feet above the ocean, as at Uddevalla, Orust, and Lake
Rogvarpen, the present rate of rise seems less than four feet in a
century. Even at that rate it would have required five thousand years to
lift up those deposits. But as the movement is now very different in
different places, it may also have varied much in intensity at different
eras.

We have, moreover, yet to learn not only whether the motion proceeds
always at the same rate, but also whether it has been uniformly _in one
direction_. The level of the land may oscillate; and for centuries there
may be a depression, and afterwards a re-elevation, of the same
district. Some phenomena in the neighborhood of Stockholm appear to me
only explicable on the supposition of the alternate rising and sinking
of the ground since the country was inhabited by man. In digging a
canal, in 1819, at Sodertelje, about sixteen miles to the south of
Stockholm, to unite Lake Maeler with the Baltic, marine strata,
containing fossil shells of Baltic species, were passed through. At a
depth of about sixty feet, they came down upon what seems to have been a
buried fishing-hut, constructed of wood in a state of decomposition,
which soon crumbled away on exposure to the air. The lowest part,
however, which had stood on a level with the sea, was in a more perfect
state of preservation. On the floor of this hut was a rude fireplace,
consisting of a ring of stones, and within this were cinders and charred
wood. On the outside lay boughs of the fir, cut as with an axe, with the
leaves or needles still attached. It seems very difficult to explain the
position of this buried hut, without imagining, as in the case of the
temple of Serapis (see p. 486), first a subsidence to the depth of more
than sixty feet, then a re-elevation. During the period of submergence,
the hut must have become covered over with gravel and shelly marl, under
which not only the hut, but several vessels also were found, of a very
antique form, and having their timbers fastened together by wooden pegs
instead of nails.[738]

Whether any of the land in Norway is now rising, must be determined by
future investigations. Marine fossil shells, of recent species, have
been collected from inland places near Drontheim; but Mr. Everest, in
his "Travels through Norway," informs us that the small island of
Munkholm, which is an insulated rock in the harbor of Drontheim, affords
conclusive evidence of the land having in that region rema