152 



NATURE 



[December i, 1910 



STOCKHOLM TO SPITSBERGEN: THE 

 GEOLOGISTS' PILGRIMAGE. 



AX7E geologists who were privileged to take part in the 

 '^* journey to Spitsbergen before the meeting of the 

 'Geological Congress in Stockholm had good reason to 

 .count ourselves fortunate. Perfect weather, genial com- 

 panionship, comfortable surroundings, admirable organisa- 

 tion and guidance, and a route through the strongholds 

 of Thor of the Hammer, in which intense scientific interest 

 was constantly united with entrancing beauty of scene — 

 surely the combination would have roused enthusiasm 

 among much more stolid folk than the impressionable race 

 of hammerers ! 



We started by special train from Stockholm, about 

 seventy strong, an agglomerate of fifteen nationalities, on 

 the evening of July 25, and at once left behind us the 

 broken weather that has encircled Western Europe this 

 summer, entering a northern region of brightness and 

 calm in which we continued until our return. Those of 

 us who were in Stockholm the previous day had been 

 called together to see a fine exhibition illustrative of 

 Spitsbergen geology, temporarily shown in rooms attached 

 to the museum of the Swedish Geological Survey, and to 

 hear lucid demonstrations on the exhibits by Prof. A. G. 

 Nathorst and by the Director of our excursion. Prof. G. 

 De Geer. Here we had already an opportunity to begin 

 or to renew friendships that were cemented during the 

 journey. Owing to the care and forethought with which 

 every detail of the expedition had been planned, our start 

 was made promptly, and we settled without confusion 

 into our allotted places. 



„ The night's train journey brought us to Ragunda in 

 Angermanland, where our first halt was made. During 

 four hours of the morning we visited sections splendidly 

 illustrating the evidence from which Prof. De Geer has 

 worked out the chronology of post-Glacial time in Sweden. 

 By a catastrophe in 1795, the great lake of Ragunda was 

 suddenly drained and its bed laid bare ; and the ravines 

 ■subsequently eroded through its sediments now reveal 

 the whole succession deposited since the melting of the 

 Glacial ice-sheet. In these sediments Prof. De Geer 

 recognises and counts the annual bands of the " seasonal 

 clays," much as one may count the annual bands in a 

 tree trunk. By the extension of the same method over 

 various other parts of the country, he has attained results 

 by which the recession of the ice-sheet and all its incidents 

 may be actually dated, as he showed us later in field 

 ■demonstrations near Stockholm during the sitting of the 

 congress. 



Northward again for the rest of the day and through 

 a night of twilight, during which the Arctic circle was 

 crossed, our train brought us to breakfast on July 27 at 

 the bright town of Kiruna, which has newly sprung up in 

 the Lapland wilderness under the famous mountain of iron 

 ore. Here we remained until the afternoon, visiting the 

 great iron quarries under the guidance of Director Hj. 

 Lundbohm, who instructed us by a preliminary address 

 in the geology of the district and the history of its rapid 

 development. After a banquet to which we" were 

 invited by the mining company we took train again at 

 4 p.m., and ran shortly into view of the beautiful Lake 

 Tornetrask, in a region of jjowerful overthrust faults and 

 of Glacial lake-shores. Making several short halts in this 

 wild country to examine points of especial interest within 

 easy reach of the railway, under the guidance of Dr. O. 

 Sjogren, we reached Abisko in the evening. Iftre our 

 train remained for the night, affording us opportunity to 

 appreciate the picturesque surroundings of Abiskojokk, 

 now a much visited tourist resort. 



On the morning of July 28 the Norwegian frontier was 

 reached at 11 a.m. Thereafter followed a marvellous 

 descent to the coast, along the rim of a great fiord the 

 blue waters of which shone gloriously in the depths below 

 us. At Narvik, our port of embarkation, we were shown 

 the methods of treating the iron ore from Kiruna and 

 the facilities afforded for its shipment, being thereby still 

 further impressed with the enterprise which has been shown 

 in the development of this great Swedish mining industry. 



Our ship was the ALolus, Captain S. de Klinteberg, a 

 comfortable Stockholm passenger boat of 870 tons register. 

 Sailing from Narvik at 5 p.m., we were held up for a 



NO. 2144, VOL. 85] 



few hours of the night by fog in the narrow passages 

 leading northward from the Ofoten Fiord; but this was 

 our only delay in the charming voyage to Tromso, which 

 was reached next evening. 



