vestiges,
which are true enough, alternate far too often and far too sud-
denly with lava flows to fit the time scale of Pleistocene major
glaciations, and even that of early and late-glacial climate
fluctuations (cf. chapter 1).
One cannot take off a Pleistocene icecap like a hat, just to
make place for a lava flow and then put the cap on again.
The main clue to these glacial intercalations is in a number
of cases clear enough. They are the vestiges of a nearby temp-