Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - First part - I. Physical Geography - 1. Configuration and Water-system. By Docent Gunnar Andersson, Ph. D., Stockholm - C) Småland Highlands - D) The Plains of Skåne
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configuration and .water-system.
21
the trunk-line to Malmö, the country the traveller passes through
between the stations of Osby and Nässjö is so very like that in the middle
belt of Upper Norrland that he will have difficulty in distinguishing any
points of dissimilarity between the two. The same wide ranges of
pine and spruce, with a sprinkling of foliage trees in the vicinity of
the occasional cultivated tracts, the same wearisome mosses with
scattered dwarfling pines, the same succession of insignificant heights and
valleys. It is only the milder climatic conditions more successful here that
have rendered agriculture. Hence, to give but one example, there are far
fewer hindrances than farther north to the cultivation of the large
moorland districts, the damage done by frosty nights being little or nothing.
D) The Plains of Skåne, forming the southernmost section of
Sweden, though not of great extent, are of especial importance on
account of their extremely favourable natural conditions. The natural
boundary, geologically, between the Scandinavian-Finnish archæan röck
district and the extensive plains which border the shores of the southern
section of the Baltic Sea and rest on a foundation of sedimentary
formations, takes its way through Skåne. This boundary-line runs
approximately in a south-westerly direction from Skelderviken in the
north to Stenshufvud in the south. North of it there extends a
considerable plain around Kristianstad, wholly similar in general character
to the south-western and southern parts of the province. In direct
connection with it, again, is that portion of the coast-district in South
Halland which lies north of the Halland Ridge.
A peculiar geographical feature in the orography of Skåne is that all the ranges
of higher ground run from N.W. to S.E. The chief ones are the Halland Ridge
(Hallandsåsen), with highest point 226 m., Kullen 188 m., Söderåsen 188 m.,
Linderödsåsen 196 m., and Romeleklint 185 m. This circumstance is due to a series
of dislocations that had the same course, and which can be traced in
continuation on the island of Bornholm. These dislocations have brought about a
depression of the deposits belonging to the Silurian, Rhaetic-lias and Cretraceous systems,
in such a way that they resemble in our times extensive plains at the foot
of the ridges of primitive röck. The ridges subdivide the plains of Skåne into
separate sections. North of Linderödsåsen the Kristianstad Plain stretches up
towards the boundary of Småland, south of that plain and cast of Romeleklint
is the East Plain (Osterslått), passing, in the more hilly districts round Ystad,
into the very fertile South Plain (Söderslätt), which is, indeed, the richest part
of the whole of Sweden, and continuing northwards as far as to Skelderviken in
the plains of western Skåne.
The general character of the plains is somewhat varied. In the
neighbourhood of Skelderviken and Kristianstad, where there is a covering of recent marine
deposits, the surface is almost uniformly level; in the southern districts we find,
now extensive, undulating, and shallow valley-basins, separated from each other by
low ranges of heights, now, as for instance to the south and south-west of
Romeleklint, a very hilly country, where the morainic material has been heaped
up into heights and ridges to an altitude of some 20 or 30 meters above the
depressions, these being often without any outlet. The last-mentioned is the most
extensively wooded tract in southern Skåne; the large beech-woods lend to the
scenery a great charm, which is heightened by the luxuriant green of the meadows
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