This is quite embarrassing............

The big boulder just below and to right of centre is the one deemed by TD to be virtually identical in shape to the Newall Boulder............

The same boulder is seen just to left of centre, on the edge of the flooded area.  It is clearly not at all the same shape the Newall Boulder, as claimed by TD.

Embarrassing?   ....... not for me, but for the members of the Bevins /Ixer gang who work with him.   Our old friend Tim Daw, whose trolling behaviour is in itself a source of concern, has demonstrated yet again his complete lack of understanding of the fundamentals of glacial geomorphology.

https://www.sarsen.org/2026/01/the-brian-john-boulder-again.html

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/394390618_Comparative_Analysis_of_the_Brian_John_Boulder_at_Craig_Rhos-y-felin_and_the_Newall_Boulder_from_Stonehenge_Implications_for_the_Origins_and_Transport_of_the_Bluestones?channel=doi&linkId=6894edbbd3c4ac316e2edf77&showFulltext=true

For some time he has had a weird obsession with a boulder at Rhosyfelin which he calls the "Brian John Boulder."  I'm very honoured.  There is nothing inherently fascinating about it, except that it is superficially similar in shape to the Newall Boulder (when seen from one perspective) which has been at the centre of a vigorous debate. It's also somewhat similar in shape to lots of other boulders at Rhosyfelin and elsewhere.  Just look at the photos of the archaeological dig by me and by MPP and his colleagues.  If TD was so intent on making a big issue of the shapes of certain stones, he should have done some fieldwork and checked his assumptions first..........

I have never claimed that the Newall Boulder has a unique shape, or that the bullet shape is unique to glacially transported clasts.  Wedge or bullet shapes are common in nature, since the basic shape of blocks is determined initially by intersecting fracture patterns or joint planes.  Blocks that are narrower at one end than the other are thus very common;  more common than truly rectangular blocks, since truly rectilinear joint patterns don't occur all that often.  But as all the textbooks will tell  you, the bullet shape is accentuated or exaggerated during glacial transport because of enhanced abrasion or smoothing at the up-glacier end (where the block is under compression) and enhanced breakage at the down-glacier end (where the block is under tension). Pressure enhancement followed by pressure release and plucking or quarrying.  In my articles on the Newall Boulder I have given all the necessary sources in case you want to check this out.

The opinions on the small boulder which were expressed by 11 senior geomorphologists were based not on the bullet shape alone, but on a combination of disgnostic features.  

The TD obsession is very difficult to explain.  As far as I can see, he is obsessed with the idea that because a boulder at Rhosyfelin has a shape that is -- he assumes -- very similar to that of the Newall Boulder, and has not been transported very far, we cannot assume that the Newall Boulder was glacially entrained, transported and deposited.  The problem is that the boulder that he chooses to call the Brian John Boulder is not a glacially transported clast at all, but a locally derived block in a glaciofluvial setting. In a high energy ice wastage environment (such as that which existed at Rhosyfelin at the end of the last glacial episode) large clasts which have not been entrained and removed by true glacial processes tend to be smoothed rather rapidly by large volumes of meltwater flow.  The meltwater is turbulent and contains the silt, sand and gravel particles that are the abrasive tools.  If TD had bothered to read the articles by Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd, John Downes and myself, he would have seen that his favourite boulder sits in the middle of a somewhat discontinuous and chaotic glaciofluvial (or fluvioglacial) horizon that is stratigraphically above the local till and below the thick colluvial horizon.

The boulder which is blessed with my name has clearly had most of its sharp edges smoothed and rounded by meltwater flow. In fact the whole boulder has been affected by meltwater abrasion. Like the other boulders in this horizon, striations (if there were any to start with) have also been removed. There are no man-made features on its surface, and it holds no evidence of human quarrying activity.  It has nothing whatsoever to do with the glacial transport hypothesis, and it tells us nothing whatsoever about the origins and transport of the Newall Boulder.

Bullet-shaped clasts shaped primarily by transport on the wet bed of a glacier in the Darwin Mountains, Antarctica.  Glacier flow was from left to right.  Here the striations have survived because the boulders have not been modified by meltwater action. 

