Fjords are found on every continent except Africa and Australia, concentrated along coastlines that were heavily glaciated during past ice ages. The most famous stretch runs along western Norway, which alone has roughly 1,190 fjords. But significant fjord systems also cut into the coastlines of Canada, Alaska, Chile, New Zealand, Greenland, Iceland, Scotland, and Antarctica.
How Fjords Form
A fjord starts as a valley carved by a glacier. As the glacier moves toward the sea, it gouges rock through two main processes: plucking, where the ice lifts chunks of rock from the ground, and abrasion, where that captured debris scrapes the valley floor and walls like sandpaper. Rivers cut narrow, V-shaped valleys. Glaciers reshape them into wide, steep-walled, U-shaped valleys that can reach extraordinary depths.
When the ice age ends and glaciers retreat, seawater floods these valleys. The result is a long, narrow inlet flanked by steep cliffs, often deeper than the open ocean it connects to. There’s one more step that isn’t obvious: as the immense weight of ice disappears, the land slowly rises back up, a process called postglacial rebound. This rising land, combined with meltwater and seawater filling the carved valleys, is what gave most Scandinavian fjords their final shape thousands of years ago.
Norway: The World’s Fjord Capital
Norway’s western coast is the global epicenter. About 1,190 fjords indent the Norwegian coastline and the Svalbard archipelago to the north. The terrain here was ideal: steep coastal mountains met massive glaciers that repeatedly advanced and retreated over millions of years, carving deeper with each cycle.
The largest of them all is Sognefjord, nicknamed the King of the Fjords. It stretches 205 kilometers (127 miles) inland from the ocean to the village of Skjolden, making it the longest fjord in Norway and one of the longest in the world. Sognefjord is also Norway’s deepest. The surrounding landscape is classic fjord country: sheer rock walls rising from dark water, waterfalls cascading from high plateaus, and small villages tucked into the few flat areas along the shore.
North America’s Fjord Regions
The west coast of North America holds a nearly continuous band of fjords stretching from Puget Sound in Washington State all the way up through British Columbia and into Alaska. British Columbia’s coast is especially rugged, with hundreds of deep inlets cutting into the mountains. Alaska takes it further: Kenai Fjords National Park, on the Kenai Peninsula, preserves a landscape where nearly 40 glaciers still flow from the Harding Icefield into fjords carved during earlier glacial periods. It’s one of the few places where you can watch the same forces that built fjords still actively at work.
Canada’s eastern coast has its own fjord systems, particularly in Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, and the Arctic territory of Nunavut. These tend to get less attention than their Scandinavian or Alaskan counterparts, but some are massive. The Canadian Arctic islands contain polar fjords that remain ice-choked for much of the year.
Southern Hemisphere Fjords
Chile’s Patagonian coast rivals Norway for sheer scale. The western and southwestern coastline is a maze of fjords, channels, and islands stretching from roughly Puerto Montt down to Tierra del Fuego. Glacier Alley, a stretch of the Beagle Channel, is flanked by five named glaciers: Holanda, Italia, Francia, Alemania, and Romanche. Garibaldi Fjord, further south, puts visitors within arm’s reach of hanging glaciers and waterfalls. Much of this region sits within Bernardo O’Higgins National Park and is accessible only by ship.
New Zealand’s fjords cluster along the southwest coast of the South Island, in a region called Fiordland. Milford Sound is the most visited, though it’s technically a fjord despite its name. The area was carved by glaciers descending from the Southern Alps and filled with seawater as the ice retreated. Fiordland receives extreme rainfall, sometimes over 7 meters a year, which creates a layer of fresh, tannin-stained water sitting on top of the saltwater in each fjord. This unusual layering supports marine life typically found at much greater ocean depths.
Greenland and Antarctica round out the Southern and polar picture. Greenland’s fjords span from about 70°N to 82°N along its northeastern and northern coasts, with some of the most actively glaciated fjord systems on Earth. Antarctica’s fjord-like features exist along the Antarctic Peninsula and in subpolar zones, though many remain buried under ice or are only seasonally accessible.
Less Obvious Fjord Locations
Several places have fjords that surprise people. Scotland has sea lochs along its western coast that are geologically identical to fjords, carved by the same glacial processes during past ice ages. The Faroe Islands, a Danish territory in the North Atlantic, have small but dramatic fjord systems. Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula and the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic both contain fjords, as do Tasmania and the remote Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean. Even South Georgia Island, a speck of land in the South Atlantic best known for its penguin colonies, has glacially carved fjords.
What Makes Fjord Ecosystems Distinctive
Fjords aren’t just dramatic scenery. Their underwater geography creates unusual habitats. Because glaciers carved the valleys deeper than the surrounding sea floor, many fjords have a shallow ridge (called a sill) at their mouth where the glacier’s erosive power tapered off. This sill partially traps deep water inside the fjord, creating isolated pockets with their own temperature and oxygen conditions.
In Norwegian fjords like Hardangerfjord, these sills and the steep vertical walls support thriving cold-water coral reefs. The reef-building coral grows on both the sills and the walls, but the vertical walls host higher overall biomass of associated species, including sponges and deep-water bivalves. Wall reefs in Hardangerfjord showed 1.5 to nearly 5 times higher biological activity than sill reefs for most species studied. These cold-water coral ecosystems are among the most productive in Norway, functioning as underwater oases in the cold, dark depths of the fjords.
The combination of sheltered water, extreme depth, nutrient mixing from freshwater runoff, and unique geological structure makes fjords biodiversity hotspots in regions that might otherwise seem inhospitable. From Patagonia to the Arctic, fjords support marine mammals, seabird colonies, fish nurseries, and in some cases, species found nowhere else.