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CONFIGURATION.
7
the country may be easily distinguished: farthest to the west, one of high
mountains and great lakes; then a district of stony moraines and
peatmosses, and finally a region principally covered by Quaternary marine
deposits of sand and loam. These belts pass into one another, it is true, but
are nevertheless in general clearly defined.
a) The Mountain and Lake Belt. The Swedish mountains constitute, as
was stated above, one section of an extensive chain of high mountains
that occupies a part of Sweden contiguous to the Norwegian frontier, is
about 100 km in breadth and extends from the utmost extremity of the
country in the north down to the northernmost part of Dalarne. This
district was in ancient times called "Kölen" and is so still, though the
name has sometimes been incorrectly used to include also the more
southern part of the borderland between the two countries. The limits of the
mountain district to the East are, as a rule, very clearly marked, the
mountains often rising sheer from the wooded tracts on that side. By
reason -of its great geological age this Swedish mountain range differs in
several respects from the mountain ranges of Central and Southern Europe.
Thus even the highest peaks in Sweden have, in general, a rounded form
this being principally due to the fact that here destructive forces and erosion
have bad a vastly longer period for the prosecution of their work than
has been the case, for instance, in the Alps. The protracted period during
which the land was under ice during the Glacial Epoch is another
contributory cause. Only a few solitary peaks, consisting of some specially hard
and unyielding material, mostly of an eruptive nature, have been capable
of retaining down to the present day that boldness of outline which is
generally regarded as characteristic of lofty mountains; this is the case
with the peaks named the Sylarne in South Jämtland, and the peaks of
the Sarekfjällen and Mt. Kebnekaise in North Lappland. Another
peculiarity of the Swedish mountains is that they are intersected by wide
and deep river-valleys which divide the range into distinct
mountain-masses. So marked are these divisions, that it was reserved for the
geological researches of the last few decades to discover that these separate
masses originally formed one great mountain chain. A noticeable
difference in the character of the river-valleys on the Swedish and on the
Norwegian sides of the mountain range is that, whereas the valleys in
Sweden rise slowly towards the divide, the rivers in those of Norway
flow in deep, narrow gorges which carry their waters clown to the ocean
in the space of comparatively few miles.
The most important of the Swedish mountain-groups, enumerated from north
to south, are the following: The Kebnekaise group south of the Lake Torne Träsk,
in which Mt. Kebnekaise itself towers aloft from among the adjacent heights,
the highest in all Sweden, 2 123 m above the sea, though Raskasatjåkko
2 093 m almost attains the same height. South of the upper main valley
of the Lule River are found the numerous peaks of the groups: Sarekfjällen,
Ålkasfjällen and Pårtefjällen; this group forms perhaps the grandest section
of the whole mountain region of Sweden, presenting as it does numerous and
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