Imagine that here in the Kirkenes area we have Norway's oldest mountain! It dates back to 2900 million years old. The mountains in Lofoten are in comparison 2850 million years. We are talking about a grey, banded gneiss that belongs to the ancient rocks in Sør-Varanger and on the Kolahalvøya. Uranium-lead dating shows that the rock is 2903 million years old. It has also become known that in Pasvik, 50 km south of Snowhotel, a gneiss that is as much as 3,690 million years old may have been detected. Age dating has been carried out by the Finnish Geological Survey.
The ice age covered Kirkenes and Sør-Varanger with a 2 km thick layer of ice. When the ice began to melt, it ground the mountains into round mounds. Around 10,000 years ago, the first coastal strip appeared out in Bøkfjorden.
As it melted and tumbled into the sea – as we can now see when the Greenland ice sheet calves – it left behind polished rocks. These are the ones you are now sitting on!