Hammerfest - Strove Geodetic Arc Column - 30 September 2022

Very dim Northern lights last night, fell asleep dressed in my going out in the cold gear - a lot of clothes are needed to stay warm in this icy cold, specially at night as the cold wind cuts through everything.

Places we travel through today with our only stop that we can get off for 1hr45 at Hammerfest. We were going to take a bus, but prior experience has shown that it takes 45 people a long time to get on and off the bus so may be quicker for us to walk.

5 minutes from where the ship docks is the Struve Geodetic Arc in Hammerfest.  A chain of survey triangulations stretching from Hammerfest in Norway to the Black Sea, through 10 countries and over 2,820 km. These are points of a survey, carried out between 1816 and 1855 by the astronomer Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve, which represented the first accurate measuring of a long segment of a meridian. This helped to establish the exact size and shape of the planet and marked an important step in the development of earth sciences and topographic mapping. It is an extraordinary example of scientific collaboration among scientists from different countries, and of collaboration between monarchs for a scientific cause. The original arc consisted of 258 main triangles with 265 main station points. The listed site includes 34 of the original station points, with different markings, i.e. a drilled hole in rock, iron cross, cairns, or built obelisks.

Description is available under license CC-BY-SA IGO 3.0.

A gas producer, paid for by the Italians.