Researches on Snow and Ice, 1918-40

Abstract

IN 1916 the first world war compelled me to use in Norway a scholarship intended for an extra-European country. This proved decisive to my future life and scientific work. Very soon after arriving in Norway I felt the attraction of its mountains and glaciers, especially of Jotunheim, Scandinavia's largest mountain complex. From 1918-22 I devoted my attention primarily to the Horung massif, only a few kilometres from the innermost part of the Sogne fjord, and in particular to the small but beautifully formed Styggedal glacier (Plate 1). There I set out to learn the problems presented by glaciers: the meteorological conditions for their existence, the causes of the advance and regression of their margins, and the rate of movement of the ice. Jon Eythorsson, my Icelandic colleague, and I soon found that a station for regular weather observations would be essential for our work. We selected the summit of Mount Fanarak, 2020 metres above sea-level, for this purpose. Carrying the material for such a station up the 1000-metre slopes was by no means easy, more especially as none of the local farmers were willing to helpus, convinced as they were that at that altitude any building would be wrecked by the winter storms. With the aid of two Norwegian students however Eythors? son and I managed to put up a small observation hut on the summit. As it withstood the storms of the first winter, the mountain farmers were won over and continued the work of construction. Later the Bergen Meteorological Institute took control and extended the building. After a year or two the first high mountain observatory was ready, complete with an oil-driven dynamo for electric lighting and wireless equipment (Plate 2). The life of an observer there in the winter is not altogether a pleasure however as the humid winds from the Atlantic deposit enormous quantities of hoare-frost which, with the snow, threaten to bury the buildings completely. Plate 3 shows what this observatory looked like one Easter when no one had been staying there to combat the daily accumulation. A very fine series of terminal moraines exist in front of the present margin of the Styggedal glacier (Fig. 1). These are divided into two series: the inner is bare of vegetation, while the outer is covered by grass and bushes. At the end of the eighteenth or beginning of the nineteenth century, when most Norwegian glaciers were much farther advanced than at present, it appears that the Styggedal glacier extended to the large moraine separating the two series. It has been demonstrated that this advance marked the maximum extension of the Styggedal and other Norwegian glaciers after the melting of the inland ice. As local glaciers they have at no time been any larger. During the years of my investigations the margins of the Styggedal glacier were stationary. It was then in equilibrium: that is, its accumulation, or the annual supply of nourishment in the form of snow and hoare-frost, equalled