A Revision of The Last Ice Age in Northern Europe

This open access book brings together two decades of research on a unique late Quaternary sedimentary sequence preserved at Sokli (northeast Finland), located in the central area of Fennoscandian glaciation. The long sediment record has escaped glacial erosion due to its sheltered position in a steep depression in deeply weathered rocks of a magma intrusion called the Sokli Carbonatite Massif. The thick lacustrine and fluvial deposits, which are exceptionally rich in fossil remains, have been studied using a multitude of environmental and climatic proxies. The results from Sokli provide a revised view of the Last Ice Age (or Last Glacial) in northern Europe as earlier inferred from scattered and highly fragmented stratigraphic data. According to the earlier views, Sokli was near continuously glaciated for up to c. 105,000 years. The results from Sokli reduce the duration of the Last Glacial by c. 45,000 years (to c. 70-10 kyr ago), and even within this time interval widespread deglaciation is recorded twice (around c. 48-43 kyr ago). The newly defined Last Interglacial Complex at Sokli (c. 130-70 kyr ago) is characterized by prolonged phases with forested conditions and both summer and winter temperatures exceeding present-day values. Abrupt cooling/drying events of millennial and centennial duration interrupted the long-term climate evolution in MIS 5 and the Holocene. The research presented in this book covers a wide range of disciplines in Quaternary Sciences (e.g. paleolimnology, paleoecology, paleoclimatology, paleoglaciology, stratigraphy) and has implications for various aspects of the Earth System (e.g. ice sheet dynamics, vegetation response, climate evolution).