Glaciers
In the period known as the Great Ice Age, Norway is supposed to have been entirely covered with ice-fields, just as Greenland and Spitzbergen are at the present day. Remnants of these snow-fields and glaciers still remain, in this district, on the immense mountain plateau which lies between the Sör Fjord and the sea-coast.
Here, too, we have the extensive Folgefond ("fonn," or "fond," mass of snow). This enormous expanse of snow and ice covers the plateau at a height of some 3,000 feet to 5,000 feet above sea-level. It is from thirty-six to forty English miles in length, and from nine to sixteen miles in width. From this great snow-field glaciers descend in every direction, following the line of the valleys. The most noted of these are the Bondhus glacier in Mauranger, and the Buarbræ at Odde.
The most extensive general view of the great Folgefond snow-field is obtained from the high land which lies between Roldal and Seljestad on the east side, and from the neighbourhood of Teröen, at the entrance to the Hardanger Fjord, on the west.
In sailing into a west-country fjord, and observing how it winds along with no great breadth between the rocky cliffs, that rise higher and higher the farther we penetrate, we could quite believe it to be a real fissure in the earth's crust.
We receive the impression that the steep sides of the fjord must continue down to immense depths. Soundings show, however, that they soon turn off to a somewhat flat bottom, that a cross-section is almost in form like a trough, with more or less sloping sides, whose height is small compared with the breadth of the trough; but, as the fjords are, as a rule, very long—the Hardanger Fjord being about 116 miles—we nevertheless get very considerable depths in the fjord basins, viz., from 2,500 to 4,000 feet.
Fjord formation
These characteristic and uniformly shaped basins are not found anywhere except in those countries that have once been covered by inland ice, nor is there any other natural force known that is able to hollow out such peculiar trough-like basins.
Ice-cut land has always quite a decided and easily recognizable character, and a Norwegian fjord landscape might, therefore, quite easily be mistaken for a scene from the west coast of Scotland, or for one from the lakes of Italy or Switzerland.