Fig. 245.—Island groups of the Lofoten archipelago off the northwest coast of Norway, which reveal repeating patterns of the relief in two orders of magnitude (after a photograph by Knudsen).
Fig. 246.—Diagrams to illustrate the composite profiles of the islands on the Norwegian coast. a, distant view; b, near view, showing the individual joints and the more widely gaping fractures beneath each sag in the profile.
High northern latitudes are thus especially favorable for revealing all the details in the architectural pattern of the lithosphere shell, and we need not be surprised that when the modern maps of the Norwegian coast are examined, still larger repeating patterns than any that may be seen in the field are to be made out. The Norwegian coast was long ago shown to be a complexly faulted region, and these larger divisions of the relief pattern, instead of being explained as a consequence solely of selective weathering, must be regarded as due largely to fault displacements of the type represented in our model ([plate 4 C]). Yet whether due to displacements or to the more numerous joints, all belong to the same composite system of fractures expressed in the relief.
Reading References for Chapter XVII
William H. Hobbs. The River System of Connecticut, Jour. Geol., vol. 9, 1901, pp. 469-485, pl. 1; Lineaments of the Atlantic Border Region, Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., vol. 15, 1904, pp. 483-506, pls. 45-47; The Correlation of Fracture Systems and the Evidences for Planetary Dislocations within the Earth’s Crust, Trans. Wis. Acad. Sci., etc., vol. 15, 1905, pp. 15-29; Repeating Patterns in the Relief and in the Structure of the Land, Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., vol. 22, 1911, pp. 123-176, pls. 7-13.