Abstract
FIORDS have been a powerful influence on modern life, for the existing facility for intercourse oversea is the difference between modern and mediaeval Europe which penetrates most deeply into all departments of life and work. The Roman Empire was held together by its roads, and as its conquerors from the wide plains of the east were neither sailors nor roadmakers, Europe was resettled on national instead of on imperial lines. While Europe thus fell naturally into independent States, the most efficient of all means of international communication was being developed on the shores of Scandinavia; for owing to the fiords travel overland there was even more difficult than through the forest-clad plains of Central Europe. In Norway the fiords were the only practicable highways, and they, with their labyrinth of smooth waterways, their tidal currents, which carried boats to and fro independent of wind or oar, and their unfailing supplies of food, fuel, and skins, attracted men to the sea as much as the barren highlands repelled them from the land.
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Fiords in relation to Earth Movements 1 . Nature 89, 179–183 (1912). https://doi.org/10.1038/089179a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/089179a0