(Storey et al, 2010:  

DOI: 

10.1017/S0954102010000799)

 

Relevant text (2015):

The water-lain sediments in layer 2b are poorly-sorted,gravel-rich, and packed with rounded and sub-rounded cobbles and boulders, some of which are more than 1.5m in diameter.  Some locally-derived and sharp-edged rhyolite fragments are contained, but the erratic suite appears to be similar to that of the Devensian till. The sediments have been laid down by high-velocity, turbulent and sediment-rich streams, and the conclusion is inescapable that they are of fluvioglacial origin. There is no clear stratigraphic junction between the glacial and fluvioglacial sediments, and it is proposed that they are intimately related, having been laid down more or less contemporaneously, in an ice-wastage environment incorporating masses of dead ice. Here conditions would have been perfect for the formationof flow or melt-out tills in close proximity to clay-rich lodgement till -- and this would explain the sedimentological differences in the till exposed on different parts of the site.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE SUPPOSED “NEOLITHIC BLUESTONE QUARRY” AT CRAIG RHOSYFELIN, PEMBROKESHIRE. 

Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286775899_OBSERVATIONS_ON_THE_SUPPOSED_NEOLITHIC_BLUESTONE_QUARRY_AT_CRAIG_RHOSYFELIN_PEMBROKESHIRE[accessed Jan 15 2026].

The Cerrig Lladron Myth

I was reminded the other day of another of the myths -- and there have been many -- pushed out by Bevins, Ixer et al over the last few years as part of the Waun Mawn Saga.  It's in this article, and of course it was also pushed in the accompanying press release.  

Bevins, R.E., Pearce, N.J.G., Parker Pearson, M., Ixer, R.A., 2022. Identification of the source of dolerites used at the Waun Mawn stone circle in the Mynydd Preseli, west Wales and implications for the proposed link with Stonehenge. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 45 (2022) 103556.

• DOI: 
• 10.1016/j.jasrep.2022.103556

The promoted story is that this is a classic piece of "good science" in which learned experts correct their own mistakes.  Having claimed earlier on that Waun Mawn had something to do with Stonehenge and with the rock types represented in the "bluestone assemblage",  they say that they have now done some more brilliant research and have discovered that the four lumps of rock that can be seen at Waun Mawn actually came from Cerrig Lladron, not far away from the mythical stone setting.  That's the spin........

It's a load of tosh. They have not discovered anything of the sort, as I have pointed out in previous posts.

 
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345177590_Waun_Mawn_and_the_search_for_Proto-_Stonehenge

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/search?q=+Cerrig+Lladron

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-unhealthy-obsession-with-bluestone.html

I told them as soon as they started work at Waun Mawn that the one standing stone and three recumbent stones at the site of the putative "giant stone circle" were strictly local, having been picked up on the site or very close to it.  They would have seen that for themselves, if they had bothered to do any fieldwork.  But they chose -- as usual -- to ignore anything that came from outside their own little bubble.  Secondly, they have NOT discovered that the stones came from Cerrig Lladron. There are petrographic and geochemical similarities, but it appears that they have not bothered to sample any of the dolerite outcrops at Waun Mawn itself, and have targetted the nearest tor, since in their belief system all orthostats have to be collected and brought from prominent landscape features like the Preseli tors. 

The spinning and the mythologising goes on to this day, since none of these guys can ever admit to any shortcomings in their own research.

Furufjördur, NW Iceland -- raised beach ridges

 

This is a superb satellite image of the raised beach ridges in Furufjordur.  We were there in 1974.  The ridges run up to abut 6m asl, which means they are probably associated with the "Nucella" stage of isostatic recovery.  Above this level, in the SW corner of the image, there are traces of higher marine terraces.

High resolution image from the satellite coverage of the shoreline in Furufjördur.  This explains the name, which means "fjord of the fir trees".  The fir trees never were growing here, but up to about 6m asl the ground surface is littered with logs, tree trunks and other debris carried into this location (on the E coast of the Vestfirdir peninsula) by sea currents from the Arctic Basin, across the roof of Russia.  You can see the logs very clearly.   This oceanic drift is now very much in the geopolitical sphere, labelled as "the Northern Sea Route" (NSR) ........

New focus on the Bristol Channel

My recent assessment of the situation as it might have been at a time of "maximum glaciation".

