That same year, Viggo Widerøe received an assignment on the other side of the globe: to ‘fly the unknown areas along the coast of the Antarctic continent from 80 degrees East to 10 degrees West. Aerial photographs would be taken along the stretch of coastline, and the images used to produce maps of the photographed areas.’ Once again, Viggo Widerøe’s employer was consul and whaling shipowner Lars Christensen.
‘Many people are indifferent, or think it’s a waste of time, to explore an area that lies so far from our country,’ wrote Widerøe. But ‘[thanks to] Lars Christensen’s research activities, Norway’s position in the Antarctic is secured. Today, the Whaling Association’s maps are used by all nations who undertake whaling activities, and the maps that have now been drawn based on our aerial photographs will lead the vessels safely towards the coast in the times ahead.’
Like Sør-Varanger, the South Pole is an area where it is often necessary to wait for clear weather. After several days of ‘sleet and snow’, ‘rough, grey weather’ and ‘snow showers and brisk winds’, Viggo Widerøe observed
a sunset that can only be experienced in the polar rains […] But there was little time to make notes the next day, as the expedition was out from sunrise until long after the sun had set. My diary states only: Start 07.30, with full tanks… Mapped the entire coastline eastwards to the Western Barrier… Landing for refuelling… Reconnaissance flight inland with Mrs Ingrid Christensen… Landing… Started again with full tanks and new roll of film… Mapped the entire coast westwards towards Thorshavn Bay, 800 km there and back […]. This is what it’s possible to achieve on the rare occasions there’s good weather down here. We flew a total of 1,700 km that day, and photographed a stretch of coastline measuring 430 km long.
Viggo Widerøe’s descriptions of the work provide a glimpse of how new land was claimed in these areas: ‘Mrs Christensen accompanied me on the trip, and after we had been flying for just under an hour she pointed enthusiastically ahead. She had spotted a small, black hill peeking up from the white snow–it grew into a mountaintop, and we flew across land that nobody had ever seen before. Mrs Christensen threw down the Norwegian flag.’ The area was later named the Prince Harald Coast, and on their final flight, Widerøe and Christensen mapped more unknown territory: ‘Is it a mountain, or is it only clouds? […] Ahead a mountain landscape rises up from the inland ice, peak after peak, as far as the eye can see. A mountainous land never before seen, a Rondane [mountainous national park in Norway] deep within the white surface of the Antarctic. In the fading light of the evening sun we fly along the mountains and let the camera do its work…’
The Widerøe company was given many more assignments–Røros Copper Works wanted to procure aerial photographs to help them in their search for new ore deposits, as did Orkla in the area around Løkken Verk. Lillehammer, Stavanger, Skien and Porsgrunn were photographed for the Geographical Survey of Norway, while the municipalities of Tønsberg, Nøtterøy, Tjøme, Asker, Bærum and Strinda wanted images they could use as the basis for zoning plans and road construction projects. In the spring of 1938, Widerøe procured equipment with which they could produce their own maps–and their first assignment was to create a tourist map of Stavanger and the surrounding areas, along with an economic map of the region.
But the industry failed to develop with the speed that Widerøe had hoped for. ‘The importance of this new aid was obvious, and experts in all fields became our allies and pushed for us to be granted support for our mapping work. But the authorities held back […] and we were forced to resort to finding work abroad,’ wrote Skappel. The company submitted a tender for the topographical and economic mapping of El Salvador in Central America–a plan that unfortunately dissolved due to political complications–and worked to gain entry to Iran, who were interested in obtaining an overview of the country’s oil and mineral deposits. But these plans also had to be abandoned when the political situation in Europe reached crisis point.
In the autumn of 1939, while out on an assignment in southern Sweden, Skappel flew across the sea just north of Poland, which had been recently attacked: ‘Out on the horizon columns of smoke rose up from the sea. It was the warships. We suddenly felt that the war was very close to us.’
THE SECOND WORLD WAR | In 1938, Werner von Fritsch, general and commander-in-chief of the German Army, predicted that ‘the military organisation with the best aerial reconnaissance will win the next war.’ Many believed that Germany had both the most planes and the best cameras–the winners of the First World War had subsequently made no notable additional developments in aerial mapping techniques. ‘After World War I, interest in photo intelligence diminished practically to the vanishing point. As a result, at the outbreak of World War II, the Armed Forces were caught with obsolete cameras and no organization, equipment, or trained personnel to exploit what was to become a major source of intelligence,’ wrote the American Infantry Journal in 1949. The Royal Air Force was yet to obtain a single dedicated reconnaissance aircraft.
But the Royal Air Force did have a dedicated photograph interpretation unit–the Central Interpretation Unit–based at a stately home in the English countryside. To start with, the unit employed 114 officers and 117 other members of staff, but by the end of the war these figures had increased to 550 officers and 3,000 other staff members, all working with the production of various types of maps–a happy mix of geographers, archaeologists, journalists, explorers, geologists and artists. Everyone based at the unit took a mandatory two-week course in photographic interpretation, through which they learned how to find out the scale of a photograph, make sense of what they were looking at–whether, for example, the image showed a road or a railway line, or a runway for fighter planes or bombers–and to differentiate between objects that were of military significance, and those which were not. Separate departments studied airports, camouflage, railways, roads, rivers, canals, industrial sites and military encampments.
