I am actually learning things while I'm here, by the way...

Yesterday, my professor took us to a research lab called "Nationalmuseets Naturvidenskabelige Undersøgelser" across the street from the National Museum in Copenhagen to discuss climate proxies with the scientists there. Just to give a background on the class I'm taking here: My professor, Dr. Susanne Lilja Buchardt is a glaciologist who works with ice cores in Greenland. She has done a lot of research in regards to paleoclimatology in Greenland. Ice cores tell us what the climate was like in the past - but there are other archives to measure climate other than ice cores, such as tree rings, marine sediments, coral and pollen. The two labs we visited were the Pollen lab with Catherine Jessen and the Dendrochronology lab with Niels Bonde (Tree rings).

The entire research center was incredible - yes, it was a lab, but it was also a museum. The lab has been around since the 1930s, so there is A LOT of history in there. Old research notes from scientists are contained in big brown cupboards (that aren't fire safe), and even drawings of pollen samples before cameras existed are held in folders in a filing cabinet (that also aren’t fire safe). These observations made by all these scientists are just sitting in this old building, waiting to be read through and evaluated.

So many random things were in there – like the skull I’m holding in the above picture. Our contact, Catherine Jessen, told us that she didn’t know the age, but it was most likely found in a peat bog in Denmark. She said it’s been sitting in the lab even before she began working there.

Fun Fact: The Dendrochronology lab’s data is all recorded on Windows ’95 software. So like, Niels Bonde inputs the data he gets from counting tree rings into a blue screen with gray writing, and there’s no external hard drive. I was mortified when I saw him demonstrating what he does on such an outdated system.

Other Fun Fact: Niels Bonde is world famous for dating the wood of a Viking Ship. You can google him.

Overall, going to this lab-museum was incredible and gave me such insight to the field of paleoclimatology by leading scientists of the field. Absolutely unforgettable.