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Fjord

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Fjord in Sunnmøre, Norway

Fjords are very long inlets from the sea with high steeply sloped walled sides. A fjord (or fiord) is a landform created during a period of glaciation. Typical characteristics of a fjord include: a narrow inlet, a bottom that is eroded significantly below sea level (allowing deep-draft vessels to navigate easily), steep-sided walls which continue to descend below the sea surface, greater depths in the upper and middle reaches than on the seaward side, and communication with the open sea. During a period of glaciation a U-shaped valley is cut by a process known as abrasion, where rocks and sediment carried by the glacier erode away the surrounding bedrock. Usually fjords follow the path of a pre-glacial river valley, or in some cases a fault related to tectonic activity. In the case of a fjord, these valleys empty into the open sea, where the glacier then melts. Fjords are cut far below sea level, in the case of the Hardangerfjord the bottom is 800 m (2,624 ft) below sea level. At the mouth of many fjords there is a sill or rise generally associated with a terminal (or end) moraine. After the last ice age a 100 m (330 ft) rise in sea level helped to contribute to fjords depth.

Fjord lakes are similar, in that they are glacially eroded valleys (significantly below sea level), except that they are found within a continent and are filled with fresh water. Okanagan Lake was the first to be recognized as a fjord lake in 1962.[1]

Locations

West coast of Europe

West coast of New Zealand

West coast of North America

East coast of North America

West coast of South America

Other glaciated regions

Other regions have fjords, but many of these are less pronounced due to more limited exposure to westerly winds and less pronounced relief. Areas include:

Extreme fjords

Sognefjorden, Norway

The longest fjords in the world are:

  1. Scoresby Sund in Greenland - 350 km (220 mi)
  2. Sognefjord in Norway - 203 km (126 mi)
  3. Hardangerfjord in Norway - 179 km (111 mi)

Deep fjords include:

  1. Skelton Inlet in Antarctica - 1,933 m (6,342 ft)
  2. Sognefjord in Norway - ~1,308 m (4,291 ft) (the mountains then rise to up to 1,000 m)
  3. Messier Channel in Chile, South America - 1,288 m (4,226 ft)

Even deeper is the Vanderford Valley (2,287 m or 7,503 ft), carved by the Antarctica's Vanderford Glacier. This undersea valley lies offshore, however, and so is not a fjord.

Extreme fjord lakes

  • The deepest known fjord lake is Okanagan Lake, in British Columbia, where the bedrock has been eroded up to 650 m below sea level[2], which is 2000 m below the surrounding regional topography. This erosion exceeds the Grand Canyon.

Etymology

With Indo European origin (*prtús from *por- or *per) in the verb fare (travelling/ferrying), the Norse noun substantive fjörðr means a "Lake-like" waterbody used for passage and ferrying.

The Scandinavian Fjord is the origin for similar european words : Icelandic fjörður, Swedish fjärd (for Baltic Waterbodies), English ford, Scottish firth, and is related to: Greek poros, Latin portus, German Furt.

As a loanword from Norwegian, it is the only word in the English language to start with the digraph fj.

Scandinavian usage

Use of the word fjord (including the eastern Scandinavian form fjärd) is more general in the Scandinavian languages than in English. In Scandinavia, fjord is used for a narrow inlet of the sea in Norway, Denmark and western Sweden, but this is not its only application. In Norway, the usage is closest to the Old Norse, with fjord used for both a firth and for a long, narrow inlet. In eastern Norway, the term is also applied to long narrow freshwater lakes and sometimes even to rivers (in local usage, for instance in Flå in Hallingdal, the Hallingdal river is referred to as fjorden). In east Sweden, the name fjärd is used in a synonymous manner for bays, bights and narrow inlets on the Swedish Baltic Sea coast, and in most Swedish lakes. This latter term is also used for bodies of water off the coast of Finland where Finland Swedish is spoken. In modern Icelandic, fjörður is still used with the broader meaning of firth or inlet. In Finnish language, a word vuono is used although there is only one fjord in Finland.

The German use of the word förde on sea-stretches on their Baltic Sea coastline, seems to indicate a common Germanic origin of the word. The landscape consists mainly of moraine heaps, and "real" fjords in the geological sense are not possible. Kieler Förde still fits the same criteria as other fjordnames further north, while others merely fits the description of bugt as used in Danish. One may therefore conclude that fjord was one of the names used by Germanic tribes to describe a sea-territory.

False fjords

The differences in usage between the English and the Scandinavian languages have contributed to confusion in the use of the term fjord. Bodies of water which are clearly fjords in Scandinavian languages are not considered fjords in English; similarly bodies of water which would clearly not be fjords in the Scandinavian sense have been named or suggested to be fjords. Examples of this confused usage follow.

The Gulf of Kotor in Montenegro has been suggested by some to be a fjord, but is in fact a drowned river canyon or ria. Similarly the Lim bay in Istria, Croatia, is sometimes called "Lim fjord" although it is not actually a fjord carved by glacial erosion but instead a ria dug by the river Pazinčica. The Croats call it Limski kanal which does not transliterate accurately to the English equivalent either.

Limfjord in the north of Denmark is a fjord in the Scandinavian sense, but is not a fjord in the English sense. In English it would be called a channel, since it separates the island of Vendsyssel-Thy from the rest of Jutland.

While the long fjord-like bays of the New England coast are sometimes referred to as "fiards", the only glacially-formed fjord-like feature in New England is Somes Sound in Maine.

The fjords in Finnmark (Norway), which are fjords in the Scandinavian sense of the term, are considered by some to be false fjords. Although glacially formed, most Finnmark fjords lack the classic hallmark steep-sided valleys of the more southerly Norwegian fjords since the glacial pack was deep enough to cover even the high grounds when they were formed.

Some Norwegian freshwater lakes which have formed in long glacially carved valleys with terminal moraines blocking the outlet follow the Norwegian naming convention; they are named fjords. Outside of Norway, the three western arms of New Zealand's Lake Te Anau are named fjords as well. Another freshwater "fjord" in a larger lake is Baie Fine, located on the northeastern coast of Georgian Bay of Lake Huron in Ontario. Western Brook Pond, in Newfoundland's Gros Morne National Park, is also often described as a fjord, but is actually a freshwater lake cut off from the sea, so is not a fjord in the English sense of the term.

Fjords in culture and history

Fjord horse

There is an ancient breed of horse from the western Norway fjord regions called the fjord horse.

References

  1. ^ Nasmith, Hugh (1962), Late glacial history and surficial deposits of the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, Victoria, BC, Canada: BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources
  2. ^ Eyles, Nicholas (1990). "Thick and fast: Sedimentation in a Pleistocene fiord lake of British Columbia, Canada". Geology. 18 (11): 1153–1157. Error: Bad DOI specified!. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Fjord.
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