Glaciers and Snoivjields 25 



And now to these two products of the glacial era in 

 Scandinavia let ns add a third, which, however, is not 

 so much a result of the Ice Age as a continuation of it, 

 — I mean the immense glaciers which still remain in 

 Norway. The line of perpetual snow in Norway is, as 

 we might expect, far lower than in Switzerland. In 

 some places it is as low as 3000 feet above the sea 

 level. It is not merely the northern situation of the 

 country which prodnces the great snow fields and 

 glaciers of Norway. Their presence is partly due to 

 the smoothness of the hill-tops which I have already 

 spoken of. Thus it might be said that the glaciers of 

 Norway are so huge to-day, because they were so much 

 vaster in former ages. 



It is not, by the way, easy to persuade those who 

 have never travelled in Norway of the size of her 

 glaciers ; the Swiss glaciers are so much the most 

 celebrated that their reputation overshadows that of 

 the ice-fields of Norway. In speaking of the Joste- 

 dalsbrse as the largest glacier in Europe, I have so often 

 met with the response, ' You mean after the great Swiss 

 glaciers,' that it may be worth while to give the reader 

 an idea of the comparative areas of these different 

 ice-sheets. The largest glacier in Switzerland is the 

 Aletsch glacier : it is not more than a sixth of the Jos- 

 tedalsbrpe, with its 350 square miles, nearly half as large 

 again as the county of Middlesex. Even the next largest 

 glacier, the Folgeford, has an area of over 120 square 

 miles, — that is to say, it is nearly as large as Paitland- 

 shire. For the reasons which I have already given, the 

 Norwegian glaciers lie much lo\ver than those of Switzer- 

 land, and are, therefore, more easy to reach. The task 



