Fjords for Suggestible Dummies

Hurtigruten Fjord, Norway

About the same time that their flagship website began attracting attention as a source of misinformation, the owners of eHow.com began demanding¹ that their "contributors" (as the freelancers were called) list references for the information they claimed to be passing along. Sadly, the competition did not; if they had, we might learn the source of some of the misconceptions that fill sites like WiseGEEK.com. You know, misconceptions such as those Mary McMahon included in her article, "What Is a Fjord?" (now at niche site AllThingNature.com).

We will grant that McMahon (known at the time of writing as S. E. Smith)  managed to transcribe most of the information legibly, perhaps lifting it from an encyclopedia entry somewhere. We have a few quibbles, however, and thought we'd point them out. They are as follows:

"A fjord is caused by flooding of a glacial valley with sea water, and typically occurs on Western shores with highly durable rock which resists erosion by other forces..." 

We have no idea why McMahon / Smith was so enamored of the notion that fjords occur on western shores (she repeated this later). Her evidence appears to be that there are fjords on the western sides of Norway, Sweden, and Chile. Well, Mary, that's just accidental, and not actually true: ever heard of Loch Ness in Scotland? It feeds an east-facing fjord, Moray Firth... We also have no idea why "highly durable rock" wouldn't resist "erosion by other forces." You?

"... glaciers during the ice age... carved out typical u-shaped valleys in the Earth with their movements and sheer weight, pushing detritus to the mouth, where it would connect the ocean [sic], if it was not filled with ice."

Sadly, McMahon didn't seem to be aware that most glacial valleys of this sort formed in preexisting river valleys. Oh, and glaciers "keep going" when they reach the sea... that's where icebergs come from.

"A fjord tends to be deepest in the middle and the back of the valley, because this is where the glacier existed for the longest period of time..."

No, the deepest point in the valley is where the head of the glacier sat, in what would be a cirque in an alpine glacier.

"...most fjords are actually inlets of the ocean, and do not connect with rivers or streams, although they are quite long, and may stretch for miles into the interior of the land." 

Wait, what? of course there are rivers and streams that enter fjords!
Perhaps McMahon's greatest error, however, is her apparent ignorance of the reason that the fjords in Norway (and Chile) are so dramatic is something called isostatic rebound. The enormous mass of the continental glaciers that created the fjords went away when the ice melted, and the release of that mass caused the crust to rebound – in other words, rise out of the sea.

Too bad our Dumbass of the Day didn't find that in her reference, whatever it was (probably Norwegian travel brochures). She is, however, picking up her ninth award...

¹ That's a bit of an inside joke, since the owner of eHow.com was "Demand Media"...

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