Rit (Vísindafélag Íslendinga) - 01.07.1931, Page 3

Rit (Vísindafélag Íslendinga) - 01.07.1931, Page 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.

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Rit (Vísindafélag Íslendinga)

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