Geography
The municipality of Smøla is located north of the town of Kristiansund, off the western coast of Norway. The municipality consists of the main island of Smøla and more than 3,000 smaller ones. The 214-square-kilometre (83 sq mi) main island is very flat, the highest peak reaches 63 metres (207 ft) above sea level. Almost all of the land area consists of marshes and cliffs; only 5% is cultivated into agricultural land. Other minor islands in the municipality include Edøya, Kuli, and Veiholmen. The municipality is separated from the rest of Norway by the Edøyfjorden to the south.
Due to the vast number of small islands surrounding Smøla, there are several lighthouses. The three most notable ones are Haugjegla Lighthouse (north of Smøla), Skalmen Lighthouse, (northwest of Smøla), and Tyrhaug Lighthouse (southeast of Smøla in the Edøyfjorden).
Scientists of the Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformationtechnique of the Technical University of Berlin were testing the antique maps of Ptolemy and recognized a pattern of calculation mistakes that occurred when one tried to convert the old coordinates from Ptolemy into modern cartographical maps. The scientists believe that, when one compensates for these mistakes, the mythological location Thule corresponds to the island of Smøla.
Read more about this topic: Smola
Famous quotes containing the word geography:
“Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Ktaadn, near which we were to pass the next day, is said to mean “Highest Land.” So much geography is there in their names.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)