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- Animal Life, by James A. Grieg
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ANIMAL LIFE
The fauna of Norway belongs to the so-called Palæarctic Region.
It is thus similar, in a great measure, to that of the rest of
Northern Europe, and also to the faunas of Central and Western
Europe. Nevertheless, our animal life contains more extremely
arctic elements, remains from the glacial period, when the whole
country was covered with ice, as Greenland is at the present day.
On our mountains, and in the northern districts of the country,
we find several of the animals that live in the arctic regions, the
reindeer, the mountain or arctic fox, the ptarmigan, the snow
bunting, various insects, etc.
This arctic character appears perhaps most distinctly in the
animal life that the dredger in our narrow, deep fjords brings to
light. In them live various fish and invertebrates, which we only
find in the arctic regions, or out in the great ocean depths. This
arctic fauna is most marked in the fjords; on the coast, on the
other hand, it is intermixed with more southern forms, animals
which we find on the other shores of the North Sea, on the
shores of the Atlantic, and even in the Mediterranean. The
reason why the fjords have a more arctic animal life than the coast
is that there is a sub-marine wall, or barrier, extending all along
the coast. This barrier, which is partly an enormous moraine,
lies at a depth of from 400 to 600 feet, while the depth of the
fjords may be nearly 4000 feet. The barrier thus shuts off the
fjord depths from the ocean depth without, and its continuation,
the Norwegian channel, round the south coast. These closed
basins have therefore been able to retain species of animals, whose
true home must be sought for in higher latitudes. The animals,
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