Scandinavian Mountains

The Scandinavian Mountains, also called the Scandes, form a roughly 1,700 kilometer long range across the Scandinavian Peninsula, spanning Norway, Sweden and Finland and reaching their highest point at Galdhopiggen in Norway, 2,469 meters. Their western flank drops steeply into the North Sea and Norwegian Sea, carving Norway's fjords, while the range trends gradually northeast toward Finland and marks much of the Norway-Sweden border before reaching the North Cape. Most of the range's rock dates to the Caledonian orogeny of about 390 million years ago, but geologists describe the mountains themselves as an elevated, passive continental margin rather than a classic collision-built range, since their modern relief rose later, through Cenozoic uplift episodes including a Paleogene phase in the north and a Neogene phase in southern Norway whose exact mechanism, whether lithospheric folding, erosion driven isostasy, mantle upwelling or the Iceland hotspot, remains debated among geologists.