15 000 !

I´ve just made it, 15 000 visits ! In less than a year, well, I´m happy ! Thank you visitors, keep coming !

Mario, Ultima Thule

The Viking Museum at Borg, Lofoten islands

The Viking territories

The Lofotr Borg Viking Museum is located 55 km from the town of Svolvaer, in the Lofoten Islands.

It was in 1982 that a farmer found some interesting "potsherds"; anthropologists and archeologists who excavated the land found evidences of the Viking era. The farmstead which was found after the excavation was discovered to be the property of one of the most important chieftains of the Viking region. The museum was constructed at this place.

In Northern Norway during the Iron-age, there were about 10-15 Chiefdoms, one of which was at Borg in Lofoten. Excavations shows that it was established around 500 AD.

Archaeological studies formed the basis when the house was reconstructed. The ground plan, the room partitions, the location of poles and fire places, the wooden walls and outer walls made of grass turf could all be reconstructed in accordance with the excavated structures.

Structures in the ground and the artefacts that have been found indicate that a chieftain lived here. The farm was evidently different from surrounding farms.

In the area there are also vestiges of boat houses for long-boats, circular tunnel systems, barrows, and vestiges of other long-houses. Added together, these remains indicate that there was a concentration of power in the area during the Iron age.

The Viking Museum displays:

- The 83 m long reconstructed long-house
- a reconstructed boathouse
- a forge
- several artifacts - and the Viking long ship "Lofotr"

http://www.lofotr.no/Engelsk/en_index.html

So many different "snows" !

In the native languages of the arctic there are dozens of different words for snow and ice:

kaniq, qirihuq, qirititat, nilak, nilak, nilaktaqtuq, hiku, hiquaq, hikuaqtuaq, hikurhuit, hikuqihuq, hikuliaq, maniraq, hikup hinaa, qainnguq, manillat, kassut, iluliaq, ilulissirhuq, auktuq, quihaq, hirmiijaut...

Rime frost, freshwater ice, sea ice, thin ice, pack ice, new ice, the ice edge, solid ice, hummocky ice, pressure ridges, pieces of floating ice, icebergs in the water, melting ice…

When an inuit hunter speeds on his dog sled, the kind of ice he's on makes the difference between life and death - sliding or sinking. Ice is the only runway, the only drink, the only shelter where you build an igloo. No wonder you have to be precise when you describe it.

Just think in reverse: in non-arctic regions we have lots of something inuits scarcely know : trees. If one of them comes to our land, oak, willow, pine, larch, maple, cedar, birch... - all those would be merely "tree" for our eskimo !

By the way, a new word: sastrugi.

It means the ridges or dunes or in ice that are parallel to the prevailing wind direction.

They´ve been observed also in...Mars !

Source
http://nancycampbelle.blogspot.com/

Homer, Alaska - a slideshow

In a recent post I wrote about Homer, here.
Now a more exaustive presentation is available:

AWI's Neumeyer III - a base and a fleet in Antarctica

Neumayer Station III

The new center of german research in Antarctica.
Position: 70°40'S, 008°16'

On February 20th, 2009, the new german Antarctic research base Neumayer Station III was inaugurated. This is the first research station to integrate research, operational and accommodation facilities in one building, situated on a platform above the snow surface, and connected to a garage in the snow.

Within a protective casing, the platform accommodates 100 containers with living quarters, a kitchen, a mess, a hospital, various laboratories, workshops, a radio operator room, sanitary facilities, the power supply station and a snow-melting plant.

A primary feature of the new station is the ability to compensate for adverse effects of snow and ice accumulation by means of hydraulic elevation of the building, without leaving parts of the construction to be swallowed by snow. The station's energy supply comes from a block heat and power plant containing four diesel generators of 150 kW each.

Nine or at most ten people live and work at Neumayer Station during the Antarctic winter: a medical doctor who also acts as the head of the station, a meteorologist, an airchemist, two geophysicists, an engineer, an electrician, a radio operator/electronics engineer and a cook. Each team overwintering at the station stays there for 14 to 15 months. For nine months of that time, their only link to the outside world is by radio. In the short Antarctic summer, 30 searchers at most can live there.

Now itself buried 12 meters under the snow surface and under increasing structural pressure, Neumayer II had to be replaced by a new station. Neumayer III was shipped to Antarctica in January 2008 as an assembly kit comprising of the outer structure and shell of the station, and of the interlocking containers that sit inside and make up its interior habitable structure.

With a weight of 2 300 tons, Neumayer III consists of a superstructure raised on 16 hydraulic legs (resting on as many foundation slabs) that can be jacked up progressively over the years to elevate the building and counter snow accumulation. Neumayer III is a show-case of modern building technology, an will be runned by the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) for polar and marine research.

The AWI

The Alfred Wegener Institute carries out research in the Arctic and Antarctic. The institute coordinates German polar research and makes available to national and international science important infrastructure, like the research ice breaker “Polarstern” and research stations .

The Polar 5, a new research plane also developed by the Alfred Wegener Institute specifically for this region.

The research icebreaker Polarstern:

A floating large-scale laboratory