The atlas of Denmark

Summary

Georges Chabot reviews Axel Schou's Landskabsformerne (1949), the first volume of the Atlas of Denmark, edited by Niels Nielsen. He recalls the effort required to publish it after a fire in 1945, during the German occupation, destroyed much prepared material and the reserved paper stock. The volume combines national relief and geological maps at 1:750,000 with detailed topographic examples. Chabot particularly praises its block diagrams, which explain landform development through successive stages, supported by map extracts and annotations. Examples cover glacial landscapes, eskers, drumlins, valleys, dunes and coastal evolution, alongside limestone cliffs and the granite and basalt landscapes of Bornholm and the Faroe Islands. An accompanying text volume supplies commentary and photographs. Chabot admires the production quality and explanatory ingenuity; although he questions details in some complex developmental sequences, he judges the volume highly original and considers its treatment valuable for broader physical geography.