During the last 2-3 million years, repeated glaciation with huge ice shields covered most of Scandinavia in a manner similar to the continent of Antarctica today. Icy streams, flowing toward the coast, carved deep crevasses with perpendicular walls in ancient valley floors. Local glaciers, working away the cirques in old mountainous land masses, transformed them into sharp ridges and peaks.

From the inland mountains and mountain plateaus, the landscape falls sharply toward the coast. Along coastal fjords, alpine mountains seem like drowned giants emerging from the surface of the sea. An undulating lowland along the outer coast is protected from the Norwegian Sea in most places by the 50,000 islands.