The Waning of the Last Continental Glacier in Denmark as Illustrated by Varved Clay and Eskers

A study of the circumstances under which eskers and varved clay in southeastern Zealand, Denmark, were built has revealed that the ice remained as a stagnant body for many years before it finally melted away. Moraines, earlier regarded as deposits of the ice border, were deposited underneath the ice along a line of demarcation between the moving ice and a broad stagnant ice-border zone. This line was found in places probably more than 50 miles inside the true ice border. Four chains of eskers have been studied, and it has been shown that they are composed of similar successions of different links and that the corresponding links in each of the four chains were deposited contemporaneously just outside or partly inside the said line. The chains are composed of a series of bows, each deposited during a single year. This has led to a determination of the inward migration of the line during ten succeeding years, and has resulted in an exact relative dating of the deposits and the events during the late Pleistocene development of that region.