Rit (Vísindafélag Íslendinga) - 01.07.1931, Blaðsíða 3

1. INTRODUCTORY SURYEY
The geographical description of the Icelandic glaciers has
chiefly been given by professor 77?. Thoroddsen, who made
travels in Iceland in the years 1881 — 1898. His worh may
be said to form the basis of our present knowledge of the
distribution and topography of the glaciers.1) But, as a matter
of fact, no special investigations on the physical conditions
and oscillations of the glaciers have up to the present time
been carried out in this country.
Before Thoroddsen, the physician and naturalist Sveinn
Pálsson (f 1840) had visited many of the glaciers and given
a very skilful description of the most important ones. Sveinn
Pálsson is the very first author that already in 1794 slated,
as his opinion, that the glaciers were to some extent plastic
like resin and that their movements therefore were due to
a continuous outflow of ice.2)
It has long ago been recognized that the glaciers are very
sensitive to climatic variations, especially the glacier tongues
(Icelandic: skriðjökull == creeping glacier), and the height of
the firnlimit above sealevel. The most important climatic
elements in this respect are the temperature and predpitation.
The firnlimit adjusts itself to that height above sealevel,
where balance is kept beíween the accumulation of snow and
1) Lýsing íslands Vol. II p. 1 — 68. Also in Pelermanns Mitteilungen
1906 Erganz. Heft 152.
2) Den norske Turistforenings Arbok 1882 p. 44.