Geirangerfjord

I learned about this place, Geirangerfjord, after clicking through the link at the right, the New 7 Wonders of the World link. This is stuff that you might have touched on in geography class in grade school and didn't pay attention and now it's kind of cool to relearn it.

Geirangerfjord is in the southern part of Norway. It is a 9 mile long branch of the Great Fjord.

Geography class reminder: Norway is the western side of the Scandinavian peninsula; Sweden is the eastern side. Ya, Sveeden.

A fjord is a long and narrow inlet from the sea that was created by glacial movement and melt and the accompanying abrasion. Most fjords are deeper than the sea to which they are connected, and at the mouth is a sill or "terminal moraine", an accumulation of the glacier's detritus, the rock and soil that the glacier dumped at the end of its advance.

Do not despair, fellow flatlanders! Norway does not have an exclusive on this terminal moraine thing. There is a terminal moraine (but no fjord) in Marseilles, IL, in Kendall County. My vacation plans are being revised right now.

Geirangerfjord is constantly threatened by the impending collapse of the adjoining mountain, Akerneset. There is a giant crevasse, the Akernes crevasse, that has been widening at an increasing rate.

When the crevasse finally blows, there will be a landslide of 50 to 100 million cubic meters of stuff that will have ceased to be Akerneset. The landslide will cascade into the fjord and set off a tsunami 30 feet high in the fjord (yo, Lars, surf's up!) that will inundate everything its path. The inhabitants of the towns of Geiranger (population 250) and Helleslyt (population 600) will have ten minutes from that time to escape the surge of the 30 foot wall of frigid water.

The link below will take you to a Google map of Hellesylt. Zoom back, a step at a time, to get the image of how this whole fjord deal works, and how screwed the Hellesyltians are gonna be when the crevasse ruptures.

I am changing vacation plans; scratch Marseilles, IL. I want to see this place. While it's still there.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&q=Hellesylt,+6218+Stranda,+Norway&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=50.51141,73.125&ie=UTF8&cd=1&geocode=FdFVswMd3tVoAA&split=0&z=14&iwloc=addr

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PS:

I am posting the following photo as a public service to clear up some lingering confusion about the identity of America's Team.