Ts 
op (Or tee 
ike 
Re ee ey ne ee ee ee ee ee ee ee 
NOTES ON A SUMMER TOUR IN NORWAY. 17 
the land took place, the sea lochs and fjords, emptied of their 
_salt-water, would become land valleys. 
““ If we admit the sub-aérial origin of the glen, we must 
also grant a similar origin to its seaward prolongation, and every 
fjord will thus mark the ‘site of a submerged valley. This 
inference is confirmed by the fact that fjords do not, as a rule, 
occur singly, but, like glens on land, lie in groups ; so that when 
found intersecting a long line of coast . . . . they serve 
to show that the land has there sunk down so as to permit the 
sea to run far up and fill the submerged glens.”—Gezie. 
We have abundant evidence that considerable oscillations of 
level have taken place. And, in fact, even now are taking place, 
on the coast of Norway, so that there is nothing at all unnatural, 
or even unlikely, in the assumption that portions of the sea 
bottom immediately off the present coast-line formed a land 
surface a few thousand, or tens of thousands, of years ago. 
The occurrence of the Skjaergaard, that extraordinary belt of 
islands lying off the Norwegian coast, also receives a very simple 
explanation when we consider the submergence which has brought 
the salt-water up the land valleys. These islands are not frag- 
ments carved from the mainland by the action of the waves, but 
the tops of hills and mountains which once formed part of the 
mainland. A further submergence of but a few hundred feet, 
whilst burying beneath the waves many of the islands of the 
present Skjaergaard, would give rise to many more towards the 
east as the present border of the mainland sank below the sea 
level. 
To return once more to the origin of fjords and sea lochs. It 
might be imagined from what I have said about these occupying 
the sites of submerged valleys, that the bottom of these fjords 
would be found gradually deepening and sloping off seawards 
from the point where the glen meets the head of the fjord. Such, 
however, is not the case, for in nearly all the fjords of Norway, 
and in the sea lochs of our own western Highlands, the depth of 
the fjord exceeds very much that of the sea immediately outside. 
In other words, the fjords occupy deep rock basins in the valleys, 