It's clear from my correspondence file, that Ixer, Bevins & Co are moving their focus of attention away from Pembrokeshire, having caused quite enough trouble to be going on with.  The new focus is on the Bristol Channel coasts, and the hundreds of glacial erratics that are scattered along its shorelines and hinterlands.  That includes all the areas I have referred to in my recent publications -- Gower, the Vale of Glamorgan, the Bristol Channel islands, Devon, Cornwall and Somerset, and probably even the Isles of Scilly.

There is a big literature, and thanks are due to Ann Inglis, Paul Berry, Paul and Rosemary Madgett, Peter Keene, Chris Cornford, Clarence Kidson, Nick Stephens and many others for assembling information over the years. Of course, in the long list of erratics there will be some mis-identifications, and if Ixer, Bevins et al can sort those out, that would be great.

The Ramson Cliff erratic, provisionally referred to as made of epidiorite.  

(Thanks to Paul Madgett for the photo)

Over the years I have listed most of the erratic finds, and while I doubt that there is any new fieldwork going on, I applaud any new research that will give us a more accurate indication of where the erratics have come from and how they have travelled.  Kellaway and various others have, over the years, speculated about possible ice streams travelling in parallel -- for example a stream dominated by "Scottish ice" and a stream with a dominant Welsh erratic component.  To me, the picture looks more messy than Kellaway suggested, since most of the coastal erratics (and those further inland) will have been deposited and re-mobilised several times during the Ice Age.  But let's see what comes up from a more detailed examination of the erratics themselves and a more detailed summary of the main source areas.

The Altar Stone debate comes into the frame too, in view of the strong feeling in some quarters that it might have come from western Scotland and might have been transported southwards by the Irish Sea Ice stream.

Of course, one of the main purposes of the research will be to "prove" that the erratics are concentrated within a very narrow vertical range and that they are therefore ice-rafted -- I have already crossed swords with the Bevins gang on this, and I genuinely can't understand why this should be such an obsession, given that glacial till exists at an altitude of over 60m near Fremington, and given that the GCR volume for the South-West gives an upper altitude of c 200m for glacial materials on the Devon coast.......

Anyway, best of luck to them, and I look forward to see what they come up with when and if they get their results published.  As ever, I will be on hand to apply due scrutiny.........

For further background information, just type "Bristol Channel erratics" into the blog search box.

Some posts:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/the-bristol-channel-glaciations.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2017/10/on-redistribution-of-bluestone-erratics.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2022/02/glaciation-of-cotswolds-and-mendips.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/10/strange-boulders-on-coast-of-brittany.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/08/possible-altar-stone-sources.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/08/in-praise-of-ailsa-craig.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/09/the-myth-of-shoreline-erratics.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-erratics-at-baggy-point-croyde-and_18.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-myth-of-ice-rafted-coastal-erratics.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/12/daws-delusional-denials-latest-episode.html

Geomorphology and the bluestone transport debate

"Very pretty?  Indeed it is, and if I'm not mistaken, we are looking at an old channel system refreshed in a short-lived Late Devensian ice wastage episode and followed by a Younger Dryas episode of permafrost-induced slope transformation........."

I was encouraged to write this post by a couple of comments from one of my correspondents who is a very senior geologist. 

POINT ONE  

First, he complained about the lack of geomorphological expertise in the team which has been developing the "Stonehenge bluestone human transport narrative" over the last decade or so. He seems to be genuinely puzzled by the refusal of that team to acknowledge the operation of natural earth surface processes in the fashioning of the sarsen and bluestone "monoliths" as we see them today. Geology is an earth surface science, and yet Ixer, Bevins, Pearce and others seem to be intent on ignoring the natural processes that have affected rock outcrops and surface boulders during the course of the Ice Age and have gone out of their way to hunt for man-made traces such as those labelled so bizarrely in the two fantastical bluestone "quarries" that are supposed to exist at Craig Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog. So where Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd, John Downes and I found abundant features associated with glacial, periglacial and fluvioglacial processes operating within the past 20,000 years or so, Bevins and Ixer claim to have found stone rails, quarrying scratches, working surfaces, revetments, haulage trackways and even stone rails........

We have visited these sites alongside many other geologists and geomorphologists, and not one of them has taken the view that they are sites where Neolothic quarrying has taken place.

