From a study of these and similar phenomena, it has been demonstrated
that during the climax of the Ice Age a very large part of northern
Europe was buried under a thick covering of glacier-ice. And it has
been conclusively shown that this ice-sheet streamed outwards in all
directions from the high-grounds of Scandinavia, for which reason it is
often spoken of as the Scandinavian ice-sheet. But as it was fed, not
from the snow-fields of Scandinavia alone, but from the precipitation
of snow over its whole surface, it is better, I think, to speak of it
as the northern ice-sheet. In the extreme north of Scandinavia the ice
flowed northward into the Arctic Ocean, while south of the dominant
watershed of Lapland and Sweden its course in those high latitudes was
east and south-east. It filled up the depressions of the White Sea, the
Gulf of Bothnia, and the Baltic, extending east to the valley of the
Petchora and the base of the Ural Mountains, and south-east to Kazan,
some 200 miles east of Nijnii-Novgorod. From this point its terminal
front trended a little west of south, until it reached the fiftieth
parallel of latitude. Undulating a few miles south and north of this
parallel, it swept directly west through Russia into Galicia, till it
touched the foot-hills of the Carpathian range. After this we follow it
along the northern base of the Riesen Gebirge, the Erz Gebirge, and the
Harz, and thence westward through Hanover, and into the Low Countries,
as far south at least as the mouth of the Rhine. Throughout the vast
regions lying west and north of this terminal line, the track followed
by the ice has been well ascertained. It was east and south-east in
Russia, southerly in east Prussia, south-westerly in Denmark, Hanover,
and Holland.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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