A Trip to Norway
where the sweep hand of the geological clock ticks at the pace perceptible for humans
The previous week we were, my wife and I, on a trip to Norway, travelling round the southwestern region by coach. I am a poor traveller, more a wanderer than a sightseer, but the trip was organized the way it was, and I tried to absorb as much as I could about the nature of the place. Struck with awe at the marvels of Nature, I experienced thoughts about time more intense than ever before during hikes in beloved native Polish mountains. Here, I would like to share these reflections.
Norwegian mountains are huge. Not by their absolute altitude, but by the area they cover and the majestic enormity of single mounds.
The mountains rise abruptly to the height of some 1000 to 1500 meters above the sea level, and then seem to spread beyond the horizon more or less on the same level, as if an invisible and formidable force limited their growth, or a giant Troll had trodden upon them, levelling all spikes.
Compare this landscape to a panorama of Polish and Slovakian Tatra mountains, where an area of mere several hundred of square kilometres comprises all mountain forms, from mild hills of fields and forests, to slopes where dwarf, but more resilient vegetation grows, to barren or snow-covered sharp peaks.
Geologically, something drastically different must have happened on the Scandinavian peninsula.
I searched a bit on the Web, and found that the most recent, and most exhaustive geological hypothesis attributes the uplift of Norwegian mountains to the tectonic plates collision that took place in the Silurian or Devonian period, some 420 million years ago. The time which has passed since then could account for the erosion of any peaks to the shape of a plateau.1 The significant height of the plateau itself can be explained by the theory of “isostatic uplift.”2
According to this theory, the crust, it is the tectonic plates, “float” upon denser, viscous mantle, preserving the Archimedes’ principle of buoyancy. Whatever mass of rock erodes and is blown or washed away, it deducts from the total mass of the massif. The buoyancy force from the mantle uplifts the tectonic plate to meet equilibrium. This way, the mountains could have eroded to a flat plateau, which in turn remained uplifted high above the sea level. All the valleys and gorges are effects of millions of years of the carving activity of glaciers. Hence, the shapes of the mountains we can see, are rather carvings than protrusions.
Even if the theory is not conclusive, the age of over four hundred million years that it attributes to the mountains, corresponds well with the visual impression they leave in an onlooker. The Tatras are believed to be some 15 million years old, and with their relatively small, energetic spikes they indeed look like a vibrant toddler. Here, in the Jotunheimen mountains, and later, on the Hardangervidda (Hardnager Plateau) we could feel the unimaginable depth of impassive geological time.
And then we went to see Briksdal, one of the extremities of the Jostedal glacier.
The measurements of the position of its front face started in the year 1900:
Since then, the length of the glacier tongue fluctuated for a short time, only to reverse into an incessant retreat. Just twenty years ago, it was still huge enough to be accessible from the level of the valley:
When we walked up to the place, the glacier looked like this:
Never before in the mountains have I experienced such an overwhelming sense of their unimaginable age, and nowhere else have I seen, at the same moment, such a rapid change.
The Earth, its lands and oceans evolving and changing at the pace of deep geological time, has always been, in my notion of the world, an effectively static mainstay for all minor and softer changes, like all the history of humanity. Even my view on climate change, which we witness so clearly, went more or less this way: “By rapacious activity, we have disturbed the fragile environmental equilibrium. But the Earth is eternal and resilient; if we only curb ourselves, and let the Nature heal itself, it will”.
Far from research on the calving of Antarctica’s ice sheet, far from witnessing the melt of glaciers in Himalaya, this occasional trip to a single sightseeing place which has changed so much in the course of just several decades, has upturned my notion of Nature’s steadiness and resilience.
We, the human race, have exacerbated the climate change, and with wise, collective effort we arguably can revert or at least alleviate some of the effects. Unquestionably we should produce energy in more sustainable ways, and consume less. Give back swaths of lands and seas to wildlife. But the way our planet evolves, is not within our agency. No matter how many orders of magnitude a human life is shorter than the life of a glacier, or how many times the whole history of life is shorter than the lasting of rocks in the Earth’s crust, when a major geological event occurs, it will fall on a point in time, and there will be generations who will witness it.
When I looked at the maps in Norsk Natursenter, Norwegian Nature Center on the Hardanger Plateu, I learned that the recent glacial periods occurred in cycles of about 150 000 years, and now some 12 000 years have passed since the last glaciers receded from the European continent. So, by the extrapolation of previous cycles, the inhabitant of Canada and Europe have a lot of time ahead before a new ice cap covers all the cities and towns, tunnels and bridges, rivers and harbours.
Which perspective does not alleviate in me the anxiety about an overwhelming change which our children, or grandchildren, may witness.
Despite all our achievements, we are transient. The Earth does not need us, to paraphrase the saying “the ocean does not need us” I heard in one of the documentaries about marine life. It will proceed with its evolution at the pace of geological time regardless of our efforts, or even presence. On the contrary, we need badly everything what Nature provides: lands and oceans, glaciers and waterfalls, forests and savannas, rain, snow and sunshine. The only way to live as long as Nature allows us to, is to abide, with ultimate respect, by Her rules.
If you have any thoughts on the above, please leave a comment. Your remarks may improve my future writing.
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“The mystery of the Norwegian mountains. Are they 20 mill or 400 mill year old?”
https://bjerknes.uib.no/en/article/mystery-norwegian-mountains
“The rise of the Norwegian mountains”
https://www.scisnack.com/2019/04/29/the-rise-of-the-norwegian-mountains/