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Scandinavian Mountains
The Scandes, the glaciated spine of the Scandinavian Peninsula
The Scandinavian Mountains, or Scandes, run for some 1,700 kilometres down the western edge of the Scandinavian Peninsula, the long, glacier-scoured backbone that gives Norway its fjords and Sweden its high wild north. They rise straight from the Atlantic in a wall of rock and ice, then slope gently east into the Swedish forests. Among the oldest landscapes in Europe at the surface, they carry icefields, plunging valleys, and the deep sea inlets for which the region is famous, drowned glacial troughs reaching far inland.
The range is the worn-down stub of a once-mighty mountain belt raised more than 400 million years ago when the ancient continents that became North America and Europe collided, later lifted again and sculpted by repeated Ice Age glaciers. The highest summit is Galdhøpiggen in Norway, at about 2,469 metres, in the Jotunheimen massif. Glaciers still cling to the heights, and the dramatic fjords of the Norwegian coast, carved by ice and flooded by the sea, are the range's most celebrated feature.
These mountains shaped the divide between Norway and Sweden and long isolated the coastal communities that turned to the sea for survival, fishing and, later, the great Norwegian merchant fleets. In the far north the Sámi people have herded reindeer across the high plateaus for centuries, following the seasons between mountain and coast. Today the Scandes draw hikers, skiers, and cruise passengers to the fjords, and their rivers, harnessed for hydropower, supply much of the clean electricity that powers Norway.