National Museum seeks memories of Iceland’s 1954 total eclipse

The National Museum of Iceland is asking people who remember the 1954 total solar eclipse to share their memories, mbl.is reports. The museum has published a questionnaire on sarpur.is as it prepares to collect accounts of the total eclipse expected in Iceland tomorrow.

“In the lead-up to the eclipse, we at the National Museum noticed that many people who remember the 1954 solar eclipse have powerful memories of that day. They have not been systematically collected before,” Sigurlaug Dagsdóttir, an ethnologist at the museum, told Morgunblaðið.

The eclipse took place on June 30, 1954, and was best seen in southern Iceland. A partial eclipse was visible in Reykjavík, but the total eclipse did not reach that far west. Foreign visitors travelled to Iceland to see the event, while Icelanders also travelled south.

Modern eclipse glasses were not available at the time. A photograph taken by Morgunblaðið in 1954 shows people at Dyrhólaey using black boards to look at the Sun. Others used film and smoked glass.

Pálmi Guðjónsson told Morgunblaðið that, when he was six years old, he saw his cousin put soot on a piece of glass to protect her eyes from the Sun while they were in the countryside beneath Eyjafjöll.

Sigurlaug is encouraging anyone with similar memories to complete the questionnaire and help create records for the future. The museum plans to collect memories of tomorrow’s eclipse in the same way and compare the accounts.

“This is of course not a common natural event. We have to wait 170 years for the next total eclipse, so every time one occurs and you have the opportunity to see it, it is naturally very special,” Sigurlaug said.