The same strangely blinkered approach is apparent in the literature about the Newall Boulder.  Ixer and Bevins insist on calling it a "joint controlled block" -- implying that its shape was determined by physical geological stresses and nothing else.  When I showed close-up images of the boulder surfaces and edges to 11 glacial geomorphologists, these were their opinions:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2022/07/a-glacial-clast-from-stonehenge-newalls.html

( I told them nothing about the boulder and simply asked them for their opinions on how it might have been shaped and what its mode of transport might have been.)

1. If I had been doing a Reichelt shape classification I would have classed this as sub angular and typical of igneous clasts that have been dragged along the glacier bed.

2. I would say it has been glacially transported. That could account for the relatively smooth (abraded) surface and the other sub-angular surface and edges. There could even be some grooves on the abraded surface (upper image).

3. I would not be surprised if it is glacially transported. It looks to be the result of physical processes rather than chemkcal weathering. The light parts look hard and fresh and one side is flat. Corners and edges are neither sharp nor rounded. I could have picked it from a till in Bergen.

4. I am a bit less convinced. Looking at the right side of the first image the facets might be where cooling joints meet. That end is almost hexagonal. It is quite bullet-shaped though.

5. I would agree with my esteemed colleagues and say that there is certainly evidence for a possible faceted surface but difficult to say much more based on the photos.

6. In addition to the facets and chip marks that jumped out at first glance, the lower image to me has a slight bullet shape to it. Nothing definite from photos alone, and perhaps especially not from these two angles, but my very careful guess would agree with a subglacial transport path. Striae rarely preserve well (and on many lithologies don’t even form). Having said that, the clasts seem pretty weathered and battered.

7. Although quite hard to get a complete picture from just these two images, I’d say they seem to show a subrounded cobble/small boulder that is faceted, and has a shape that some people might say approaches a bullet-shape. I can also see some – what look like - chipmarks on some of its edges, the arrangement of which could indicate a responsible force from a single direction. From behind my wall of disclaimers and from within my cloud of speculation, I would probably guess that this boulder was subglacially transported. Striations on the faces would perhaps clinch it for me, but I could not see those in the images.

8. It's not possible to be definitive on the basis of these pictures alone. However, the presence of planar facets is consistent with subglacial transport. It would help if there were additional characters that might corroborate this, such as a stops-lee or double stoss-lee form. I guess there are no striations, or you would have mentioned them. Also rhyolite doesn't tend to striate.

9. My guess would be glacial. Not overly far travelled I’d say, but there does appear to be edge rounding and also chipping, with potential flat-iron faces. Looks like a lot of igneous clasts in tills in the north of Ireland.

10. I agree that this could be interpreted as subglacially transported boulder. Some rounding of the corners, but the facetted surface is not the best I have seen…if it has striations I would of course be 100% convinced.

11. Looks like a fluvioglacial clast. Definitely been in a fluvial system but only for short time as the degree of rounding is limited. The pic maybe misleading but I can see parallel lines -? Striations.

12. It looks partially faceted, edge rounded and abraded. The surfaces even appear to have some crude chattermarks/flip-outs. I cannot see any definitive striations but the lower image has an interesting set of linear marks that warrant a better image, though they may well be structural. I would say definitely glacially transported.

Experts consulted, in no particular order: Prof Neil Glasser, Prof Peter Worsley, Prof David Sugden, Prof Doug Benn, Prof Dave Evans, Prof Dave Roberts, Prof Jim Rose, Prof John Hiemstra, Prof Danny McCarroll, Prof Sven Lukas, Prof Jan Mangerud, Prof Steve McCarron. Some have indicated a willingness to be involved in future research on the boulder.

Here's another weird thing. In their 2025 tirade on the Newall Boulder, Bevins et al claim that the seven "diagnostic features"which I itemised in my 2024 article  "could be simply generated by surface weathering exploiting internal discontinuities".  That comment is frankly laughable, and even a GCSE geology student would not have got away with it in his end of term exams.  I'm amazed that the journal editor and the reviewers did not jump on it from a great height.........

So what's going on here?  It's pretty apparent to me that geomorphology -- and common sense -- are being muscled aside in pursuit of an agenda designed to minimise the importance of natural processes and to glorify the role of human beings in heroic rock transportation enterprises.  I can understand archaeologists trying to do this -- but senior geologists?????  Why???

The same extraordinary situation has arisen with regard to the erratic boulders of the Devon and Cornwall coasts, which Ixer, Bevins and their colleagues refer to as ice-rafted boulders or as monumental stones moved by humans --  in spite of the abundant evidence on the adjacent coast of ice 
from the Irish Sea Ice Stream pressing some distance inland and leaving behind plenty of sedimentary evidence.

