Hafger(sic)ingar and giant waves

• Published in: Applied Optics
• Main Author: van der Werf, Siebren
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: GRAVITY-WAVES; Greenland; Greenland Sea
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/11370/6c35b61d-bd4c-465b-bf17-16b521b2c40d; https://research.rug.nl/en/publications/6c35b61d-bd4c-465b-bf17-16b521b2c40d; https://doi.org/10.1364/AO.56.000G51; https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/99872147/ao_56_19_G51.pdf

A 13th-century text in Old Norse, Konungs Skuggsja (translated as The King's Mirror), tells about a phenomenon that may be encountered in the Greenland Sea. It is called hafger(sic)ingar (sea fences). The horizon is raised, and from there three giant waves come rolling in. Recently Lehn and Schroeder have explained the phenomenon as a superior mirage. I extend their analysis by introducing a periodic time dependence in the properties of the inversion layer, and show that also the illusion of incoming waves and an immediate danger may so be explained. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America