FIELD STATION | NATURAE OBSERVATIO | MARTIN’S EYE
“Bridge building” from 1758 to 2019...
iPROJECT Written by Viveka Hansen | Photographed by Lars Hansen
Via in-depth research and yearly fieldworks by The IK Foundation’s,
Bridge Builder Expeditions since 2016, it has been established that the location of the naturalist Anton Rolandsson Martin’s visit in 1758 to Spitsbergen was at the levelled coastal landscape on one of three small islands of Forlandsøyane, situated west off Prins Karls Forland. The voyage with a whaling ship may have lasted only three months, mainly spent at sea, except for going ashore here for a few hours when he primarily paid interest to eiderdown, botanical matters and rock samples. But even so, Rolandsson Martin is still today regarded as an important scientific pioneer by later Arctic explorers and natural historians.
As from 12 May 2019, the FIELD STATION | NATURAE OBSERVATIO | MARTIN’S EYE has successfully been erected on a chosen remote spot of the area during this year’s first expedition (
Voyage IV.A). Documentation and collecting of data will be done via the autonomous Field Station during the summer. That is to say via this temporary entirely automated micro-field station, which unattended during night and day, all year-round will observe a selected landscape and its life of the local biosphere. A follow-up fieldwork and overhaul schedule for the Field Station will be made in September 2019 (Voyage IV.B). The Field Station is named after Anton Rolandsson Martin – one of the so-called Linnaeus Apostles – due to that he was the first naturalist (scientist) who visited this place more than 250 years ago.
Added: 31/05/2019
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