GLA CIAL SUCCESSION IN NOR JVA V. 1 25 



glacial time, — i. c, before the Quaternary age — we have not much 

 on which to .base our ideas. The immense denudation has so 

 thoroughly altered the physiognomy of the country that we are 

 quite at a loss to reconstruct it. We can only suppose that no 

 great change in the relative heights of the mountain plateaus has 

 taken place and that there are left, perhaps, in the mountain 

 bosses remnants of the original surface. The coast line we are 

 no doubt justified in putting farther outwards than now. The 

 great slope to the ocean deep does not follow the present coast, 

 but is up to 200 kilometers distant, the intervening bank not 

 reaching beyond 400 meters. The flora and fauna of Spitzbergen 

 and Iceland must have immigrated across this now sunken north- 

 western foreland. Near Storeggen (about 62°) G. O. Sars found, 

 by dredging at 100 to 200 fathoms (200 to 400M.), remains of a 

 littoral fauna and beach shingle, which can only belong to a pre- 

 glacial coast. It must therefore be a legitimate inference that 

 the country in late preglacial times was, at least at the coast, 

 200 to 400 meters higher than now. 



On the mountains in this high country there now began to 

 gather great snow masses, the climate deteriorating owing to 

 causes that cannot be treated here.^ The neves gradually coa- 

 lesced and the glaciers flowed down to the lower land. If the 

 present numerous fjords had a preglacial existence they must 

 have represented themselves as a close series of deep lakes or 

 fjords into which the glacier soon crept. But beyond such a row 

 of ready outlets no continuous ice margin could possibly grow. 

 The depth of Sognefjord is 1,250 meters, of Hardangerfjord 800 

 meters, though both are rather shallow at their mouth. If the 

 whole country was elevated 200 to 400 meters, we still would have 

 so deep waters, that any glacier, which could not at once move 

 forward with a thickness of 1,000 meters, would get afloat and be 

 dissolved into icebergs as fast as it could grow. So any advance 

 of inland ice (which necessarily increases but slowly) must 



' I have given my reasons for accepting a shifting of the pole as cause of the ice 

 ages in a paper : Strandlinje-studier in Arcliiv for Mathematik og Naturvidenskab 

 Kristiania, 1890-91, T. 9-10. > 



