Skógræktarritið - 15.12.1991, Qupperneq 25

Survey and sample collection on the North-West Iceland.
Together with Regiönal forester Haukur Ragnarsson, who is in charge of the forests on
West-lceland, I made a surveying tour to the north-western part of lceland in July 1990.
We visited coastal farms from Thorpar to Munadarnes and collected samples from the
driftwood and stray logs (fig. 5J.
When the driftwood is washed ashore it becomes the property of the farmer whose
land borders the coast. These farmers have small sawmills, mostly powered by the
power-take-off on farm tractors. The big logs are used for lumber and panels and the
smaller and shorter logs are split and used as fencepoles. Since these logs are impre-
gnated with salt from the sea, the poles can last many decades in the ground. This, how-
ever, causes problems when such wood is used for fuel, since the saline steam from the
fire corrodes, and destroys the stove-iron.
North of Munadarnes.
Munadarnes (66°N.) is the most northerly farm still populated and in operation along
this coastal area (fig. 5). The farms farther north along the coast are depopulated and the
driftwood and stray logs have in many places not been utilized during the last 20 years.
Since there are no roads along this coastline, we made a surveying trip with a fishing
boat. As we passed the coastline we could see large amounts of logs along the entire
water's edge. At Skjaldabjarnarvík we went ashore. This farm was settled by the great vik-
ing Hella-Björn, who was an enemy of King Harald Fine-hair, who assembled Norway
into one Kingdom in 872 A.D. Shortly after that Hella-Björn settled on land along this
coast. He built his first farm on Skjaldabjarnarvík and later on another one at Bjarnarnes.
On one of the bays at Skjaldabjarnarvík we measured a pile of drift logs covering an
area of 6.4 daa: The volume was 339 cu.m of logs longer than 1 meter and thicker than
10 cm. ln addition there were 150 cu.m with small bits and pieces of wood, which had
been destroyed by ice or heavy waves which had thrown the drift logs on rocks and
stones along the shoreline. The volume corresponds to a total of 76 cu.m per daa and
since most of it was assembled during a 20 year period, this corresponds to an incre-
ment of 3.8 cu.m per year per daa. The average dimension of usable timber was 0.102
cu.m per log and the biggest log measured was 0.793 cu.m. Approximately 70% were big-
ger than 0.1 cu.m per log. 47% of the logs were pine and 43% were larch. 7% was spruce
and 1% fir and 2% poplar. Academician Iwan Stefanowich Melekow, who is one of the
Soviet Union's best known scientists, and who has expansive knowledge about their
forests, told me that such a high share of larch in the volume, together with the fact that
we found Abies sibirica shows that the timber must originate from rivers located in east-
ern Siberia such as the Ob, Yenisei and Lena. In order to check our findings during the
survey in North-Western Iceland, I made a short trip to Jan Mayen in November 1990.
This island is located at 71°North and the southbound surface current from the Arctic
ocean passes Jan Mayen before it reaches Iceland. The samples we collected showed
that 21% were larch and 70% were pine. The quality of the timber was approximately the
same as we found on the driftwood in Iceland.
Timber transport over the Arctic Ocean.
The ship leanette sailed into the Arctic Ocean and sank, destroyed by the ice, near the
New Siberian Islands (Novasibirskie ostrova) in 1881. Later on the wreckage was found
on the South-Eastern shores of Greenland. This information made the famous explorer
Fridtjof Nansen plan an expedition with his polar ship FRAM, NANSEN (1897). He sailed
from Northern Norway along the north coast of Siberia and became stuck in the ice in
September 1893. The ship moved with the ice drift, and 3 years Iater in July 1896 it
loosened from the ice north of Svalbard and could go back to North-Norway on its own
power (figure 11). FAIRBRIDGE (1966) showed that the minimum cover area of ice thicker
than 0.5 meter is in September while the maximum cover occurs in April. SÆTER,
RONHOVEDE and ALLEN (1971) reported both the movement of the ice and the speed,
which varied between 400 km per year and 1.000 km per year (figure 12). Generally, the
ice cover passes slowly northbound from the Bering Strait over the Arctic Ocean, passes
the North Pole area and continues southbound between Greenland and Spitsbergen.
SKÓGRÆKTARRITIÐ 1991
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