102 The American Geologist. August, i898 
but elsewhere the depth of this margin of a former land sur- 
face is from 900 to 1,200 feet. Through all its course the old 
land border is limited by the submarine contour of 200 fath- 
oms, from which a much steeper descent, precipitously steep 
west and north of the Lofotens, sinks rapidly to oceanic 
depths of 3,000 to 9,000 feet. 
■ The shallow, submerged plain, having a mean width of 60 
to 75 miles, was doubtless built up as low coast lands, while 
this part of Europe stood 600 to 1,200 feet higher than now. 
Its material was supplied from the waste of the higher land 
through its erosion by rain and streams, sculpturing the ele- 
vated peninsular plateau into mountain peaks and ridges, with 
canon valleys which have since become the sea-filled fjords. 
The time of this highland erosion and coastal deposition may 
have comprised the whole of the Mesozoic and Tertiary eras, 
which are not represented here by any formations above the 
sea level. It was separated from the present time, however, 
as I believe, by a great epeirogenic movement of much higher 
uplift of northern Europe, preceding the Glacial period and 
causing its vast snow and ice accumulation, and by an ensu- 
ing depression, which in its turn caused the relatively sudden 
termination of that period by the melting of its ice-sheet. 
In my journey a year ago from Helsingborg, Goteborg, and 
lake Wenern, to Christiania, lake Mjosen, and Trondhjem, 
and thence east and south to Stockholm and to Goteborg 
again, only a glimpse of this great peninsula was obtained, 
which, happily, I am enabled to supplement somewhat fully 
through the aid of a valuable series of maps and coastal charts 
kindly supplied me by Dr. Hans Reusch, the director of the 
Geological Survey of Norway, and through other maps and 
brochures received from Dr. Andrew M. Hansen, of Chris- 
tiania, Prof. Otto Torell, director of the Geological Survey 
of Sweden, and Dr. Edvard Erdmann and Baron Gerard De 
Geer of the same survey. The Norwegian maps, showing alti- 
tudes of the land and depths of the sea, both ofifshore and in 
the fjords, have been of especial service in this paper, which 
will consider the origin of the fjords in its bearing on the 
probable cause of the Ice age through high continental eleva- 
tion. For this purpose the following table presents notes of 
some of these very remarkable valleys in their order from 
south to north: 
