Henrik Munthe


Henrik Vilhelm Munthe was a Swedish geologist active at Uppsala University and the Geological Survey of Sweden. His research centered on the Quaternary geology of the Baltic Sea region, nevertheless he did also some contributions on the Silurian stratigraphy of Västergötland and Gotland. Having begun his career using bicycles to survey the terrain Munthe continued to advocate using bicycle well after survey by car had become commonplace.
A Gotlänning by birth Munthe's dialect is reported to have been Gotländska and he was particularly fond of working with issues regarding the island. He was the editor of SGU's Gotland maps and lectured about its Quaternary geology at the Visby local history society in 1911. Munthe was an active member of Geologiska föreningen i Stockholm being a longtime editor of its scientific journal Geologiska föreningens förhandlingar. He was also a member of the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation and Svenska Turistföreningen.

Scientific career

Following his 1886 discovery of Ancylus fluviatilis fossils in Gotland in Munthe proposed in 1887 the existence of Ancylus Lake, a lake that would prove "the most enigmatic of the many Baltic stages".
Later he endorsed the idea of an outlet for this lake at the near Degerfors proposed by Lennart von Post in the 1920s. The two worked together until 1927 when their relation fell apart. In 1927 and 1928 he was involved in a controversyabout Svea River through opinion pieces in newspapers with Astrid Cleve, a strident outcast of Sweden's geological community.