- Project Runeberg -  Norway and Sweden. Handbook for travellers /
xxxii

(1889) [MARC] Author: Karl Baedeker
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Coal occurs here aiul tliere in the peninsula. The coal-measures
of Helsingborg at the S. extremity of the peninsula are of
considerable value and extent. On the island of Ancle, one of the
Yesteraaleu group, in latitude 69°, a bed of coal was also recently
discovered at the mouth of the llamsaa, hut investigation has proved
it to be of little value. The condition, however, of its organic
remains proves that the island must have been subjected to violent
convulsions about the period when the coal was formed. I nder
the sea extends a thick seam of coal, above which lie strata of
sandstone, clay-slate, and later coal, extending into the island.
The island must therefore have at one period been more extensive
than now, and thickly clothed with vegetation , after which it
appears to have been submerged and then upheaved anew.

The configuration of the mainland must at one time have
differed greatly from its present form. That it was once higher above
the sea than new, is proved by the formation of the coast with its
water and ice-worn fjords, straits, and isthmuses (Eid). On the
other hand the sea appears within recent centuries to have receded
at places. This was first observed by Celsius (d. 1744)and Linnæus
(d. 1778), who caused marks to he made ou the rocks at Kalmar
and Gefie with a view to measure the retrocession of the sea, by
the German naturalist Hell at Vardø in 1769, and hy L. v. Iiuch,
the geologist, in 1807. Throughout a vast tract, extending from
8pitzbergen to about latitude 62°, the whole country is ascertained
to be gradually rising, or the sea to be receding. In the Altenfjord,
near Hammerfest, there are ancient coast-lines 620 ft. above the
present sea-level, and others gradually decreasing in height extend
all the way to Throndhjem and still farther 8., while at Throndhjem
itself a rise of 20 ft. within 1000 years is well authenticated. At
Torneu, at the head of the Gulf of Bothnia ,n the ground is even
said to have risen 5 ft. in a century; in the Aland Islands, farther

8., a rise of 3 ft. within the same time has been observed ; while at
Karlskrona no change of level has been detected. To the S. of
Karlskrona, on the other hand, a gradual depression of the land or
encroachment of the sea appears to be taking place. These
calculations are probably not very trustworthy, but careful measure
-ments made at eleven different places between 1839 and I86 0,
proved that the average rise of the coast-line between Maasø a ud
Christiania during that period was 1 foot. According to Kjeru If,
the most eminent of the Norwegian geologists, the elevation of the
coast has taken place fitfully, as several facts tend to prove. Thus
it will generally be observed that in all the Norwegian valleys and
fjords there are several distinct terraces, between which there is a
sudden and well-defined dip, and that the old coast-lines, with
their heaps of debris , descend abruptly at their lower ends at an
angle of 25-30°. Again it will be noticed that the different
water-levels on the rocks are marked by a kind of disintegrated pathway

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