How are the fjords formed? Why do they constitute some of the most picturesque areas of the world?

How fjords are formed

• During cold phases of the Pleistocene, thick valley glaciers flowed to the coast in high-latitude mountains such as Norway, Greenland, Alaska, Chile, and South Island, New Zealand.
• Ice plucked and abraded the valley floor and walls, turning a river V-shape into a deep U-shaped trough with a hanging tributary network.
• The glacier often overdeepened the trough so the rock basin sat below later sea level, with a shallower rock threshold or moraine near the mouth.
• When the ice melted, global sea level rose, and the sea drowned the trough to form a narrow inlet with very deep water inland of that threshold.
• Rivers and waterfalls now enter from hanging valleys, while the inner basin stays calm compared with the open ocean.

Why they look picturesque

• Steep rock walls rise almost from the water, so the eye sees a sharp contrast of cliff, forest or snow, and a still, branching channel.
• Waterfalls, hanging valleys, and narrow sky give a vertical landscape that ordinary coastal plains do not have.
• Clear water, reflections, and changing light on ice, rock, and village wooden houses make scenes that painters and travellers record.
• Relative isolation of farms and fishing hamlets on tiny benches of land adds human scale against huge walls.
• In polar and sub-polar belts the same inlets also show glaciers, icebergs, or the aurora, which adds movement and colour to the drowned trough.

Limits of the picture

• Not every drowned coast is a fjord; rias are drowned river valleys without the glacial overdeepening and U-profile.
• Tourism and cruise traffic can crowd the same views that isolation once protected.