An imaginary map created by the Geographical Survey of Norway in 1959 in order to experiment with the use of symbols, colours and typography. The map is based on the area around the town of Sandnes, which has been named Storesand, while Jotunheimen, Lillesand, Rygge and Svelvik are in reality located elsewhere.
The route flown by every single plane was marked on a map in order to establish what had been photographed, and–fairly often–what would need to be photographed again. Items of interest were marked on a main map, and three-dimensional model maps were created of the areas of greatest strategic importance. Carpenters, sculptors, artists and silversmiths were all appointed to work with these models, which were often large, measuring almost two metres across, and depicted landscapes with hills, trees, rivers, beaches, harbours, houses, locomotives, goods wagons, radars and military installations. Sometimes they were even lit to find out how the area would look on a moonlit night. Such models were constructed before the British bombed the Möhne and Sorpe dams–the pilots were instructed to ‘look at these until your eyes stick out and you’ve got every detail photographed on your minds, then go away and draw them from memory, come back and check your drawings, correct them, then go away and draw them again till you’re perfect.’ The largest model construction assignment involved 97 three-dimensional maps of the beaches of Normandy, created as part of the preparations for D-Day and the landing operations of the Allied soldiers in France in June of 1944.
The Second World War–unlike the first–did not lead to any significant progress within aerial mapping. But if anything, it made the countries involved aware of how far behind they lagged in this area, and as soon as the war was over, the United States Air Force used its resources to map Europe from the air before diplomatic considerations could complicate the issue.
NEW NEEDS | After the war and the occupation of Norway, one of Widerøe’s first assignments was to photograph ninety cities and locations burned by the Germans during their retreat in Finnmark–new maps would be vital in planning the rebuilding activities.
Norw
ay also became a member of NATO after the war, which introduced new requirements regarding military maps. The Norwegian Armed Forces submitted plans for a new, national map series at a scale of 1:50,000. Until this point, the country’s main map series had been created at a scale of 1:100,000–and still hadn’t been completed. The requirements of the Armed Forces resulted in the Geographical Survey of Norway abandoning all plans to map the remaining areas of the country at 1:100,000–instead, they began to survey the entire country again at 1:50,000. The intention was that the Americans would lend a hand, and in 1952 the Norwegian Army collaborated with the American Army Map Service to map the region of Øst-Troms. The formerly blank areas of the map of Norway were soon covered by thirty-three map sheets.
The success of this project led to the decision that the American Army Map Service would aerially photograph the entire region of southern Norway, and take responsibility for drawing two-thirds of the maps. But it soon became evident that the experience gained from the wide-open, sparse terrain of Øst-Troms did not easily transfer to the mapping of the rolling hills, densely populated areas and forest-covered regions in the south-west. The maps produced ultimately bore traces of the fact that the Americans’ photographic survey methods were extremely different from those the Geographical Survey of Norway had developed for Norwegian conditions. In 1957, the two parties agreed to bring the collaboration to a close.
The Norwegian Army and the Geographical Survey of Norway continued the work to publish two map series, one military and one civil, with the names M711 and Norway 1:50,000 (N50). But not even this collaboration was without its problems. The Norwegian Armed Forces and the various public agencies had differing requirements when it came to the maps’ content, but in a country with such limited resources creating different map series for different purposes was simply out of the question. ‘As far as possible, our maps must be “all-purpose” maps,’ wrote Kristian Gleditsch, director of the Geographical Survey of Norway after the war. All details included on the maps themselves were identical in both series, apart from the grid only included on the military series and the graticule only presented on the civil, while the accompanying texts were different.
Every update made to a map or map series entails changes in both the map’s appearance and content that reflect changes in society at large–and the N50 map series was no exception. The outdated symbols for timber- and watermills were removed; a dedicated symbol was created for summer houses–and for the first time, roads were marked in red lines of varying thicknesses to denote the various types. The symbol for a farm was changed from a solid black square to an open one. ‘We could discuss the farm symbol for all eternity,’ wrote Gleditsch, adding that the former solid black square had proved too overbearing in appearance. ‘I hope the open square will prove to be a good solution.’
In parallel with work on the main map series, debate continued regarding the economic map series for which Skappel and others had argued before the war. The time for such a map series had arrived–Norway was one of the few countries in western Europe not to have one. The costs involved had been one reason for this; the low population density and large areas that lay deserted another. Previously, an economic map series had primarily provided an overview of areas used in agriculture and forestry, and in Norway these areas made up only 25 per cent of the country’s land mass, as opposed to 60 per cent in Sweden, 74 per cent in Finland and 83 per cent in Denmark. ‘But the post-war period also brought many other requirements, in particular the increasingly urgent planning requirements for the districts that were being urbanised, often at a remarkable pace and without any real planning,’ wrote Gleditsch. ‘That which people found frightening when proposals for an economic map series were put forward was of course the involved costs. But a technological revolution had happened here in the period from around 1930 to 1950. Photographic survey methods made it possible to produce the maps far more cheaply than previously. […] Towards the end of the 1950s, we were finally able to get all the governmental authorities to recognise what had happened.’
