WATERFALLS, SNOWFIELDS, AND GLACIERS
A really fine waterfall is a most fascinating thing. Long before you
reach it you hear the roar of the water, and see the spray ascending
like steam from a boiling caldron. Then when you stand before it,
you gaze in wonder on the never-ending rush of water, hurtling in
one great mass from top to bottom of the lofty cliff, or leaping in
mighty bounds from ledge to ledge.
Nowhere in Europe can one see such a variety of waterfalls as in
Norway, for every district has its _fos_, and in some districts the
cascades are innumerable. In the Romsdal, for instance, an English
traveller once counted within a mile no fewer than seventy-three
waterfalls, "none of which were less than 1,000 feet high, while
some plunged down 2,000 feet." But the majority of these would only
consist of a single thread of water, not of that great, broad sheet
which is the feature of the more famous falls.
Which of Norway's many waterfalls is the finest is a matter of
opinion. Some people give the palm to the Rjukanfos (Telemarken), some
to the Skjæggedalsfos [2] (or Ringedalsfos), some to the Vöringfos,
while others maintain that the Vettifos, the Tvindefos, and the
Tyssedalsfos are without rivals. The fact is that each of these
(and other falls which could be named) has its own particular charm,
and the last one visited always seems to be the best. A great deal
also depends on the time of year, and on the amount of snow which has
fallen on the mountains during the preceding winter. For, it must be
remembered, it is the rapid melting of the snow in the spring that
gives to most of the Norwegian waterfalls such a volume of water in
the early months of the year.
But the summer rainfall on the high fjelds is always heavy, and
even after all the snow of the year has melted, an immense amount
of water has to drain away to the lowlands, and so to the sea. At
first it collects in the tarns which fill the hollows of the mountain
plateaux, but these, overflowing, soon send their surplus water by
certain channels away over the cliffs.
The greater waterfalls, however, are those which indirectly carry off
the water from the snowfields, the mountains capped with perpetual
snow; for, except during the frost-bound months of winter, these
falls are always full.
The snowfields are of themselves of immense interest, but so intimately
are they connected with the glaciers that we shall speak of the two
together. A snowfield may exist without a glacier, but a glacier
cannot exist without a snowfield--that is to say, the glacier is made
by the snowfield.
How snowfields came into existence nobody knows for certain, but it
is generally supposed by learned people who have studied the matter
that, thousands of years ago, after what is called the Great Ice Age,
Norway gradually put off her mantle of ice and snow and became what
she is now; but the snow on the higher parts of the land has never
yet had time to melt right away, because fresh snow is always falling
and adding to the pile. And it is the weight of all this fresh snow on
the top of the accumulation of centuries which produces the glaciers.
The Folgefond, in the Hardanger district, is the snowfield which most
people who visit Norway see sooner or later, and since it covers
an area of 120 square miles, at a height of about 5,500 feet above
the sea, it is visible from a great many points of view. It forms a
background to many a picture of the varied scenery of the Hardanger
Fjord, and it has the advantage of being easily accessible.
Of course, the belief in the old popular legends is dying out even in
Norway, but there are still some aged grandfathers and grandmothers
living near the great snowfield who can tell the tales as they were
told to them. Thus they relate that where the Folgefond now lies was
once a fertile and well-peopled valley, called Folgedalen, and that in
one night its farms, forests, people, and cattle were buried in snow as
a judgment for some great sin. One story ascribes the misfortune to the
curse of a gipsy woman, who had been refused alms by the priest; while
another relates that the valley was overwhelmed because the inhabitants
had murdered their liege lord, the petty King of the district.
But why it happened and how it happened does not really much matter,
for there the vast field of snow is to-day, and there it will doubtless
remain for many centuries to come. As has been said, you can go up
to the top of it and sleigh across a portion of its summit, or you
can potter round about it and examine its many glaciers.
The two largest glaciers of the Folgefond are the Buar Bræ, near
Odda, and the Bondhus Bræ, near Sundal, and to spend a day at either
of them is a real treat. But it is not wise to visit these glaciers
without someone who knows them, for one might easily fall into one
of the great fissures in the ice, known as crevasses, especially if
lately-fallen snow had hidden the opening of the mighty crack.
A glacier, as most people know (now that everyone goes to Switzerland,
if not to Norway), is nothing more than a river of ice; not a nice,
clean, smooth sheet of ice, but a rough mass of frozen billows,
almost blue in colour, and generally covered with sand, dust, and
stones of all sizes. Wherever, beneath the edge of a snowfield,
the country shapes itself into a valley, there you will find a glacier.
If you make a snowball, and keep pressing and kneading it in your
hands, you will soon convert it into a solid lump of ice. That is
just what the sun does to the snowfield. It keeps melting the new
snow, and this presses down into the old snow, so that the weight
of the whole thing squeezes out the frozen snow into the valleys in
the form of glaciers. And, as this process goes on year after year,
the glacier would naturally keep going lower and lower down into the
valley were it not for the fact that the point (or snout, as it is
termed) of the glacier very frequently breaks off, and disappears into
the torrent of ice-water which flows away from it. So some glaciers,
although always moving, never grow any longer, but others creep a
little bit farther down each year.
There are many other interesting things about a glacier. One of them
is the moraine, which consists of heaps of rocks and stones broken off
from the edges of the valley by the great river of ice as it pushes
its way imperceptibly forward. These rocks are embedded in the ice
or borne on its surface, and are only given up when the extremity
of the glacier melts away into the torrent. Some of the rocks thus
transported are of immense weight, and the torrent is powerless to
move them; year by year, therefore, the jumbled heap of boulders and
rocks is added to until it often grows to an enormous size.
Another fine snowfield in the Hardanger district is the Jökul,
a splendid white dome, whose melting snows help to swell the
Vöringfos. The Jökul does not possess many large glaciers, but one
of them has, in past years, been a great source of trouble to the
people who live near it. This is the Rembesdal glacier, at the far
end of the Simodal Valley, near Eidfjord.
The Simodal is a beautiful and fertile valley, with farms on either
bank of the river, which rushes through it to the fjord. This river
comes from the glacier, but not directly. The head of the valley is
choked by a high cliff, over which tumbles a grand waterfall, and
this issues from a large mountain lake, into the opposite end of which
descends the snout of the glacier, with a continuous stream of milky
water flowing from it. So far there is nothing peculiar in all this,
but the peculiarity lies higher up.
Some little distance up the glacier, and almost at right angles to one
side of it, is a rocky hollow or small valley, and into this the water
begins to pour in the spring as soon as the sun is strong enough to
begin to melt the snow. The great glacier blocks up the end of this
hollow with a thick dam of ice, and before long a huge lake is formed.
What used to happen every two or three years was that the pressure of
the water in this dammed-up lake became so tremendous that the glacier
at last could resist it no longer. Away went the side and lower part
of the glacier, and with one mighty crash the water escaped. Down
into the lower lake, and over the waterfall, the wall of solid water,
several feet in height, descended into the valley. There it carried
destruction far and wide, sweeping away crops, cattle, farm buildings,
bridges, and everything that came in its way. The loss of life also
was often considerable, for there was no warning other than the roar
of the water as it burst into the valley.
A few years ago, however, some Norwegian engineers devised a means of
averting these terrible floods by enabling the upper lake to empty
itself gradually. They constructed under the glacier an iron-lined
tunnel, connecting the upper lake with the lower, and in this way the
water escaped at once. So the people of Simodal can now sleep in peace.