Jökull - 01.01.2020, Page 137

Sturkell and Gudmundsson
camped on a small plateau framed by abyss-like cliffs
on both sides. The horses were nervous and Erik and
Hakon had to hold them all night, and at midnight it
started to rain. After this miserable night the journey
down towards civilization continued. Hakon suffered
badly from rheumatism as they followed the narrow
ice ridges down the glacier. At nine o’clock on the 6th
of September they finally arrived at the farm Hólar in
the district of Mýrar (Figure 1).
The farm people were extremely friendly, and they
were well cared for. At the farm they meet Dagbjartur
Eyjólfsson, a farmer from Heinaberg. He offered to
help them retrieve the sledge up on the glacier. They
rested for a few days and then decided to let the world
know about their achievement. They rode to Höfn in
Hornafjörður and sent a wire to news agents. On the
9th of September the first news appeared in Morgun-
blaðið and Berlingske. The next day the Swedish
newspaper Svenska Dagbladet printed the story with
the headline: “The largest Icelandic crater discovered.
An astonishing achievement by two young men from
Stockholm. The crater perhaps the largest of the world
has been named - Swede crater.”
Now all they had to do was to retrieve the equip-
ment. On the 18th of September they set out with four
horses and with the guidance of Dagbjartur they fol-
lowed a better route. But the last part proved to be
very difficult as new crevasses had formed. Eventu-
ally after several hours they reached the sledge. The
horses were loaded and they noted the wind had died
completely. This was bad news. A storm from north
was coming. The storm caught them and they had to
sacrifice the equipment and concentrate on surviving!
They succeeded wrapping the tent around the three of
them, but no clothes and blankets – they had a terri-
ble night. The next day they managed to get blankets
and food. They were stranded on a tiny plateau sur-
rounded by deep chasms. The horses were still with
them on the second day of the storm, but on the third
day when the storm had ceased, the horses were gone.
One of the horses was found deep down in a crevasse,
alive but beyond help. The three men succeeded in
reaching a populated area, but they were scarred for
life. Two other horses had managed to find their way
down and were found by a farmer. On the 22nd of
September, five Icelanders went back to retrieve all
the equipment parts they could find, but a lot of it was
lost.
Erik and Hakon traveled back to Stockholm and ar-
rived there on the 19th of November.
Other observations made by Wadell and Ygberg
Although the discovery of Grímsvötn was the most
noted finding of this two-man expedition, there are
other relevant observations. Firstly, their descriptions
and photos bear witness to the extent and magnitude
of the fallout of tephra on Vatnajökull in the eruption
of Katla in 1918. Wadell (1920a) states that the tephra
was up to 10–20 cm thick in the ablation area of Síðu-
jökull (Wadell uses the name Skaftárjökull) and that
in that area a 20–25 cm layer of packed snow was
found between the tephra layer and the glacier ice.
This may, however, have been and older tephra layer
as this thickness is improbable given the large distance
from Katla. Moreover, they used this tephra layer to
estimate the mass balance in the accumulation areas,
apparently by digging snow pits down to the tephra
layer. Wadell states that at 1600 m above sea level
the thickness of the net snow accumulation varied be-
tween 1.5 and 3 meters. These may be the first obser-
vations of mass balance on Vatnajökull. Using a firn
density of 550 kg m3, these numbers are equivalent
to a net mass balance of 0.8–1.7 m water equivalent,
comparable to the averages reported for 1992–2006
(Björnsson and Pálsson, 2008) in the the accumula-
tion area of Vatnajökull traversed by Erik and Hakon.
Aftermath
The achievements of Erik and Hakon got a good cov-
erage in Iceland. Morgunblaðið (1919) was the first
to break the news on the 9th of September. The news-
paper printed a longer story in the 21st and contin-
ued on the 23rd of September based on a telephone
interview with Hakon Wadell. The next summer
Morgunblaðið printed a more complete story written
by Hakon (Wadell, 1920b), first introduced on the 3rd
of June 1920 and when published on 9th, 10th,12th,
20th of June, and 3rd and 8th of July. In Sweden, the
news came out on the 10th of September in Svenska
Dagbladet. They got a hero’s welcome upon their re-
turn on the 19th November, but their fame died out
134 JÖKULL No. 70, 2020