There had been rumours of unusual ice conditions in the 

 Spitsbergen seas before we left Stockholm, and at Tromso 

 these rumours were partly confirmed. Our Director, there- 

 fore, learning that a French ship was due to arrive next 

 day from the north, decided to await her coming in order 

 to gain definite information. So we spent a calm, sunnv 

 day pleasantly at Tromso, first visiting the museum with it- 

 excellent collection of Arctic animals and birds, and after- 

 wards crossing to the mainland to see the Lapp summer 

 camp or to climb the nearer mountains. Meantime the 

 lie de France had arrived, and reported that while floe-ice 

 from Barents Sea had drifted in quantity round the south 

 and south-west coast of Spitsbergen, the inner fiords of 

 the island were free, so that the only difficulty was to 

 obtain access to them, for which purpose it might be 

 necessary to go far to the westward. With this intelli- 

 gence we steamed ahead again on the evening of July 30. 



As we passed northward in the shadow of the fiords a 

 red glow of wonderful brilliancy shone on all the higher 

 peaks and glaciers, and never faded ; until, at midnight, 

 as we passed out into the open ocean under the majestic 

 Fugle Rock, we saw the disc of the sun just cut by the 

 sea-line ; from which it rose with seeming effort, like a 

 heavy seabird, as night grew into morning. It was thus 

 that most of us gained the midnight sun for the first 

 time, not to lose it again until our approach to Norway 

 in returning. 



During the last day of July we pounded northward under 

 a cloudy sky, with a touch of ice in the air ; but in the 

 evening we ran into sunshine again, and there, ahead of 

 us, lay Bear Island miraged on the horizon. This was 

 indeed good fortune, for in his eleven previous voyages 

 past the island our Director had seen it only twice, so 

 frequent are fogs in these seas. Our course was altered 

 that we might run in under its eastern face. The placid 

 sea around us was furrowed by its myriad sea-fowl, and 

 from II p.m. until 2 a.m. we coasted its lonely 

 cliffs and sea-stacks closely enough to distinguish the 

 main features of their geological structure, and to catch 

 glimpses of its desolate interior with all features accen- 

 tuated by the light and shade of the low sun. 



In its stratigraphy Bear Island is akin to Spitsbergen, 

 though with a more restricted range of formations. To 

 all geologists these far northern islands are of great 

 interest, but peculiarly so to the geologists of Scandi- 

 navia, inasmuch as they contain a great sequence of the 

 later Palaeozoic. Mesozoic, and Tertiary sediments which 

 are lacking within the Scandinavian ' shield.' To the 

 Swedish explorers, and especially to Prof. J. G. Andersson, 

 we owe most of our knowledge of the geology of Bear 

 Island. At its -southern extremity is a ridge of crushed 

 and altered ' Heklahoek ' rocks, which include fossil- 

 iferous Lower Silurian limestones. The rest of the land 

 is built up of Devonian, Carboniferous, and marine 

 Triassic strata, all in some parts very fossiliferous, and 

 with coal seams in the Devonian. The sequence is inter- 

 rupted by strong unconformities and broken by faults, some 

 of which we could see plainly from our steamer. 



Now it became difficult to chop up the Arctic day into 

 conventional night and morning, and we counted by events 

 — particularly by meal-times, for we were a hungry crew 

 — rather than by the clock. Not many hours after sinking 

 Bear Island in the southward, on August i, we began to 

 meet floe-ice ; which soon thickened, so that we had to 

 slow down and eventually to turn southward and west- 

 ward for more open water. Again and again during the j 

 day was this experience repeated, a chilly ice-blink j 

 always paling the hazy sky to the north and east as j 

 we threaded our zigzag course amid the floes, on which I 

 inquisitive seals shifted uneasily, doubtful whether to re- ! 

 gard us as dangerous or not. Usually at this season the j 

 voyage to Spitsbergen lies entirely in open water ; but most j 

 of us were glad of the chance which gave us this touch of ; 

 the true Arctic colour. Still, to the anxious captain^ of i 

 our ship the prospect must have been decidedly less enjoy- j 

 able. Thus we steamed cautiously all day and all night ' 

 among the floes or along the broad water-lanes between 

 the great white streaks drawn out by the north-flowing 



