RECENT DISCOVERIES IN THE SOUTH NORWEGIAN FLORA 245 



humifusa, so-called "West Arctic" species (from a Scandinavian point of 

 view), and on the other Oxytropis deflexa, Crepis multicaulis, and Scirpus 

 pumiliis. 



It is worth mentioning here what is written in a paper by the Swedish 

 botanist Rutger Sernander (1896): ". . . that in the Norwegian mountains 

 have been preserved a not negligible number of remnants from the Inter- 

 glacial flora of Scandinavia, especially in Dovre, Nordland and Finnmark, 

 which were not over-run by the second Inland Ice. From this time we have 

 especially the American-Greenlandic element in the Scandinavian flora" 

 (translated from Swedish). In the same treatise Sernander goes as far as to 

 state: ", . . into our South-Swedish mountain regions in Jamtland and Harje- 

 dalen the most important elements have arrived from that western flora which 

 was not destroyed by the second glaciation, and not, as has been suggested, 

 from the glacial flora which dispersed from the south, foflowing the rim of 

 the regressing Inland Ice up through Norway and Sweden" (translated from 

 Swedish). 



The Norwegian geologist and prehistorian, Andreas M. Hansen tried 

 (1904 a, b) to solve all the problems pertaining to the Norwegian mountain 

 flora (above I have touched upon only a few of them) by launching a theory 

 according to which there existed along the Norwegian Atlantic coast a broad, 

 ice-free margin on which a large number of plant species could have "over- 

 wintered" the Last Glacial Age. In 1905 a thesis was published by the Nor- 

 wegian botanist N. Wille in which he pointed out that Hansen's theory 

 contains much exaggeration but holds nevertheless also a kernel of truth. 

 Wille's thesis does not give much new information but he demonstrates by the 

 aid of statistics that the number of "rare Arctic plants" in southern Norway 

 decreases from the area of Dovre- Vaga-Lom southwards to the Valdres and 

 Aurland Mountains and still more so towards the Hardangervidda. This 

 gradation from north to south, in Wille's opinion, corresponds badly with 

 the view that the south Norwegian mountain flora should have immigrated 

 from the south after the Last Glacial. 



Unfortunately, neither Blytt, Sernander, Hansen nor Wille tackled these 

 difficult phytogeographical problems by a cartographic presentation of the 

 distribution of the species concerned inside Scandinavia. 



The theory of glacial survival must of course also be considered from the 

 point of view of Quaternary geology. Hansen (1904) did so and believed he 

 could trace a more or less continuous Une of moraines in the fjord-districts of 

 Norway. He supposed that this line marked the outer border of the last large 

 ice-shield along the Norwegian Atlantic coast (Fig. 3). More recent investiga- 

 tions (Undas, 1942; Holtedahl, 1953) have shown, however, that this Une, 

 the so-called Ra-line (corresponding to the Finnish Salpaussalka-line) marks 

 a certain stage during the deglaciation of Norway and not the outer boundary 

 of the last ice-shield. Nevertheless, there exist fragments of end-moraines in 



