Preikestolen, Norway by Edwin Kooren

Preikestolen, Norway
Preikestolen ('The Pulpit Chair') lies 604 metres above the Lysefjord and the hike up is one of the most famous mountain hiking routes in Norway. Interest in Preikestolen increases every year and in 2017 more than 300,000 nature lovers visited the extraordinary rock formation.

During the Caledonian orogeny, Laurentia (more or less present-day North America) and Baltica (more or less Europe without southern Europe) collided to form Laurazia together. This collision gave rise to the Scandinavian Highlands in which lots of granite and other magmatic rocks formed. The mountain range must have looked like today's Alps. Right from its formation, erosion of this mountain range began, which would continue for hundreds of millions of years. Laurazia gradually began to move back apart, with the fault being definitive from about 180'years ago. We find the rift between Greenland and Scandinavia, among others.

During the Pleistocene, a number of ice ages followed one another. The ice sheets resulting from the ice ages had a double effect on the Scandinavian Highlands. On the one hand, they led to a specific erosion, the valleys were eroded into a U-valley and the weight of the kilometres of thick ice pack caused the earth's crust to sink into the asthenosphere. The ice not only eroded the valley but was also powerful enough to split large boulders. Near Preikestolen, several of these blocks broke off. Preikestolen itself also shows a huge crack.

At the end of the last ice age, about's 12,000 years ago, the climate became warmer. As a result, much of the ice sheets disappeared and the sea level rose, causing seawater to enter the many U-valleys on the coast. As a result, Preikstolen is located on a fjord