Mountain Centered Icefi elds in Northern Scandinavia

Mountain centered glaciers have played a major role throughout the last three million years in the Scandinavian moun-tains. The climatic extremes, like the present warm interglacial or cold glacial maxima, are very short-lived compared to the periods of intermediate climate conditions, characterized by the persistence of mountain based glaciers and ice fi elds of regional size. These have persisted in the Scandinavian mountains for about 65 % of the Quaternary. Mountain based glaciers thus had a profound impact on large-scale geomorphology, which is manifested in large-scale glacial landforms such as fjords, glacial lakes and U-shaped valleys in and close to the mountain range. Through a mapping of glacial landforms in the northern Scandinavian mountain range, in particular a striking set of lateral moraines, this thesis offers new insights into Weichselian stages predating the last glacial maximum. The aerial photograph mapping and fi eld evidence yield evidence that these lateral moraines were overridden by glacier ice sub-sequent to their formation. The lateral moraines were dated using terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide techniques. Although the terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide signature of the moraines is inconclusive, an early Weichselian age is tentatively sug-gested through correlations with other landforms and stratigraphical archives in the region. The abundance and coher-ent spatial pattern of the lateral moraines also allow a spatial reconstruction of this ice fi eld. The ice fi eld was controlled by topography and had nunataks protruding also where it was thickest close to the elevation axis of the Scandinavia