Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/106

96 North of latitude 68° north the range "scatters," and finally sinks into slight and timid heights or gradually disappears. South of Drontheim this central axis unfolds and deliquesces into a series of separate lines of elevation, forming the wide expansion of Southern Norway which, thickened and braced by ridges of crystalline rock, held back the force of the North Sea, and bore the searching pressure of the northern glacier, when in a single and enormous surface it invaded Europe. This southern extension of the Norwegian highlands has less height than the narrow fork which enters the north, and is really a succession of tablelands interrupted by occasional peaks, or narrow and precipitous valleys. These level floors, barren and monotonous, constitute over forty per cent, of the surface, reducing the available land for cultivation, roughly estimated, to less than eleven per cent. The coast of Norway along its entire extent is deeply penetrated by a complex system of fiords, long channels which wind in almost inextricable detail amid its highlands and at the base of its loftiest summits. Running for miles inland, and connected with the labyrinth of straits which fimbriate the shores and break the outlines with detached islands, these wonderful expanses expose the most bewitching and lovely scenery which Norway boasts. Glacier, snow-capped mountain, green fields verdant under cultivation, villages, and dizzy cliffs, are exquisitely blended into a diversified panorama of sublimity and beauty.

The glaciers of Norway are not so imposing, so numerous, or so accessible, as those of the Alps. The peaks are frequently too isolated and too steep, the valleys too shallow and too small, and the stretches of table-land too frequent, to permit the best exhibition of glacial forms; yet the accumulations of snow are very formidable. The snow-fields of Justedals Bracen, which feed several glaciers, the largest of which is only one-seventh the size of the Aletsch glacier in the Alps, stretch for fifty miles upon one range, and cover an area of four hundred square miles. Sognefield and Ymesfield form imperfect reservoirs of snow, and generate only inferior though numerous ice-streams, falling off their declivities through abrupt and narrow passes. The Fondalen Mountains and the Borgefield both release glacial currents, in some instances impinging their icy barriers upon the sea, but all subordinate in interest.

Sulitelma, the highest mountain within the arctic circle, occupies a conspicuous centre of glacial activity. It dominates over an extensive region of elevated and snowy ranges, and distributes its frigid emissions on either side to Lapland or to Norway. The peaks of the Loffoden Islands reach above the snow-line, but no adequate footing is afforded for the formation of glaciers, though the islands of Ringvadsö and Kraagen contain glaciers, which in the first instance have pushed their moraines to the water's edge. If we now examine the actual evidence of glacial action, we shall find it analogous to that we have witnessed in the Alps, except that it is perhaps less emphatic. The