ESA ENVISAT: Beautiful Norway from space

This Envisat image features a snow-flanked western Norway, located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in northern Europe.

Norway, Europe's northernmost country, is famed for its fjords – long narrow arms of the sea that commonly extend far inland.

Some of these are visible at the left edge of the land as dark lines between the white and snow-covered land.

During the ice age both ice and rivers carved deep valleys in the mountains.

As the climate changed, most of the ice melted, and the valleys were gradually filled with salt water from the coast, giving birth to the fjords.

Many fjords are astoundingly deep, reaching hundreds to thousands of metres below sea level.

The Sognefjord (image centre) is Norway's longest and deepest fjord, stretching 205 km inland and reaching a maximum depth of 1308 m below sea level.

The average width of the main branch of the fjord is about four-and-a-half km. The only fjord larger than Sognefjord in the world is the Scoresby Sund in Greenland.

South of Sognefjord is the Hardangerfjord, Norway’s second largest and the world’s third largest. It is about 179 km long and has a maximum depth of more than 800 m.

Not all of the ice melted when the climate began to change, so parts of the mountain areas remained covered with ice, creating glaciers. Glaciers cover more than 2600 sq km of Norway’s land area.

The largest glacier in Northern Europe, the Jostedalsbreen, is situated north of the Sognefjord’s inland branches.

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