Why is it called Iceland

SLN geography@Iceland 2003 Photo-enquiry 6

All photographs can be used in any teaching and learning context in a school but cannot be used for any other purposes without prior permission of kate.russell@staffordshire.gov.uk

6 Why is it called Iceland?

	6.1 Imagine discovering a new island and landing in a place like this- what would you call it?
	6.2 Icebergs calve from the front of the glacier as it moves forward.
	6.3 Valley glaciers flow down to sea level and when Ingolfur Arnason landed in the 8th century he would have seen much more ice than this.
	6.4 Vatnajökull - an ice cap is larger than all the rest of the glaciers of Europe added together.
	6.5 Heavy precipitation falls on the icecap, compressing snow to ice and it flows and crevasses down steep mountain sides.
	6.6 Crevasses are cracks caused by the movement of ice.
	6.7 When glaciers melt, rivers flow in tunnels.
	6.8 Glaciers pluck and grind rock below the ice.
	6.9 Glaciers sometimes expand and push up eroded material called a terminal moraine.
	6.10 They then melt backwards and it seems as though they retreat. They don’t, they flow forwards and melt. They only go backwards if the melt is greater than the flow.
	6.11 They can leave behind wide flat bottom valleys when floods wash over them.
	6.12 Valley glaciers erode deeper valleys and rivers flow to the sea laden with sediment.
	6.13 Vatnajökull's glacier ice is about 1500 years old. So in 2003, the snow that made this ice fell in the 6^th Century. Before Iceland had been settled by people.
	6.14 Glacier ice is dense with very little gas in it.
	6.15 This landscape of glacially eroded material is very cold in winter. This area will be frozen.
	6.16 This is a piece of relatively soft volcanic rock.
	6.17 Pieces begin to break off and water gets into small cracks.
	6.18 Cracks appear as water expands when frozen.
	6.19 Water in the cracks expands and breaks up the rock further.
	6.20 Finally the rock is shattered. Frost shattered in a Tundra environment.
	6.21 That was small frost shattering, this was a large one!
	6.22 Mosses begin to colonize the moraines and outwash plains.
	6.23 Flowers grow in clumps to establish themselves.
	6.24 Flowering plants can be succulent to store water as although it rains a lot, the water seeps through the stony sediments.
	6.25 Seeds of grasses begin to grow in the clumps.
	6.26 Dwarf willows are low growing to cope with the icy tundra winds.
	6.27 Lupins help bind the stony surface together.
	6.28 Birches and larger willows will eventually establish themselves in the more sheltered valley sides. This is almost as big a forest as exist in Iceland.
	6.29 Let us go back to Jökulsarlon, one of the most beautiful places on Earth.
Low - High	6.30 watch an Arctic Tern flying over, this bird migrates from South Africa every year to breed on the gravelling plains.
	6.31 A Great Skua - a bird that steals the food of other birds, mostly terns.
Low - High	6.32 Terns feeding on sprats make arrow like dives into the ice water.
	6.33 This is how to see the iceberg lake an amphibious vehicle in a country where there are no amphibians!
Low - High	6.34 Take a short journey on the lake lace - the movie
	6.35 This is a fjord in the making. The glacial lake is 300 metres below the ice and the mountains around are over 2000 metres high