History

The word “Gletscher” (glacier) first appeared on a map of the Alps in 1538 but the term “Ferner” for old snow was used in the Tyrol in 1300 and “Kees” (ice) in 1533 and on a map from 1604 (Klebelsberg, 1948, pp. 1–2).

A sketch map of the Vernagtferner glacier in the Ötztal of Austria dates from 1601 (Nicolussi, 1990). In the Alps Kuhn (1787, 1788) wrote on the mechanisms of Alpine glaciers. Between 1792–1794, Sveinn Pálsson made the earliest known scientific study of glaciers, including a glacier sketch map of the Vatnajökull glaciers in Iceland. Excerpts of his 1795 report were published in Danish between 1881–1884 but it was only translated in full in 1945 and then only in Icelandic. So the work remained totally unknown by most glaciologists until recently translated into English by Williams and Sigurðsson (Pálsson, 2004).