Many pla­ce names on the tab­le mountains end in “kle­ven” or “kle­va”. They are all asso­ci­a­ted with steep slo­pes in the mountains.

The Sand­stensk­le­ven cleft at Häl­le­kis are made up of lay­ers of rock that were depo­si­ted on top of the bed­rock over 500 mil­li­on years ago and now form the steep sho­re­li­ne of Lake Vänern, north of Häl­le­kis camp­si­te. At this time our con­ti­nent lay at a sout­her­ly lati­tu­de of 40 degrees.

A thin lay­er of a rock known as conglo­me­ra­te, expo­sed along the sho­re line, is cove­red by thick beds of sand­sto­ne, all depo­si­ted in the shal­low waters of a sea about 540 mil­li­on years ago. The sand­sto­ne is most­ly made up of grains of quartz, i.e. an ori­gi­nal san­dy sea­bed, in which ripp­le marks reve­al that water was qui­te shal­low. In the more fine­ly grai­ned lay­ers of sand­sto­ne that con­tain clay, the­re are tra­ces of orga­nisms that lived at the bot­tom of the sea. This type of sand­sto­ne takes its name, Mickwit­zia, from one of the­se cre­a­tu­res, a type of brachiopod.

The easi­est way to reach Sand­stensk­le­ven is from the path that runs along the sho­re, north of Häl­le­kis Camping.

Hit­ta Hit