Depositional processes and glacial margins associated with the late glacial isolation and retreat of Svartisen Ice Cap, northern Norway

South of Svartisen Ice Cap, northern Norway, the relative age of ice-flow indicators shows that as the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet declined, glacial ice was diverted from a westward to southward flow direction toward Ranafjord. Eventually, an active ice cap separated from the ice sheet that extended to Ranafjord from an accumulation center over the Svartisen highlands.; A glaciomarine delta in Altermarka, a side valley of Ranafjord, formed at the margin of Svartisen at its maximum. Although the foresets dip toward the fjord, the surface slope dips gently away from the fjord. Otherwise, the stratigraphy is that of a normal delta: there is no till or missing delta sediment to suggest that the adverse slope was caused by a glacier overridding the delta. Differential slip along several thrust faults in the Altermarka area may be responsible for tilting the delta to the northeast. Alternatively, the delta may never have built up to sea level. High discharge subglacial streams could have caused the delta to form with an adverse slope.; De Geer moraines formed at the margin of Svartisen when it retreated into upper Raudvassdalen. These ridges have compositions ranging from mostly till to mostly sorted sediment. Pebble fabric, grain-size analysis, and structures within cross-sections of the ridges indicate that these ridges all formed at the grounding line of a tidewater glacier by common processes despite variability in their composition. The ridges form by the deposition of sorted sediments beyond the grounding line by sheet flow and by subglacial streams followed by deformation, shearing, and bulldozing of pre-existing sediments by an advancing glacier margin. These processes might occur in an annual cycle: sorted sediments are deposited during the summer when meltwater production is high and tills are deposited during slight readvances of the glacier margin in the winter. Despite the annual cycle, individual ridges may take several years to form, especially in ridges where multiple tills are separated by sorted sediment layers. The compositional variation of the ridges is probably related to the position of the studied cross-section relative to the location of subglacial streams which supplied the sorted sediment.