Yesterday I was on a fieldtrip to the south eastern regions of Scania (which is the most southern Province of Sweden, where I live). It took me among many things to a very small village by the ocean called Simrislund. This place is interesting geological-wise since its one of few places where Cambrian quartzite is very abundat at the surface as bedrock. Most of the bedrock is smooth and grinded flat by the last iceage. Sprinkled all over the landscape and the shoreline is oilshale since this used to cover the cambrian rock but nowdays is eroded away. Further inland the shale is still intact as bedrock. The shale is also full of fossils like brachiopods and trilobites.

One other interesting aspect of the Cambrian quartzite is the human impact on it. At Simrislund there are many rocks with carvings on it from the Scandinavian bronzeage over 3000 years ago. This makes this place both culturally and geologically worth a visit.

Today’s excursion took us to see several types of glacial soil deposits like eskers, sandurs tills, talus, tufa and moraines. I must say that the study of glacial soil formations is much more complicated than I’ve imagined. There are just so many types of formations that I’ve never heard of before studying geology. Not to mention all the types of soils and sediments and the terminology about the different particle sizes and how they behave in terms of erosion and cohesion. I took some pictures of course, however "soil" make poor lousy photo material so I mostly took shots of the landscape today - so no cool macros of minerals today.

Pictures below shows an esker (swe. "rullstensås") covered in Beech forest streching for about half a mile and 40 meters high near the small village of Torna Hällestad. It really knocked the wind out of me when climbing up to the summit since it was such a steep climb. Yes, my physical condition could obviously be much better. Its not like its a mountain…

Picture below shows the stratigraphy of a sandur-deposit. Rounded material often transported with the ice and melting water for hundreds of miles across the landscapes. 

Picture below shows a talus (frost eroded rocks - very uncommon here in the south of Sweden)

The pictures below are from the nice natural reserve in Benestad where we looked at some small deposits of Tufa (Swe "Kalktuff").

Got a new camera. Nothing fancy, a "Canon digital Ixus 950 is". But it had a nice macro-function so i took som new photos just for fun.

Picture below is a garnet crystal inside of a amfibolitic rock. Hornblende to be precise. Picked it up on an excursion.

Picture below is of a olivine crystal (or a couple of them of course) inside a basalt rock from a small dead "vulcano" in the middle of Scania. Age about 145 Ma. Picked it up on an excursion.

Picture below is of an ordinary sandstone heavily oxidized with iron found in an Jurassic-Trias-deposit of sand. Its composed of several layers of differently oxidized and dense sediments. Looks more strange than it is. 

The picture below is not totaly geological but still quite nice. A piece of iron slag from Uppåkra (Uppakra) Iron age settlement outside Lund (roughly 700 AD perhaps). Since I started my career with archaeology I also have some archaeological things in my possesions. Some of them I actually found myself on field training exercises like this slag and the piece of pottery below.

The picture below is of a piece of Iron age pottery from the same settlement/village.  

Perhaps I should share some general geological information about my part of the world.

Sweden and the Scandinavian peninsula was formed geologically from the continent of ”Baltica” which today is called the Baltic Shield or the Fennoscandian Shield. It consists of today’s Sweden, Finland, Norway, Northwestern Russia and parts of the Baltic Sea (not Denmark geologically). The Baltic Shield has a maximum age of about 3.1 Ga, but most parts of Sweden is formed on 2-1.5 Ga old granits and gneiss. In general its older to the north east than to the south west. Many parts of today’s mainland of the south east, like Skåne (Scania), the province where I live, is younger and formed of sedimentary deposits. But the Baltic shield is still below the sediments even here, some 2-3 kilometers and can be seen at some horst formations, especially along the Tornqvist zone. Scandinavia has a quite a variation of landscapes, both because of the differences in geology, but mostly due to the geographic distances. Some parts of the north have a arctic climate almost (Like Canada or Alaska). And here in the south there is a temperate climate. Probably the same as you might find around Boston or New York. The same temperate climate goes for Denmark, wich geologically consists only of sedimentary rocks and therefore technically isn’t a part of the Baltic Shield. Picture below of Baltic Shield.

The mountain range of Sweden and Norway is called the Scandinavian Mountains (“Skanderna” in swe.). It’s actually related to the Appalachian mountains since both belong to the Caledonian orogeny. Back in the days (450 Ma) they were connected before the Atlantic Ocean was formed. Picture below of Scandinavian mountains.

Picture below is Padjelanta national reserve in the north of Sweden. Typical view of the mountain landscape during summer.

Picture below is of Sarek National reserve in the north of Sweden. 

Pictures below shows parts of the Norwegian costal landscapes with their Fjords. Insanely beautiful if you ask me. Perhaps some of the most beautiful types of landscapes in the world. One could easily make an entire blog about the Norwegian fjords.

Today, in the lovely spring weather we have here in the south of Sweden, I took a small trip out to the nature reserve called Billebjer just outside my town of Lund. It’s part of the horst that is called Rommeleaasen, a horst that is part of a greater geological system called Tornqvist zone. Basically the Tornqvist zone is a lot of ancient faults stretching from the Black Sea to somewhere outside Scotland. This zone begun to form some 300 million years ago and the horsts was raised some 60 million years ago.

Most of the rocks are difficult to identify by visual means since the bedrock is covered with growth and heavily cracked and eroded. And fresh surfaces of bedrock only reveal a diffuse rusty rock. But looking at the bedrock up close revealed more typical traits of a granite. And small traces of a metamorphic process could also be seen. But I was far from sure so I had to cheat and look it up at the webpage of the Swedish geological survey. According to them it’s a Orthogneiss. But Im not completely convinced and some pages on the internet talk about a granite-gneiss. That is, a only slightly metamorfed granite. But other sources talked about an Amphibolite rock that also is common in this horst. Well, my guess is a very iron rich granite-gneiss perhaps. Its so full of this "rust" that its almost impossible to see what it is. It almost looks like a sedimentary rock at a distance. But that much I know, it isnt.

Igneous bedrocks are not the dominate bedrock in the very south of Sweden (where I live). Most of the bedrock here is sedimentary and the metamorfed or igneous rocks are hidden deep below or only revealed through horsts. The Billebjer formation is one of few spots where I can look at the bedrock in close vicinity of Lund. North of the Tornqvist zone the igneous bedrock becomes more and more common. And basically 90% av the Swedish topside bedrock is metamorfic or igneous. The province of Scania (Skåne) where I live and the island of Gotland are the exceptions and especially here in Scania you can find all sorts of bedrock. From 2 billion year old igneous rocks to tetriary sedimentary deposits.