vegaøyan world heritage
Life at Strandflaten
Vegaøyan is located on the largest continuous stretch of beach in Norway, which measures approximately 50 km from the mainland to Egga.
The surface was excavated in the bedrock in the zone between sea and land when the ice retreated after the last ice age. The landscape on the beach surface was given flat belts of land and corresponding shallows below sea level. Archipelagos with many small islands, islets and reefs are common on coastal stretches with a wide beach surface. Such landscapes are only found along the Norwegian west coast, on Svalbard, Greenland and a few other places in the world.
The beach surface and the coincidence of several geological phenomena have laid the foundation for the population to find Vega a good place to live since time immemorial.
In the south lie high granite mountains that have given the inhabitants protection from winter storms. In the north, the bedrock is dominated by calcareous rocks that provide a rich soil for crops when they weather. The northern part of Vega therefore has the richest flora. Southern parts of the area consist of gray-colored granite that is 475 million years old. The granite in the southern part of the island is resistant to erosion and often forms sand, gravel and mud.
Ice age and land uplift
Northwestern parts of Europe have had several ice ages over the past 1.8 million years, a period known as the Quaternary. The last ice age had its greatest extent around 20,000 years ago. The ice edge then reached all the way out to the edge of the Norwegian Sea. Outside Vega, it probably reached almost 600 km west into the sea. Recent data shows that the thickness of the ice cap varied considerably across the land areas.
The 800 meter high mountains on Vega show clear frost weathering with spires and narrow ridges. This is typical of mountain ranges that emerged from the ice. Vega probably became ice-free early on, probably as early as 13,000 years ago. But the glacier, which was several hundred meters thick, still weighed down the land. When the ice melted, the pressure decreased and the land began to rise. When Vega was ice-free, the sea level was 110 meters higher than today.
As a result of land uplift after the Ice Age, the sea has deposited a number of shorelines on Vega and Søla. The shorelines can almost be read as annual rings in the terrain. Such shorelines can be seen on the south side of Søla, under Trollvasstind-Vegtind and Floaksla on the south side of Vega (90 - 95 meters above today's sea level), at Mohalsen by Gullsvågfjellet and under Hestvikfjellet and Tårnet in Hestvika in the southeast of Vega (92 - 96 meters above sea level).
The Caledonian mountain range
The Caledonian mountain range was formed 400 million years ago. At that time, the two continents Baltica (Scandinavia and the Baltics) and Laurentia (North America/Greenland) were pressed against each other. During the collision, some of the rocks from the North American continent were pushed to the east and became part of the Baltic continent. These rocks dominate parts of the bedrock on Vega. You could therefore say that Vega is geologically a small part of America!
The rocks were pulled 10-15 km down into the depths during the collision. The temperature there is several hundred degrees Celsius. The soft rocks in the northern parts of Vega were deformed and transformed. During the two to three million year ice age, the soft rocks were worn down, while the hard rocks were left as ridges in the terrain. Today, these ridges can be seen as small islands out in the sea, which in direction and pattern show the folds in the Caledonian mountain range.
The harder rocks south of Vega did not melt in the same way. This is why some rocks there appear as fragments, or so-called inclusions, unevenly distributed in the granite. This is particularly true of quartzite and limestone. Few places in the world have inclusions on this scale. This is why a student at the Technical University of Texas is doing his doctorate on the inclusions at Vega.
Source
Vegaøyan World Heritage. Cultural history travel book by Inga E. Næss and Rita Johansen.
