Thank you for taking the trouble to reply, at this difficult time for
everybody in Houston.
Looking at the map again, I think I can see what you mean. Are you saying
that the channel started as a fault line, became deepened by glacial
scouring while it was still several hundred metres above the sea, and then became flooded as the sea level rose?
Come to think of it, I can now provide evidence to support this theory.
There is a bridge between the islands of Streymoy and Esturoy near a small settlement called Streymnes. This is at ~10 km from the northern, and ~20 km from the southern end of the channel, and is at the point where the channel
is least wide (~100 metres) and least deep. I do not know exactly what the depth is here, but it is sufficiently shallow that they have been able to
build a bridge with footings, and have not needed to resort to a suspension bridge. This presumably is the watershed position of the glacier, where some
of the glacier would have slid downhill towards the south, and some downhill
to the north.
The real test of the glacier theory would be the depth of water at the
northern and southern ends of the channel. Is there sufficient slope to make the glacier slide downhill? Unfortunately, I do not have any data for these depths.
Thank you again for your interesting reply.
Richard Chambers Leeds UK.
===============================
"Paul in Houston TX" <
Paul@Houston.Texas> wrote in message news:ooactv$v8r$
1@dont-email.me...
I am not familiar with Faroe geology, however Google maps shows regional >faulting
to be trending NE-SW with a minor subset trending NNW-SSE.
Remember that sea level changes over time. 12,000 years ago sea level was approx 100m lower than it is now. 3 million years ago it was
substantially lower
than that, perhaps 1 km or so. Ice ages occur often on a geo time scale.
The Faroe valleys look an awful lot like glacial scouring.
I wish Google would not color the world with fake coloring.
Richard Chambers wrote:
I recently visited the Faroe Islands in the north Atlantic, approximately
midway between Iceland and the north of Scotland. A striking feature of
the
islands is that two of the main islands are separated by a long narrow
parallel-sided channel of seawater, approximately 30 km long and perhaps
1
km wide. I asked what had caused such a channel, and they told me that it
was glacial action during the Ice Age.
I do not believe this explanation. A glacier can cut fjords like this,
but
only if the valley at the top end of the glacier rises to a height of
several hundred, or several thousand, metres. Height is necessary to
provide
the gravitational energy to propel the glacier along the channel it is
cutting. So the fjords in Norway are open to the sea at their lower end,
but
the valley rises up into the mountains at its upper end. The channel
between
the islands in the Faroes is open to the sea at both ends, so there is no
force of gravity to propel a glacier along its length and produce a
cutting
action.
Furthermore, the channel does not look like a sunken river valley such as
you find at the extreme west of Galicia (Spain). Or between Wales and
Anglesey.
Is there a better explanation for the parallel-sided channel in the
Faroes?
I am an interested layman, not a geologist. Please adjust the level of
your
explanation accordingly.
Richard Chambers Leeds UK.
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