6. Labrador stone occurs west of Lindernæs, in the south, at Ekersund
on the west coast, below Stavanger, round the Galdhopiggen (the highest
point in Norway), and north-east of Fortun, in the Sogne fjord.
The whole of this surface bears record of the immense extent and effect
of the glacial period of Norway. The valleys show the glacial set as
distinctly as does the tide in large rivers, the greatest attrition
and scoriation being in the concaves going down. Huge bastions of
rock[7] have been rounded and ground down by constant attrition, and
vast terraces of sand, at the end of each valley, are the result of
this attrition accumulating for ages. It would be very interesting
to analyze and find the component parts of these immense deposits.
Certain it is there is no natural sandy soil above, and, as we have
before mentioned, when reindeer-hunting, we have found huge boulders
of thirty or forty feet at an elevation of 5,000 feet, with smaller
ones of a different formation resting on them. Now all this has been
brought about by the influence of the gulf stream: when the gulf stream
took this course the glacial period ceased in Norway. That epoch none
can tell. It will be sufficient to notice the result, which is this:
when the polar current from Spitzbergen runs down the west coast of
the Atlantic, and produces the great fogs off Newfoundland, the gulf
stream, driven up from the Gulf of Florida by the force of the great
caldron of the equator, strikes on to our west coast and the coast
of Norway, running up to the North Cape; in fact, the only timber
to be obtained there is the drift wood from the West Indies; and at
Hammerfest casks of palm oil have been washed up from Cape Lopez Point,
in Africa. In Iceland, too, as Professor Ericker Magnussen informs us,
the bridges are made of mahogany. Not that bridges are frequent in
that country; but those which they have are made from the logs washed
up there. This accounts for the variety of temperature which the two
boundaries of Norway—the gulf stream on the west, and Sweden on the
east—present. For instance, though Bergen and Christiania are in about
the same latitude, the average temperature at the former is 46° 8´ and
at the latter 41° 5´; the summer average is about the same; but in the
winter months Christiania is often 13° colder than Bergen. Hence there
may be skating at Christiania while there is none at all at Bergen,
where the average annual rainfall is 72 inches, which, by the way, is
lower than that in our English lakes.
[7] See the rocks of Steensund, on the west coast: these are
conglomerate.