Norway: 1881


Coleman's years spent working on his PhD. in Prussia can also be seen as the beginning of the geologist's life long interest in travel.

Notebook 6, "To the North Cape and Back" gives an account of the journey taken by Coleman to "Lapland and the Land of the Midnight Sun." This trip stimulated Coleman's interest in glaciation. It also served as the geolgist's introduction to mountain climbing.

To the North Cape and Back.

After a heavy semester’s work at a university in the east of Germany, in 1881, a longing seized me to get as far as possible from German heat & German erudition. I had a hazy impression that the North Cape would furnish the opposite extreme in these particulars, so buying a Baedicker’s “Norway” and putting about $200 in my pocket, all that remained of my funds at the time, I took the next train for the north. …

Notebook 6, 1881, page 1

When Coleman was installed in the Chair of Natural History and Geology at Victoria University in 1883, he delivered an installation lecture on "Norway—its geology and people. ”1

Notebook. A.P. Coleman. A.C.T.S., Breslau, 1881 [Cover,] Diary No. 6 1881

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1. "Norway: its Geology and People", Acta Victoriana Vol. 6, No. 5 (February 1883): 9 - 19


…Our course lay for five days always northward between the swarms of peaked & jagged islands and the mountainous shore of Norway. Often the points of black rock were capped with cloud or swathed with mists or loomed dimly through

Notebook. A.P. Coleman. "To the North Cape and Back" in Notebook No. 6, 1881, page 4

fog, but now & then the sun lit warmed them up into as much of a smile as their rugged features would admit of and showed patches of vegetation of a wonderfully vivid green. Often the green was absent and nothing but black rock, white snow and gray sea & sky were to be seen as if nature had only sketched them in charcoal and not taken time to color them. Near Gröni we saw the celebrated glacier Svartisen according to Baedecker the second in size in Europe. It belied its name of “Black ice,” and was white with shimmering snow. It is this glacier I believe which our enterprising company is going to quarry for ice to supply the English markets.

Notebook. A.P. Coleman. "To the North Cape and Back" in Notebook No. 6, 1881, page 5