Krossfjord: Collinsodden

Collinsodden Panorama 1: the coastal landscape

Collinsodden is situated at the entry of Krossfjord. It is not exactly well sheltered, to put it mildly, but on a lovely day like this, the coastline with some wide beaches, interrupted by small, rocky points, can almost appear tropical 🙂

Collinsodden Panorama 2: the coastal plain

The flat coastal plain stretches over many kilometres, from Ebeltofthamna in Krossfjord and up the west coast (Diesetsletta). It was probably created by wave action during the pleistocene, which cut a coastal platform into the bedrock (schist, in this case).

Collinsodden Panorama 3: the old hut

There is a ruin of an old hut a bit away from the coast. It was a trapper hut, but it was used for scientific purposes for a short period between 1912 and 1914. In those years, there was a German meteorological observatory a good 7 kilometres away in Ebeltofthamna, initiated after Count Zeppelin’s expedition in 1910 and led by Kurt Wegener, brother of the famous Alfred Wegener (the one with the plate tectonics). Next to meteorology, the scientists also did some work on the northern lights.

Meteorologist Max Robitzsch took the initiative to photograph the aurora from simultaneously from two positions a couple of kilometres apart for altitude determination. Next to the main base in Ebeltofthamna, this old hut at Collinsodden was chosen as a secondary base for northern light photography during the dark season. To enable perfect synchronisation, they even improvised a telephone connection over more than 7 kilometres between the two sites!

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