The last glacial maximum
Sea level is 120 metres lower and Norway lies under ice
See it on the timeline →In depth
The Fennoscandian and Laurentide ice sheets covered northern Europe and Canada. Doggerland in the North Sea was habitable plain; Sundaland in Southeast Asia was continuous land. As the ice retreated from around 19,000 years ago, the sea rose quickly and drowned these regions — events that may lie behind flood stories in many cultures. Scandinavia is still rebounding from the lost weight of the ice, by up to eight millimetres a year in the Gulf of Bothnia.
For children
At the coldest, an ice sheet covered all of Norway, as thick as twenty Eiffel Towers stacked up. So much water was frozen that the sea stood over a hundred metres lower than today — you could walk dry-shod from Denmark to England.
Connects to
Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org