Jutulhogget is a long dry
canyon
A canyon (from ; archaic British English spelling: ''cañon''), or gorge, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosion, erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tenden ...
in the municipalities of
Alvdal and
Rendalen in
Innlandet
Innlandet is a county in Norway. It was created on 1 January 2020 with the merger of the old counties of Oppland and Hedmark (the municipalities of Jevnaker and Lunner were transferred to the neighboring county of Viken on the same date). The ...
county,
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...
. The canyon was created by the rupture of the dam of a
proglacial lake and the force of the rushing water leaving the lake carved out the canyon. The canyon was protected as a nature reserve in 1959. The steep walls of the canyon range from in height.
The canyon was formed at the end of the
last Ice Age, around years ago. The proglasial lake
Nedre Glomsjø was dammed up by glaciers stopping the water from running southward. As the amount of meltwater rose, it eventually broke through its earthen boundaries and formed a new outlet heading eastward through a weakness zone in the bedrock. The lake drained through to the
Rendalen valley, at an estimated . The pressure of the water quickly dug through the rock, and the rock and formed the canyons in a matter of days. To the early settles downstream, this would have been a cataclysmic and sudden event.
References
External links
aukrust.no rena.no
Canyons and gorges of Norway
Landforms of Innlandet
Geology of Norway
Alvdal
Rendalen
First 100 IUGS Geological Heritage Sites
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