GREENLAND BY THE POLAR SEA 



slaty limestone, and finally the sandstone, appeared as almost horizontal strata, 

 which sloped only faintly towards the north-west. No violent catastrophes 

 of nature have, in the course of time, altered their original stratification ; they 

 lie to this day as they were formed on the bottom of the ocean in olden times. 

 Therefore the landscapes in these regions are very monotonous. The colour 

 and the height of the rocks may vary, but the steep coastal mountains, which 

 at their tops form flat plateaux, are a feature repeated again and again in these 

 regions. 



If one turns one's eyes to the north, towards the mountain chain, one 

 sees even at a distance that the landscape is quite a different one. The 

 plateaux are succeeded by a wild Alpine country. The flat glaciers, which in 

 appearance resemble the inland-ice, have disappeared, and the country is almost 

 free of ice ; only occasionally is a quite small glacier hidden away in some 

 narrow valley. 



A glance at the map shows that all the north coast of Greenland is formed 

 by this mountain chain. It runs, however, not at all as a continuous ridge 

 along the coast. In reality there are many ridges between which valleys and 

 fjords cut in ; further, the mountains are penetrated again and again by fjords 

 and sounds, so that now only the remains are left of a once much more enor- 

 mous mountain chain. Especially in the fjords, which cut across the line of 

 mountains, there is a good opportunity to examine what the inside of a moun- 

 tain chain like this looks like. The inland-ice, which during the Ice Period 

 sent its glaciers out through these fjords, has polished the coastal mountains, 

 which now stand without vegetation as long profiles in which one can see 

 exceedingly clearly how the strata lie. 



One sees at once that the mountain chain has arisen by the layers, which 

 were once horizontal, being pushed up into enormous folds by pressure from 

 the sides. In the southern part of the mountain chain one can see how the 

 coarse sandstone, which on the plains lies horizontally, gradually assumes a 

 more wavelike surface, finally merging into the great folds of the central sec- 

 tion of the mountain chain. Upon closer examination one will probably also 

 find the fossiliferous layers pressed up, as these must be assumed to stretch out 

 beneath the sandstone under the surface of the sea. These pressed and folded 

 strata have been subjected to such an enormous pressure that they are to a 

 greater or smaller degree transformed and difficult to recognize, especially as 

 nearly all the fossils presumably have been crushed during the folding. 



In some places the layers bend and wind so strongly that they resemble 

 the entrails of an animal ; in other places a mountain may consist of one 

 single or a couple of huge folds. The peculiar fact is then observed that that 

 which was once a valley is now a mountain-top, and a place where long ago a 

 mountain towered up has now turned into a valley. The explanation is very 

 simple. When a stratum is pushed upward, in this case when it forms a 

 mountain-top, the upper layers of the top will, as it were, be torn apart, and 

 thereby lose a great deal of their power of resistance. The opposite takes place 

 when a layer, originally horizontal, is pushed down, forming a valley. In the 

 hollow the layers will be pressed together, thereby adding to their power of 

 resistance, so that the bottom of the valley will become hard. When a newly 

 formed mountain chain like this begins to disintegrate, the tops will quickly 

 crumble, first becoming level, then turning into valleys, whilst the original 

 valleys, with their bottoms consisting of hard rock, will remain as mountain- 

 tops. When from a high mountain one stands looking across nearly 2,000 



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