March 5, 1896] 



NATURE 



417 



work will confirm them ; and when this is done, students 

 of spectrum analysis will find a new region of the 

 highest importance open to their inquiries. 



J. Norman Lockyer. 



{To be continued.) 



THE VARANGERFJORD REGION AND THE 

 FORTHCOMING SOLAR ECLIPSE. 



V\ T^E expect to have during this summer a good many 

 * » visitors to the far north of Norway under the 70th 

 parallel of north latitude, and close to the frontier of 

 Russia. The total eclipse of the sun on August 9 (a few 

 minutes before 5 a.m.) will attract many astronomers to 

 these high latitudes. The sun will rise only 14' above 

 the horizon during the eclipse, but the mountains here 

 are not so high as to prevent the selection (though 

 with some little difficulty even on the fjords) of places 

 where their height will not prove an obstacle to the 

 'hservers. In case one is in doubt, our official almanac 

 :ives the time when the sun will be visible on May 3 ; 

 add nine minutes to that time, and it will be the time 

 when the sun will rise over the mountains at the particular 

 place. 



It will be more difficult for astronomers to get a clear 

 iky. The neighbourhood of \'ardo, which otherwise 

 would be very suitable, is plagued with fogs in the 

 ummer. \'adso has more advantages, but still better 

 ire such inland places as Polmag, Utsjoki, Karasjok, 

 Kautokeino, and Karasuando (in Sweden). 



I shall give here some information for the guidance of 

 those who intend to visit this remote corner of the earth. 



The Varangerfjord ("ng" pronounced as in singer, not 

 as in anger) runs inland west-north-west ; the land lying 

 north of it is called the Varanger Peninsula, and that to 

 he south of it South Varanger. All the land is fjeld 

 mountainous land, highlands), but it rises nowhere to 

 <iny great height. There are no good maps of this 

 region, except of the eastern part of South Varanger, of 

 which the Government recently published a map on the 

 scale of I in ioo,oco ; it is the best map. There is also 

 the ethnographical map of Finmark, by Friis, scale i in 

 200,000 (Christiania, 1888). On this remarkable map 

 every family is indicated by a separate mark ; it indicates 

 also the language they speak, and gives other details. It 

 is, naturally, only in such a very sparsely populated region 

 that such minute details can be represented on a map. 



The Varanger Peninsula is a plateau which on its 

 vestern border attains a height of 2200 feet, and on its 

 ^(luthern about 1500 feet. The plateau is, however, not 

 |uite level, but presents such long, gentle undulations as 

 ire seen on the open ocean in calm weather. The per- 

 manent population, which keeps to the sea-coast, has here 

 md there some outlying fields in the open parts of the 

 \ alleys near the sea. 



With the exception of these and the immediate neigh- 

 bourhood of the settled places, the whole region consists 

 of rolling mountain-tops practically unknown to the 

 civilised world. It can, according to all that we know of 

 it, be described as a wilderness of rocks, a stony desert 

 covered here and there with reindeer moss [Cladonia 

 rangi/erifta), and some swampy places where there 

 thrives a scanty vegetation of green plants. Towards the 

 inner part of the Varangerfjord there are some stretches 

 of damp ground, overgrown with dwarf willows. About 

 the centre of the peninsula are some large lakes full of 

 fish, which only a few Norwegians have visited. How- 

 ever, access to them (apart from the question of distance) 

 is not difficult from the south, for although there is no 

 road, one can be driven there in a little cart. In winter, 

 I few clever snow-shoe skaters have crossed this com- 



pletely desolate, uninhabited land from north to south, a 

 distance of forty English miles. 



The western side of the Varanger Peninsula has a 

 steep coast-line, but between Vardd and Vadso the slope 

 of the land seawards is very gentle ; to those who sail 

 along the coast the country seems quite level. 



The appearance of the coast at Vardo is seen in the 

 illustration on p. 418, desolate and dreary, truly an Arctic 

 desert land ; to the right is a bay of the sea, and the 

 flat land in the foreground, consisting of gravel, exhibits 

 some characteristic curved lines ; they are raised sea- 

 beaches. Probably one must go to the great lakes of 

 America to find equally brilliant examples of former 

 water-levels. The uplifting of the land has not been 

 uniform. On the north side of Varanger Peninsula the 

 old beaches are 70 feet above tide, but on the south, at 

 Vadso, they have been raised to between 260 feet and 

 295 feet. Probably the land is rising at the present time. 

 In Vardd, old people point out quays which have risen 

 several feet during their lifetime. The Austrian as- 

 tronomer. Pater Hall, who came to Vardd in 1769 to 

 observe the transit of Venus, was so much interested in 

 this question, that he caused a little pillar to be erected, 

 the height of which above the then existing tide-level was 

 accurately determined. He inserted in the parish register 

 of Vardd a description of the position of this pillar ; 

 but, alas ! though the register is still in existence, the 

 pillar has disappeared. The land on the south side of 

 Varangerfjord, South \'aranger, is not quite so bleak and 

 bare as Varanger Peninsula ; it has some pine forest in 

 the valleys. It also can be considered a plateau ; but it 

 is furrowed by valleys and fjords, and is thereby broken 

 up into a multitude of small, flattish, dome-topped moun- 

 tain masses. The plateau character is shown by the 

 fact that all the mountains rise to about the same height ; 

 in the eastern part, near the sea, to about 1300 feet. 



These differences in the landscape and in the character 

 of the country are connected with the fact that there are 

 not the same kinds of rocks on the south side of the 

 fjord as on the north side ; probably there is a line of 

 faulting along the fjord. On the south side there are 

 Archaean gneiss and granitic rocks ; on the north side 

 younger rocks (conglomerates, sandstones, and slates), 

 probably of Cambro-Silurian age ; but fossils have not as 

 yet been discovered in them. A remarkable conglomerate 

 occurs in the inner part of the Varangerfjord ; it may 

 have been formed during a very remote (ilacial period, 

 probably Cambro-Silurian. It contains striated boulders, 

 and rests partly on an underlying bed which shows 

 glacial striations. 



We shall now take a glance at the inhabitants of this 

 province, Finmark, which touches the Russian frontier. 

 The Norwegians gradually migrated into it during the 

 last few centuries, but the Laps were already there. 

 Many of the Laps wander as nomads with their reindeer, 

 and dwell in tents, but the greater part of them live on 

 the sea-shore, poor fishermen and farmers Hike the 

 crofters in the isles of Scotland), who grow a little hay 

 for their cattle, and a i&\\ potatoes for themselves. There 

 are no cereals in this northerly province. 



Many of the inhabitants live in wretched earth-huts, 

 which they share with their cattle. The Fins, who came 

 from the grand-duchy of Finland, were the last to 

 migrate into this district. The immigration commenced 

 more than a century ago ; it attained its maximum be- 

 tween twenty and ten years ago, and it is now decreasing. 

 The language of the Laps differs about as much from 

 that of the Fins as English differs from (ierman ; the 

 Norsk language, as is well known, belongs to another 

 group, the Germanic. All the three races are Lutherans. 

 F"inmark is very thinly peopled ; the whole population in 

 1 89 1 was 23,000 on an area of 47,000 square kilometres, or 

 about two square kilometres to each individual. Finmark 



NO. 1375, VOL. 53] 



