p. A. ØYEN. 



retreated considerably. We are even justified in i-egarding our 

 present glaciers as giants when compared with the glaciers of 

 that period, at least as far as regards the glaciers situated along 

 our western coast. This is clearly illustrated by the destruction 

 of ancient habitations not only in the Jostedal, but also near 

 Svartisen. The record of the oscillation of the Glacier of Aa- 

 brække shows the same circumstances as a statement regarding 

 the Glacier of Nigard in 1742, from which we learn that this 

 glacier, during the preceding years, had destroyed a considerable 

 tract of meadows and pastures, by covering the whole area for 

 a distance of about two kilometres and a half. And this increase 

 of glaciers seems to have been quite as rapid as it was great; 

 for in the neighbourhood of the farm of Berset, towards the end 

 of the seventeenth century (about 1690) the glacier had been 

 observed only as a very small hang-glacier in the upper part 

 of the Tufteskaar according to the statements of two peasants 

 in the Krondal, while in 1742 the same glacier had so increased 

 as to cover the whole valley and part of the meadow down towards 

 the river. A peasant even stated the rapidity of the increase 

 of the glacier for ten years previously to have been about two 

 hundred metres. A tradition of the Glacier of Bjørnesteg also 

 states, that this glacier was increasing so tremendously, that 

 peasants going to their mountain farms (sætre) were scarcely 

 able to make their way with axes through the large offshoots 

 that had originated during the previous twenty-four hours. 



The leading facts, stated above, direct attention to a main 

 line of curvature, graphically representing glacier oscillation, and 

 these facts lead us to look for the minimum point of that line 

 in a time previous to the year 1690. Comparing, how^ever, the 

 figures of the table of alternating climatic periods, we are obliged 

 to regard the retired position of glaciers as at least preceding 

 the commencement of glacier advance in 1675, in the manner in 

 which this Alpine phenomenon has been determined by Richter; 

 but we do not venture to say, whether we ought not to look 



