Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1977, Qupperneq 167

Glacial striae, roches moutonnees and ice movements
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meters, while on Suðuroy he has observed moutonnee surfaces
at heights of up to 440 meters.
Geikie’s paper (1880) is also accompanied by a map showing
roches moutonnees and glacial striae, demonstrating that the
Faeroes have had a local glaciation. He shows that on Suðuroy
the glaciers moved eastwards and westwards, although at
Hvalbiarfjørður he has only observed roches moutonnees indi-
cating ice movement from east to west.
Grossman & Lomas (1895) mention striae, roches mouton-
nees, cirques and glacial deposits on the Faeroes. From Suður-
oy they mention striae and roches moutonnees along Trongis-
vágsfjørður. Like Geikie and Helland, they consider the Fae-
roes to have been locally glaciated, with the ice reaching a
height of about 500 m., so that the highest peaks emerged as
nunataks. They do not think that the valleys and fjords were
created by the ice, but rather that the ice modified pre-Glacial
valleys.
With respect to the extent of the ice cover beyond the
present coastline, more recent investigations and counts of
glacial erratics on the sea-bed southeast of the Faeroes have
shown that the ice covered the entire Faeroes shelf in this
area, but that the shelf ice was rather thin (Waagstein & Ras-
mussen 1975).
The following account of the ice movements on Suðuroy,
which is based on observations of striae and roches moutonnees,
forms part of a more extensive investigation into ice move-
ments on the Faeroes which is in progress under the auspices
of the Geological Survey of Denmark. Fieldwork has been
carried out by the authors and by Peter B. Konradi, whose
observations are included in this article.
The pre-Glacial geology and. major landscape features of the
Faeroes.
Geologically, the Faeroes belong to the North Atlantic or
the Brito-Arctic basalt province, and thus comprise the remains
of a basalt plateau whose formation commenced in the Lower