Bennett, J. A., Cullingford, R. A., Gibbard, P. L., Hughes, P. D., & Murton, J. B. (2024). The Quaternary Geology of Devon. Proceedings of the Ussher Society, 15, 84-130.
https://ussher.org.uk/wp- content/uploads/benettetal1584130v2.pdf

So, in the face of all of this, why is it that  geomorphologists (apart from James Scourse, Chris Green and myself) have steered well clear of the Stonehenge bluestone debate?  Well, partly it has something to do with academic etiquette -- university geomorphologists seem to have decided that this is naturally not their territory, and that archaeologists should be left in control of the agenda.  Several of them have said to me "Oh, I can't say anything really useful because I am not sufficiently immersed in the debate and am therefore ill-informed."  Others might have decided that the issue is too hot to handle!!

That's a pity, because geomorphologists do have special skills and have something unique to contribute to the debate.  Their opinions on the shapes and surface characteristics of the bluestones and the sarsens would be invaluable, in print and on the record.  We also need more opinions on the traces of glaciation that exist in the South West Peninsula and on the possible routes and dates for bluestone transport.  There are also opportunities for  the employment of established techniques for the dating of exposed rock surfaces.  

POINT TWO

One final point from my geological correspondent. He expresses his disappointment that the term "debitage"  has been used by many people (including me) for the stony detritus found in the soil in and around the Stonehenge stone monument.  He says that the term encourages circular reasoning, because not all of it has come from the human destruction or shaping of bluestone and sarsen monoliths.  So the word itself encourages the belief that the "debitage" is a man-made layer that has some stratigraphic and chronological significance.  I take his point.  This is typical of the rather slack or slapdash thinking that characterises the whole of the Stonehenge bluestone dabate.  I shall try to avoid the use of the term in future.

In similar vein, I have drawn attention to the circular reasoning involved in the interpretation of the bluestone fragments found in Stonehenge excavations.  Almost always, in Cleal et al (1995) and other publications, it is assumed that the presence of blustone fragments in a sediment layer MUST date that layer as having been formed after the first use of the bluestones on the site.  That is a very dangerous assumption, which must in the past have resulted in many inadequate or incorrect dating exercises.

Bevins and the Bluestone Bully Boys: much bias and bluster, and not much science

"What on earth were they thinking?" I have been asked that question by a number of my geology contacts.  Well, I can't see into their minds, but it's fair to assume that they wanted -- metaphorically, one hopes -- to kill me off and to demonstrate that the bluestone transport debate is now dead. After ignoring me and my work for more than a decade, and arrogantly refusing to enter into any sort of debate, they decided that they couldn't any longer turn a blind eye to a string of my peer-reviewed articles that they found very uncomfortable indeed.  So, from their strange perspective, enough was enough. Richard Bevins took the lead, assembled his team of prominent and widely-published experts, and cobbled together that extraordinary tirade designed specifically to discredit almost everything I have written about the bluestones and the glacial transport theory.

This is the article:

Richard E. Bevins, Nick J.G. Pearce, Rob A. Ixer, James Scourse, Tim Daw, Mike Parker Pearson, Mike Pitts, David Field, Duncan Pirrie, Ian Saunders, Matthew Power. 2025. The enigmatic ‘Newall boulder’ excavated at Stonehenge in 1924: New data and correcting the record, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, Volume 66, 105303.

The article by the Bevins Bully Boys was rejected by the Journal of Quaternary Science (an earth science publication) and was then accepted by the Journal of Archaeological Science, a journal about which I have expressed concerns on many occasions in the past. It appears to me that they will publish almost anything vaguely archaeological as long as the authors include some complicated graphs or tables and can afford to pay the APC (article publishing charge) of $4608 USD...........

Anyway, I am not going to be pushed around by anybody.  I will continue to do what I think we should all be doing -- scrutinising the "specialist literature" in my own field of interest as honestly as I can, to the best of my ability.  So I have summarised my main points of concern about the Bevins et al tirade, leaving out many smaller points of disagreement in the cause of brevity.  Here are the details:

Brian S John, 2026.  The Newall boulder at Stonehenge: correcting the "corrections".  Researchgate pre-publication document, 13 pp.