In 1964, the Norwegian Parliament published the Landsplan for økonomisk kartverk (National plan for an economic map series), which proposed that the entire productive area below the treeline–135,000 square kilometres–should be mapped at a scale of 1:5,000; the remaining areas would be mapped at 1:10,000. The mapping would be completed over a period of fifteen years, and be a collaborative project between the Geographical Survey of Norway, the government, the county administrations, municipal authorities, landowners and private enterprises.
‘Never before had a survey of such scope ever been undertaken–and we were starting almost from scratch in terms of knowledge and experience. The opportunities to make mistakes were legion at all stages,’ wrote Torbjørn Paule in Den økonomiske kartleggingens historie i Norge (The Story of the Economic Mapping of Norway). ‘The establishment of such a map series required a solid, all-out effort, with groundbreaking performance from many individuals and institutions. It is said that when the survey was presented to some Danish colleagues at the time, they exclaimed in shock: Pffft, you Norwegians are crazy!’
During the work, it became clear that the economic map series of Norway would have to be expanded; the original 135,000 square kilometres increased to 170,000 after the county administrations had obtained an overview of all the areas that should be included. There was also increasing awareness that the rapid pace at which areas were being planned and developed soon resulted in outdated maps. In 1975, it was estimated that a third of the produced maps were already so outdated that they would be of little use in connection with planning activities, and a conflict between the need for first-time surveys and updates consequently ensued. Only in the year 2002 was the first-time surveying of all identified areas finally completed–185,000 square kilometres covered at a scale of 1:5,000.
DISPOSABLE MAPS | The role of maps changed in the consumerist society of the post-war period. In 1969, Kristian Gleditsch, director of the Geographical Survey of Norway, was asked whether he agreed that the map had become an object of daily use in the public consciousness to a greater extent than just a few years previously. He answered in the affirmative: ‘Yes, undoubtedly. In the time of our fathers, the map was a costly jewel that was mounted, preserved and inherited–now maps have become a household item that is used, consumed and replaced. And this is a gratifying development. But with the rapid developments in transport and housing maps must be updated quite often, so it is good that they are not used for long.’
Maps also became a part of public education and information. ‘When presenting plans and projects to politicians and the general public, the provision of a thorough account using maps may help people to more easily engage with the plans, and their democratic influence may therefore be more real,’ stated a public report from 1975 titled Om norsk kart-og oppmålingsvirksomhet (On Norwegian Mapping and Surveying Activities):
Today, there is a particular need for maps that can give ordinary people an improved overview of the current circumstances and proposed measures in many areas of society, such as:
• The effect of acid rain on the natural environment over time (map of Southern Norway).
• An overview of the areas within a local municipality that are worthy of protection.
• Alternative plans for pedestrians, cyclists and motor traffic within a school district.
The report also provides an overview of the areas in which maps may be used, and by whom–as envisioned by the report’s authors in 1975. In a matter-of-fact and bureaucratic tone, the report leads us through six areas of use, and the first, Resource management, reels off the need for maps of the country’s bedrock, plants and wildlife, water, air, land ownership, settlements and public transport. The second is Area planning, the third the Project planning of homes, schools, industrial facilities, roads, bridges, airports, harbours, power stations, and facilities for energy transmission, telecommunications and water supply. The fourth area of use, Operations
, is the largest, and includes agriculture, forestry (ownership), fishing (sea-floor conditions, navigation lines), mining (seismology), oil production, industry, water supply, power supply (grid, water resources), public transport on land (transport capacity, road quality), shipping, aviation (airports, aviation obstacles), telecommunications (network), trading, tourism (accommodation, capacity), the school system (development, capacity), health service (development, health of citizens), police, fire service (hydrants, supply network, water sources), defence and general administration. Then follows the fifth area, Legal matters, and the sixth, Other areas of use, which includes the collection and presentation of statistics, weather reporting, teaching, mass media, travel, outdoor recreation and orienteering.
Forty years earlier, Helge Skappel flew across the country thinking that it was impossible to build a society without maps and plans. Now, the official position of the authorities as expressed through the report was as follows: ‘It is impossible to measure the significance of maps and survey data for society’s economic activities. But this significance is undoubtedly great, since it is difficult to imagine a modern society being able to function without access to such tools.’ And under almost every single area of use, where the report specifies what the maps are based on, the text reads: ‘Flybilder’ (‘Aerial photographs’).
WAR AND PEACE | Aerial survey methods arose as a result of the technical innovations of the 1800s–through which photographic and aviation technologies developed almost simultaneously–and a war completely unlike previous wars, where the only things able to move to any significant extent were the planes and their cameras capable of fixing enemy positions in an instant. During peacetime, aerial mapping was used in civil operations, including everything from the search for metal ores and the mapping of marshland to municipal planning, the construction of roads and economic surveys. Eventually, aerial mapping became so cheap and effective that it became the standard–the Norwegian Mapping and Cadastre Authority continues to map all locations in Norway from the air every seven years to keep its maps up to date.
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