Fjord

A fjord (pronounced FEE-ord or fyord, SAMPA: ['fi:3:d] or ['faI3:d]; sometimes written fiord) is a glacially overdeepened valley, usually narrow and steep-sided, extending below sea level and filled with salt water.

Fjords are found in locations where current or past glaciation extended to sea level. A fjord is formed when a glacier (carving its typical U-shaped valley) meets the sea and melts. This leaves a narrow, steep sided valley into which the sea floods. The flood creates a narrow, deep lake (sometimes as deep as 1300m) connected to the sea. The terminal moraine pushed down the valley by the glacier is left underwater at the fjord's entrance, causing the water at the neck of the fjord to be shallower than the main body of the fjord behind it.

This shallow threshold and the protection afforded by the valley's sides generally means that fjords are excellent natural harbours. Consequently fjords often provide the home-port to fishing fleets, and in industrialised locations have come to be used for fish farming and ship building.

The word fjord comes from the Scandinavian languages, and is cognate to firth. In Scandinavia, fjord is used for narrow inlets in Norway, Denmark and western Sweden, whereas the name Fjärd is used in a synonymous manner for narrow inlets on Sweden's Baltic Sea coast, and in most Swedish lakes. This latter term is also used for bodies of water off the coast of Finland where Swedish is spoken. Note that the uses for the words fjord and especially for the eastern form fjärd are more general in the Scandinavian languages, than in English. Fjord in the English sense is taken from a type of fjords found in Norway and in parts of Sweden.

Fjords are found all along the coast of Norway, in the southwest corner of New Zealand (see Fiordland), and on the south and west coasts of Alaska. The west coast of Scotland also features fjords (called "sea lochs"), and the long fjord-like bays of the New England coast are sometimes referred to as "fiards". The largest fjord in the world is Sognefjorden in Norway.