Sognefjord

The fjord began as a river valley, cut into an older and gentler surface after the Scandinavian mountains were uplifted. The line was set long before any ice arrived.

Ice found that line and deepened it. At the height of the last glaciation the sheet standing over the fjord was close to three thousand meters thick, and the floor it left lies 1,308 meters below sea level, with walls rising a thousand meters above it.

Near the coast the ice spread into the sounds and low valleys around Solund and lost its confinement. The floor rises there to a sill about a hundred meters down, so the deepest water stands inland, behind a shallow mouth.