Sir,
As a Dane I can only welcome Anker Weidick’s initiative to elucidate the use of the term “inland ice”, indlandsis, and cognate terms, as these are often used at random.
Based on knowledge of Rink’s works published in Danish it is beyond doubt that Rink meant his term Indlandsisen as a geographical place name to distinguish the huge part of Greenland from the different, remaining part of the country. The term Indlandsisen is therefore used on Danish topographical maps as an ordinary place name, and according to general rules for geographical place names it should not be transcribed to “inland ice” or other anglicized terms, and further it should be spelled with capital 1.
Besides as a geographical place name Indlandsisen has been used by numerous authors to indicate a glacier, an ice sheet of huge dimensions. It deserves notice, however, that Rink’s original definition—as also stressed by Weidick—does not only emphasize that the ice is of immense extent, but also that it should be barred from the sea by a generally wide, coastal land strip. The latter is not even 100 per cent the case with the Greenland ice sheet though nearly. If it is maintained that the ice should be barred from the sea by coastal land, it is obvious that the term “the Antarctic Inland Ice” is incorrect and presumably also “a Pleistocene Inland Ice”. The terms “ice sheet” or “ice cover” are more correct to indicate these phenomena. The word Indlandsis should therefore only refer to the Greenland ice sheet of general use in Danish is the word Iskappe, normally indicating a glacier type of smaller dimensions than Indlandsisen. The older literature in particular uses it to describe Indlandsisen, but here it does not signify a particular place name, and the corresponding English word “ice cap” may therefore also be used of the Greenland ice sheet.
14 February 1967
