AQUEOUS AGENCIES. 



45 



lines, with high promontories, separated by deep inlets, 

 show the waste they have suffered in previous geological 

 times. As we go north, the evidences of destruction 

 become more and more conspicuous. To the north of 

 Scotland, among the Hebrides, Orkneys, and Faroe Isl- 

 ands, are found groups of bare, wave- worn rocks, standing 

 in the midst of the sea, mere skeletons of once fertile 

 islands (Fig. 22). 



But all these effects, viz., boldness of the headlands, 

 the depth of the inlets, the intricacy of coast-dissection,, 

 reach their highest point on the coast of Norway. Any 

 good map of this country (see Fig. 23) shows that the 

 whole coast consists of alternate promontories and inlets. 

 The promontories are rocky head- 

 lands, 2,000 to 3,000 feet high, and 

 the inlets run 50 to 100 miles inland. 

 Such deep inlets, separating high 

 headlands, are called fior ds. Closer 

 inspection shows a line of islands off 

 the coast. These are rocky islands 

 2,000 to 3,000 feet high, and of hard- 

 est granite. These granite isles are 

 probably the axis of the Scandina- 

 vian mountains in fact, of the Scan- 

 dinavian Peninsula. If so, then it 

 would seem that the whole western 

 slope of these mountains has been 

 swept away, that the sea has already 

 broken through the axis or backbone, and is now gnaw- 

 ing among the ribs on the eastern flank. On nearly all 

 bold and severely beaten coasts we find such off-shore 

 islands, which are the fragments of a former coast-line. 



The present form of the Norway coast, however, is not 

 wholly due to sea-erosion, but also largely, as we shall 

 show hereafter, to subsidence. Yet, as Norway is per- 

 haps the oldest part of the European continent, we have 



FIG. 23. Map of Norway 

 coast, showing the dis- 

 sected coast-line and isl- 

 ands off shore. 



