From Ice to Eye: The Mystical Formation of Norway’s Dragon’s Eye.
Norway’s Dragon’s Eye: The fantastical ‘pothole’ that emerged from ice 16,000 years ago
Norway’s “Dragon’s Eye,” a photogenic natural hollow in the rocks along the northwestern coastline, likely formed around 20,000 years ago under the enormous Fennoscandian Ice Sheet. This glacial mass covered Scandinavia, parts of Northern Europe, and northwestern Russia during the last glacial maximum. The “Dragon’s Eye” resembles a reptilian eye, with a boulder at the bottom acting as the pupil, surrounded by white sand and algae.
Francis Chantel Nixon, an associate professor of physical geography and quaternary geology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, explains that this feature, a type of glacial landform called a pothole, formed beneath the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet. Glaciation creates various geological formations, including plastic forms, or p-forms, resulting from the erosion of bedrock beneath the ice.
“P-forms are created by meltwater full of abrasive sediments,” Nixon said. These sediments, ranging from fine sand to giant boulders, are carried by high-pressure meltwater currents beneath the ice. These currents sculpt the bedrock into smooth-walled depressions, which can be straight, curving, or circular, varying in width and depth.
Potholes like Dragon’s Eye are shaped by particularly turbulent meltwater currents that concentrate abrasion and erosion in circular patterns. “When the meltwater eventually slows down or disappears, the coarse sediments settle out of suspension and become trapped inside the pothole,” Nixon said. This process likely led to the boulder sitting at the bottom of Dragon’s Eye.
Dragon’s Eye emerged from beneath the ice around 16,000 years ago during regional deglaciation. The retreat of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet exposed the bedrock and its potholes, made of gneiss, a type of metamorphic rock with colorful mineral bands that enhance the eye’s fantastical appearance.
The eye, roughly 5 feet (1.5 meters) across, changes appearance depending on the time of day and tides. At high tide, waves wash over the rocks, depositing and removing sand from the hollow, so the boulder sometimes sits on bare bedrock. The algae inside the eye also varies with the season and light.
Source: From Ice to Eye: The Mystical Formation of Norway’s Dragon’s Eye
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