• DOI: 
• 10.13140/RG.2.2.10844.86401

The Newall boulder at Stonehenge: correcting the "corrections". Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/399619799_The_Newall_boulder_at_Stonehenge_correcting_the_corrections[accessed Jan 10 2026].

ABSTRACT

This short article contains a critique of a paper published in 2025 by Prof Richard Bevins and ten others in which they claim to have “corrected” the record concerning the Newall Boulder found at Stonehenge and concerning the transport of bluestones from West Wales to Salisbury Plain. The paper was accompanied by a high-pressure publicity campaign in which it was claimed that the glacial transport thesis is now dead. The paper, in turns petty, condescending and misleading, was also a thinly disguised ad hominem attack on the present author, involving no less than 52 citations of his work. The paper by Bevins et al adds little in the way of new evidence, and numerous speculations and assertions are presented as facts. The contents of the paper are therefore refuted, and it is suggested that instead of claiming that the glacial transport debate is dead, and that their “human transport narrative” is proved, Bevins et al should accept that their ideas are scientifically disputed and that new research is needed to establish the length of time that has elapsed since the bluestones were originally deposited on Salisbury Plain.

The document in its present form may well be modified in response to feedback, while I consider future publication options.  

East Greenland 1962 -- innocent research meets political intrigue

This might seem a strange post for this particular blog site, but I thought it worth pointing out that when research is going on, politics is never very far away......... not to mention active warfare!!

When my Greenland novel called "Icefall Zero" was published in 2014, I thought that some of the events portrayed might be considered ludicrous. But I had a gut feeling that something dodgy was going on, and that the USA had very serious territorial aspirations during the 1960s.

This is what I said on my web-site:

The novel is labelled as a thriller (it has to be labelled as something, according to the rules of the game). But I hope readers will see in it my deeper purpose! This is really an author's protest against environmental degradation, triggered by the events of the Cold War. A quiet wilderness deserving of reverence is violated and even desecrated by the great powers in the name of "national security" -- while the indigenous people, who have an almost mystical communion with the land, are not even consulted. The focus is East Greenland -- but it could just as well have been any wilderness in a position of strategic or economic importance.......

Wagner's Ring Cycle is an allegory about the self-destructive evil that flows from the lust for power and wealth. For the obsession with power, look no further than NATO and the Warsaw Pact alliance in the Cold War of the early 1960's. For the dream of limitless wealth, look no further than the international mining corporations who never turn away from a mineral resource which is capable of exploitation and capable of ensuring a long-term revenue stream. And when the "desirable" territory is a small country with a weak government, everything falls nicely into place. So the wilderness is desecrated -- unless somebody is brave enough -- or crazy enough -- to stand in the way.

In the novel, the villain of the piece is called Wagner, not Trump, who operates with the full weight of the US government behind him, and he controls his fiefdom from a mountain retreat called Himmelbjerg -- in Norse mythology the tallest mountain in the world of the Gods.

This is Malmbjerget, in the Werner Mountains of East Greenland.  There is a molybdenum mine here, sometimes worked and sometimes not, depending on global metal prices.  Nice metal resources, but devilishly difficult in terms of access.  All crushed ore has to be carried out on caterpillar tractor trains across the mountains to the coast -- up one glacier and down another.  In the novel this is called "Himmelbjerg" -- a very suitable place for the Twilight of the Gods.

Now here's a funny thing. When I was digging around for information which I needed to give the novel authenticity, I came across a declassified US document called "Technical Report EP-140. Environment of Southeast Greenland" and published originally by the Quartermaster Research and Engineering Center, Environmental Protection Research Division" in October 1961. Unclassified Catalog number AD 251 797. It is incredibly detailed. Although many pages are virtually illegible in the digitised version, there is enough detail visible to show that the East Greenland coast, adjacent to Denmark Strait, was being taken very seriously by the US military, and that they wanted to know EVERYTHING about it, including weather and climate, tides, sea ice conditions, landing beaches, anchorages, routes onto the ice sheet, vegetation, marine life etc etc. The discovery of the document was almost spooky..........

And here's another funny thing. While I was in the field as joint leader of an Oxford University expedition in 1962 there were two other scientists working in the area -- well-funded, with helicopter support. We never did work out whether they were doing serious research -- but we got to know that they were working under the auspices of the US Army.