GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS 



metres high cliffs, which were originally the bottoms of large valleys, and in 

 imagination attempts to reconstruct the original mountain-tops which have 

 now disappeared, one understands what enormous periods of time must have 

 elapsed before this transformation was finished. However, it is only very old 

 mountain chains which look like these. 



When one considers these conditions it is easier to understand why the 

 mountain chain is penetrated both lengthwise and crosswise by fjords and 

 sounds. In reality all the islands along Greenland's north coast are frag- 

 ments of a folded chain which was once far mightier. 



It would be in vain to attempt to fix in years the age of this mountain 

 chain ; there is no means whereby one could measure the time which has 

 elapsed since then. But it is not difficult to decide the relative age of the 

 folding. The statements we have already made will have made it clear that 

 the mountain chain must be younger than the coarse sandstone, which to the 

 south had a horizontal position, and consequently must have been deposited 

 before the folding commenced. The sandstone, which was superincumbent on 

 the slaty limestone and the black schist with the graptolites, must therefore be 

 younger than these strata, and this gives us a point on which to fix. From 

 other regions of the earth we know that the graptolites found in the slaty lime- 

 stone lived in the very earliest part of the Silurian Period. Consequently the 

 coarse sandstone must belong to the Devonian Period, and the folding must 

 therefore be younger than the beginning of this. From a previous expedition 

 it is known that, to the north of the folding, horizontal strata from the 

 Devonian Period are to be found, and above them strata from the Carboniferous 

 Period. The mountain chain must thus have arisen during the first half of 

 the Devonian Period. 



During an Arctic sledge journey, when each day brings a crowd of new 

 impressions, there is seldom an opportunity to sit down and look at matters 

 as a whole. One examines the landscape at a distance through field-glasses 

 and makes a guess at what kind of rock went to the building of the districts 

 through which one passes, and when one stops it is the fossils and the rocks 

 which are examined closely through a magnifying-glass. One therefore 

 returns from such a journey with a mass of details which are only gradually 

 brought together so that the larger contours appear. 



However large and beautiful the view from one of the highest tops of the 

 folded chain may be, one is merely looking at a slight section of the whole 

 chain, and one must therefore in imagination attempt to make a connected 

 picture of the entire folding in order to find out whether other regions have 

 also been subjected to this enormous catastrophe of nature. 



If one follows the westward direction of the mountain chain, one finds that 

 its continuation is a large mountain chain in Grinnell Land known from earlier 

 times, the so-called "Albert and Victoria " mountains. Down towards Elles- 

 mere Land the foldings gradually disappear. If this section of the folding is 

 included, the Greenlandic mountain chain has a length of approximately 1,000 

 kilometres — in other words, it is as long as the Caucasus. 



If the direction of the mountain chain is followed eastward we find as its 

 continuation a submarine ridge across to Spitsbergen, and in continuation of 

 this ridge there is on Spitzbergen a large folded chain, of the very same age 

 as the one in Greenland. The mountain chain on Spitzbergen, however, is 

 merely a part of a large system of folds which via Bear Island runs down to 

 the north of Norway, and thence forms the whole of the Scandinavian mountain 

 U 30.) 



