Die Geologie des südlichen tend mittleren Norwegen

Abstract

IN that rugged northern land where the mingled Atlantic and Arctic tides course round a network of islands, and lave the shores of deep lonely fjords, sending their waters far inland to the very base of snowfield and glacier, the people, with the patriotism of mountaineers, sing enthusiastically of “Gamle Norge”—Old Norway. And well may they sing of a land that by its scenery and climate has moulded their habits of thought, their traditions, their literature, and has knit their bodily frames into that muscular type for which the hardy Norsemen have been famous from time immemorial. Dear Gamle Norge! The sound of its praise awakens a responsive chord in the breast of many a Briton, leading him to reflect how much of the vigour and success of his own countrymen may be due to the fresh blood which came to them from the robust north, and reminding him of the wild creed and spirit-stirring songs which his ancestors shared with their kinsmen of the northern fjords. Well may men speak of “old” Norway. Even as regards human records, its antiquity goes back far enough to merit that appellation. But if we pass to the earlier history of Europe the fitness of the epithet becomes singularly impressive. To that northern region of tableland and valley the geologist looks as the cradle of this continent. The plains of Russia and Germany are formations but of yesterday. The Urals, the Alps, the Pyrenees, the high grounds of Bohemia, Saxony, and Central France have appeared at various widely separated epochs, and have undergone many vicissitudes in a long course of ages. But the uplands of Scandinavia, though they too have not been without their mutations, already existed as land almost at the beginning of those ages which are chronicled in the rocky records of the earth's crust. From the sand and mud washed down from these uplands the formations have been derived out of which, for example, most of the highlands of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland have been built up. So far as we can tell, the earliest land of Europe rose in the north and north-west. The subsequent growth of the continent has been over the tract of shallow sea by which the first land was bounded. Die Geologie des südlichen tend mittleren Norwegen. Herausgegeben von Dr. Theodor Kjerulf; autorisirte deutsche Aufgabe von Dr. Adolf Gurlt. (Bonn: Max Cohen und Sohn, 1880.)