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ROLF NORDHAGEN 



the west- and north-Norwegian coastal areas which are older than the Ra- 

 stage. As a matter of fact, the older stages in the deglaciation of western and 

 northern Norway have not been definitely estabhshed yet. 



In a later paper, Wille (1915) drew attention to the conditions — even from 

 a Norwegian point of view- — of the literally brutal relief which characterizes 

 certain parts of western Norway (especially the coast of More) and all the 



Fig. 3. Map of the Salpausselka-Ra stage of end-moraines in Fennoscandia 

 (after Martninussen, 1961). 



coast of northern Norway (from the northernmost part of Nordland County 

 northeast towards west Finnmark). He could not imagine that this coast had 

 ever been totally covered by ice during the Last Ice Age and proposed that 

 there had been refugia with plant life. (cf. Figs. 9 and 10). 



Already in 1912 the late Norwegian geologist Th. Vogt had pubhshed a 

 paper about the outermost (southern) islands of Lofoten, Vsero and Rost, 

 which he claimed to have been ice-free during the Last Glacial period. 



It was, however, the Swedish botanist Th. C. E. Fries, who in his doctoral 

 thesis from 1913 succeeded in pulling down the "survival theory" from its 

 lofty heaven of speculations to terra firma. Inspired by Vogt's (1912) work, 

 Fries made dot-maps of the present distribution of the mountain plants on 

 the Scandinavian Peninsula. He adhered also enthusiastically to the theory of 

 survival. Fries divided the Scandinavian mountain flora into four groups : 



(a) The ubiquist group, or plants covering all of the Norwegian-Swedish 

 mountain chain. 



(b) The bicentric group, or plants concentrated — though without absolute 

 congruence — in two distant "islands" in the mountain chain (Fig. 4). This 



