

Sea- Cliff of the Loioer Saint Lawrence. 313 



A slight subsidence of the southern part of Norway and 

 Sweden next took place, and the barrier of the Ancylns sea 

 was removed. The Ancylns sediments were buried by marine 

 clays and sands, in which the predominant fossils are common 

 salt-water species like Littorina littorea and Mytilus edulis. 

 This stage is called by Broegger the Littorina subsidence; and 

 has recently been shown to correspond to the first stone age of 

 north Europe, or the age of ''kitchen middens" in Denmark 

 and Sweden. It w r as in this region a period of warmer climate 

 than the present. According to Broegger, the subsidence 

 lasted about 2000 years, but was of slight vertical extent as 

 compared with the earlier and later uplifts, consisting in the 

 Christiania region of a depression of only about 10 feet. 

 Farther south the subsidence was greater ; farther north, less.* 



The long interval since the maximum Littorina submerg- 

 ence or kitchen midden epoch, estimated by archeological 

 dataf to be about 7000 years, is divided by Broegger into 

 four parts: earlier, middle, and later Tapes periods; and the 

 recent period. During the first three of these stages, the 

 coast rose to its present position, bringing the Littorina shore- 

 line at Christiania up to the 200-foot mark. This emergence, 

 beginning, it is estimated, about 5000 years B. C, lasted 

 approximately 4500 years, untill the end of the Bronze Age 

 and the beginning of the Iron Age, about 500 B. C. It is of 

 interest to note that this last emergence in Scandinavia was 

 not simply a differential uplift, but was accompanied by a sub- 

 mergence of the more southern coasts of Jutland. In an iso- 

 base map, Broegger has recently shown how the amount of 

 uplift of the Littorina shoreline decreases towards the south- 

 west, reaching zero along a line that crosses the Laaland penin- 

 sula through Nissuinfjord, Jutland, and Falster. This zero 

 line ("nullinien") seems not to have been a hinge line, limit- 

 ing the area of crustal deformation, but rather a pivot line, 

 separating a region which suffered uplift from one which, 

 concomitantly, suffered depression.^ As Scandinavia slowly 

 rose, southern Laaland slowly sank. The downward move- 

 ment southwest of the pivot line was much less pronounced 

 than the upward movement near Christiania, amounting to a 

 tilt of about one-third of a foot a mile, as against one and a 

 half feet per mile in the latter district. 



The period of 2400 years since the close of the Bronze Age 

 is regarded as a period of approximate stability. Broegger 



*Op. cit., pp. 98-99, 283, 305-306. 



\ Broegger takes, as the basis for his chronology, the estimates of Monte- 

 lius : Les temps prehistoriques en Suede. Paris, 1895, and Die Chronologie 

 der aeltesten Bronzezeit im Nord Deutschland und Skandinavien. Braun- 

 schweig, 1900, p. 223. 



{Op. cit., plate 12. Cf. De Geer, op. cit., p, 461. 



