NORWEGIAN GLACIERS. 85 



menon confined to our western regions, and that oscillation has 

 consequently been chiefly due to exceedingly wet weather rather 

 than to a more irregularly low temperature. 



On visiting some of the glaciers in the northern part of our 

 country, we find that traditions concerning Ihe oscillation of gla- 

 ciers near Holand Fjord are somewhat doubtful, though we may 

 perhaps conclude from them, that the position of glaciers, even 

 here, has been, stationary, on the whole, from the middle of the 

 eighteenth down to the beginning of the nineteenth century, though 

 probably with a somewhat slight and rather slow decrease, and 

 a little oscillation. This supposition is in perfect accordance with 

 Wahlenberg's statement, that he bad not been able to make 

 any observation as to the oscillation of glaciers, nor had he 

 been able to determine whether the glaciers were increasing or 

 decreasing. 



It is not until we get near the end of the period of oscilla- 

 tion of glaciers in the first two decades of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury, that we find more numerous accounts of glacier oscillation 

 in our native country. The fact that we here mainly meet with 

 records of a well-marked decrease of glaciers, may be easily 

 explained, when we remember that a double phase of retrogres- 

 sion was going on. As already mentioned, a decrease of the 

 Glacier of Bondhus was noticed in 1812; but even somewhat 

 previous to that year, we find a statement by Vargas Bedemar 

 mentioning a decrease of glaciers near Holand Fjord. At this 

 time, in the year 1813, we also meet with the first account of 

 the bursting of a glacier lake, the Dæmmevand near the Hard- 

 angerjökel, in our country, another indication, as we see, of the 

 beginning of a decrease of glaciers. 



In the year 1819, Bishop Neumann gives some figures rela- 

 ting to the amount of glacier decrease during the preceding hun- 

 dred years, that is, of course, the decrease of glaciers for the 

 period subsequent to the great oscillation in the middle of the 

 eighteenth century. The amount of decrease for that period is 



