The Scandinavian Ice-sheet

Abstract

MANY geologists affirm that the Scandinavian ice-sheet became confluent with that of Scotland, and reached the East Anglian coasts. Perhaps some of your readers could inform me whether the following difficulty, which has occurred to me, has been already raised, or has received a satisfactory answer. A submarine channel, some 400 fathoms deep, sweeps round the southern coast of Norway from the Cattegat to about the 62nd parallel of latitude, whence it gradually opens out into the deeper water further north. If the 100 fathom line of soundings were to become the coast margin of north-western Europe, this channel would form a fjord, considerably broader than the straits of Dover, and for the most part 1800 feet deep. A further general upheaval, amounting in all to some 2500 feet, would convert this fjord into a wide valley, sloping gently towards the north, which was bounded on one side by the Scandinavian mountains (then commonly rising to a height of about 5000 to, 9000 feet); on the other by a nearly level plateau (with a yet slighter slope, but in the main northward), elevated generally some 2000 feet above the bed of the valley. In such cases, if any trust can be placed on the evidence afforded by Greenland at the present day, the drainage of Scandinavia would obey the law of gravitation, even when in the form of ice, and would be diverted down the fjord or valley towards the northern Atlantic.