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MORAINE RIDGES

The Rindarne moraine is visible from the right stretch of road in Eikedalen, toward Kvamskogen. Northeast of Lake Eikedalstvatnet it shows itself as a forested ridge, from the skyline and down over the valley side.

If you follow the path along Dalagjelet, north of Måvotsvatnet, you will see that the forested ridge continues further, just north of the top of Skeisheia, at roughly 800 metres altitude. The system of moraines taken together is over a kilometre long, with many small arc-shaped ridges that dam up the marshes in the highland.

The moraine ridges were deposited by a glacier that came down from Skeiskvanndalen valley from the north. The glacier front reached all the way down to Lake Eikedalsvatnet, and the highway crosses the moraine ridge at Teigen Farm, just west of the tunnel. Here, there are also traces of meltwater rivers between the ridge and the mountainside. On the west side, on the slope from Eikedalen ski centre and down toward the dismantled ski lift by the highway, the glacier has shoved up large moraine deposits.

The moraine ridges show that there was "life" in the glaciers long after the end of the Younger Dryas cold period, which marked the end of the last Ice Age. The glacial advances by alpine glaciers after the Younger Dryas, and which resulted in the Rindarne moraine, can be caused by cold summers with little snowmelt, or, more likely, by winters with a lot of snow. The age of these ridges is about 10 800 years.

  • Map of The Rindarne moraine

Map of The Rindarne moraine (Kart: Martin Hamborg/Eva Bjørseth).

  • Hamborg, J. 1983. Strandlinjer og isavsmelting i midtre Hardanger,Vest-Norge. Norges Geologiske Undersøkelse 387:39–77.