Notes on the Glacial Geology of Arctic Europe and its Islands.—Part II. Arctic Norway, Russian Lapland, Novaya Zemlya, and Spitsbergen.

Abstract

So much has been written about the glacial geology of Northern Norway by, great authorities that I should have refrained from discussing the subject had I not recently heard a paper9 read at a Meeting of this Society, in which the author suggested that the terraces in the transverse fiords of North-western Norway would be perfectly explained by the formation of ice-dammed lakes. The author, however, admitted that the authenticated occurrence of marine organisms in these raised beaches would be a conclusive argument against his views.I have never made any special study of the phenomena connected with the secular upheaval of Arctic Norway, for I had always been under the impression that few geological facts were more generally accepted -as well established than the recent elevation o,f land in Arctic latitudes, including Northern Norway. My observations are consequently somewhat cursory, but I do not remember landing on any of the more considerable islands north of the Arctic Circle, that form the ‘ Skjergaard9 of Norway, without noticing traces of recent elevation and deposits containing abundantly shells of molluscs of the same species as those that now inhabit the adjacent sea. The same holds good of the ‘ westeraalen,’ and I observed last summer a well-defined raised beach near the settlement of Rissohavn, on the island of Andd, full of the shells of recent molluscs; this beach was overiain by 4 feet of peaty soil, in which grew birch-trees. The lofty chain of the Lofoten Islands has not been buried under