8 TRAIJSTI EINARSSON 



form a thick group that contains hgnites of a much cooler character than that 

 of Gerpir; they belong to Pflug's third or fourth types. Rather high up in this 

 group the locahty Bessastadaa has a flora comparable to that of the warmest 

 zone of the Phocene Tjornes sediments (Pflug, 1959). In the close neighbor- 

 hood, and almost certainly below Bessastadaa, the locahty Hengifoss shows a 

 flora of a much cooler character. Pflug interprets it as a cold period at the 

 beginning of or at the end of a glacial time. 



A number of localities at Jokuldalur and Vopnafjordur, which belong to 

 this group of basalts, have a flora comparable to that of Bessastadaa, but 

 it has also been found that the flora is horizontally quite variable (Jux, 1960). 

 Pflug and Jux place this flora into the Upper Tertiary, or even the Upper 

 Phocene. 



Let us now return to Tungufell. According to the mapping by Walker, this 

 locahty should be close to the Holmatindur lignite and we must put this far 

 below the above-mentioned Upper Tertiary inland basalts. However, Meyer 

 and Pirrit (1957) give an Upper Phocene or Lower Pleistocene age for 

 Tungufell on a palynological basis. Also Jux (1960) concludes that the 

 Tungufell flora shows a striking similarity to the flora of the inland basalts, 

 which he is inclined to put into the Upper Pliocene. The conditions are thus 

 quite perplexing. A possible solution of the difficulties is the assumption that 

 the warm flora of the Lowest Tertiary in Iceland was very soon replaced by a 

 much cooler flora that, with httle variation, persisted throughout all the rest 

 of the Tertiary. 



In the Icelandic lignites Pflug has found some 50 poflen species, including 

 nearly 20 new ones, i.e. not previously found elsewhere. He points out that 

 whereas European and North American pollen types of this time are considered 

 nearly identical, the Icelandic types show marked differences. They present 

 closer affinity with the Paleocene of Spitsbergen and with the Lower Tertiary 

 of Japan. Macroscopic remains have also rendered about 50 species if we 

 include the old determination made by Heer (1868). 



The results of Pflug's work suggest that in the Lower Tertiary, and perhaps 

 stiff later, Iceland was not connected with lands in the east or west but 

 instead there were rather connections with more northerly lands. 



Finally, it may be recalled that, on the basis of the Eocene flora. Chancy 

 (1940) concluded that the poles and the continents in the Arctic to Sub- Arctic 

 areas were practically at their present relative position. The same data would 

 seem, among others, to indicate that the influence of the Atlantic waters was 

 felt in Spitsbergen as it is today. Provisional results of paleomagnetism in 

 Iceland (Th. Sigurgeirsson, private communication) give for the Lower 

 Tertiary pole a position of about 75°N., 70°W. (Smith Sound) which would 

 imply a latitude of 70° for Iceland, instead of the present 65°. On the other 

 hand, the paleomagnetically located pole for the Upper Tertiary in Iceland 

 (Sigurgeirsson, 1 957) shows no sure difference from the present geographic pole. 



