Justedal, and to the Mantle of Lodal 257 



years, it head descended about 600 feet upon the open plain, 

 bearing before it all the earth and stones lying on the surface 

 of the ground. (This mass of gravel, and sand and stone, is 

 what the Swiss call Moraine). In breadth it extended about 

 1680 feet, so that to the west, across the valley, from the moun- 

 tain to the river, all was covered with ice. From the south, too, 

 the ice had descended, into the valley, so that the farm was de- 

 prived of the greatest part of its pasture-ground, though what 

 remained was at present very green. There was a small quan- 

 tity of corn in the ear, but unripe, from the strong cold wind 

 which now more than formerly descended from the glacier. 

 The excessive reflection of the sun^s rays, too, from the ice, was 

 found to be injurious to the meadow ground. Within a few 

 years all the houses on the farm had been carried away, by two 

 successive falling masses of snow, and were set up again in new 

 situations." 



Other instances are to be found of the encroachments of the 

 glaciers, and of the mischief occasioned by them. An old wo- 

 man, who died in the year 1810, according to the parish-book 

 of Justedal, had been often in the old farm-house of Nigaard, 

 whose inhabitants, according to her account, and that of several 

 other persons, did not leave it till the ice had pushed the house 

 away. The peasant Claus Elvekragen remembers seeing, about 

 fifty years ago, the roof of a house buried in the moraine ; so 

 that there is good reason to believe, that a great part of the val- 

 leys now covered by the glaciers has been formerly inhabited. 

 At the same time, there is unquestionable evidence, that many 

 of the glaciers in Justedal are at present growing less, both in 

 depth and length. The mighty accumulation of moraine, which 

 this very glacier of Nigaard had formerly pushed before it, is 

 now about 1 726 feet below its margin, while the bare sides of 

 the mountain shew its depth now more than 200 feet less than 

 it has once been. The yearly amount of the difference, how- 

 ever, and its periodical changes, it is impossible, from the want 

 of accurate observations, to ascertain. The tradition, that they 

 increase and diminish every seventh or every nineteenth year, is 

 of equal authority with many other gratuitous hypotheses with 

 regard to the season and the weather. The crops at Elvekra- 



