Ancylus Lake

The Ancylus Lake replaced the Yoldia Sea after the latter had been severed from its saline intake across a seaway along the Central Swedish lowland, roughly between Gothenburg and Stockholm.

The final definite Littorina Sea, had a stage with high salinity between 7,100 and 5,400 years BP when flooding through Øresund was such that there was a massive inflow of salt-water from the world ocean.

[3] The lack of an obvious outlet of the lake led to intermittent debates involving not only Munthe and De Geer but also Ernst Antevs, Arvid Högbom, Axel Gavelin, N.O.

[3] The idea that the Svea River canyon was the outlet of the Ancylus Lake gradually lost ground by the works of Sten Florin, Astrid Cleve and Curt Fredén.

[2] In 1927 Cleve who was already "an outcast of the geological community"[6] commented in an opinion piece in Svenska Dagbladet on a proposal of making Svea River a national monument.

[7] Cleve outlined her ideas for Svea River and Ancylus Lake in detail in 1930 making an alternative and intricate theory involving tectonic movements.

By 1946 she had changed mind as she then proposed an altogether different theory claiming the Svea River canyons and potholes formed by subglacial drainage and had nothing to do with the Ancylus Lake.

[2][8] The demise of Svea River led authors in the late 1970s and 1980s to revisit the idea that the fresh-water Ancylus Lake was at sea level.