Fell

Types

Fells can be divided into various types based on various arbitrary parameters. In Swedish, fells are commonly divided into high, low and fore fell based on elevation properties.

High fell

High fell (Swedish: högfjäll) denotes fell above the snow line (at least 1,200 m (3,900 ft) above sea level). Such areas usually feature significant elevation differences, sharp peaks, glaciers, snow, and bare mountain devoid of vegetation due to moraine not having been deposited there by the ice sheet. These areas are usually crossed by U-shaped valleys.

High fell is covered with snow for most of the year and may even receive snowfall during the summer, which, if there is a lot of snowfall, sometimes leads to the snow not having time to melt during the summer, which over time forms glaciers due to the constant build up of snow. These glaciers may be 30 meters thick and consist of compressed ice. While not always covered in glaciers, high fell is characterized by such, and glaciers have a major impact on how the shape of the high mountains changes over time.

The term is recorded as early as the 15th century (1460-1480), as Old Swedish høghfiæl, denoted as "high mountain or fell" (Latin: alpis vel alpes).

Low fell

Low fell (Swedish: lågfjäll) denotes fell below the snow line (<1,200 m (3,900 ft) above sea level) but above the tree line. It is the most common type of fell and may cover very extensive areas, often made up of undulating mountain plains. These are sometimes devoid of vegetation due to moraine not having been deposited there by the ice sheet.

Low fell rarely have glaciers, however, they may occur under certain conditions.

Fore fell

Fore fell (Swedish: förfjäll) denotes the corresponding nature below and in the fell tree line. Fore fell areas are characterized by large flat areas and numerous and large bogs. The flat bedrock surfaces, which often dominate these areas, prevent rapid water runoff and provide conditions for a high groundwater level and extensive bog formation.

Intrinsically, fell should be above the tree line to be considered fell, which is not the case for fore fell, however, such is still usually included by extension due to their direct affiliation and many similarities to proper fell, both in terms of character and terrain. Fore fell is such that has previously been above the tree line, and thus bare fell proper; however, since the tree line has increased in elevation over time, such have become vegetated, while still being reminiscent of fell.

Generally, fore fell do not surpass 1,000 m (3,300 ft) above the sea level. As a geomorphic unit, fore fell extends across Sweden as a 650 km (400 mi)-long and 40–80 km (25–50 mi)-broad belt from Dalarna in the south to Norrbotten in the north.

British Isles

In northern England, especially in the Lake District and in the Pennine Dales, the word "fell" originally referred to an area of uncultivated high ground used as common grazing usually on common land and above the timberline. Today, generally, "fell" refers to the mountains and hills of the Lake District and the Pennine Dales.

Names that originally referred to grazing areas have been applied to these hilltops. This is the case with Seathwaite Fell, for example, which would be the common grazing land used by the farmers of Seathwaite. The fellgate marks the road from a settlement onto the fell (see photograph for example), as is the case with the Seathwaite Fell. In other cases the reverse is true; for instance, the name of Wetherlam, in the Coniston Fells, though understood to refer to the mountain as a whole, strictly speaking refers to the summit; the slopes have names such as Tilberthwaite High Fell, Low Fell and Above Beck Fells.

The word "fell" is also used in the names of various breeds of livestock, bred for life on the uplands, such as Rough Fell sheep, Fell terriers and Fell ponies.

Place names

Fell is also found in many place names across the north of England, often attached to the name of a community; thus the township of Cartmel Fell. In northern England, there is a Lord of the Fells – this ancient aristocratic title being associated with the Lords of Bowland.

Groups of cairns are a common feature on many fells, often marking the summit – there are fine examples on Wild Boar Fell in Mallerstang Dale, Cumbria, and on Nine Standards Rigg just outside Kirkby Stephen, Cumbria.

There are examples of fells named "Beacon Fell": Beacon Fell, Lancashire and Beacon Fell, Cumbria.

Activities

As the most mountainous region of England, the Lake District is the area most closely associated with the sport of fell running, which takes its name from the fells of the district. Fellwalking is also the term used locally for the activity known in the rest of Great Britain as hillwalking.

Scotland

The word "fell" also enjoys limited use in Scotland; with, for example, the Campsie Fells in central Scotland, to the north-east of Glasgow. One of the most famous examples of the use of the word "fell" in Scotland is Goat Fell, the highest point on the Isle of Arran. Criffel and the nearby Long Fell in Galloway may be seen from the northern Lake District of England. Peel Fell in the Kielder Forest is on the border between the Scottish Borders to the north and the English county of Northumberland to the south.

Fennoscandia

Finland

In Finnish, the fells are called tunturi (plural: tunturit). A tunturi is a hill high enough that its top is above the tree line and has alpine tundra. In Finnish, the geographical term vuori is used for mountains recently uplifted and with jagged terrain featuring permanent glaciers, while tunturi refers to the old, highly eroded, gently shaped terrain without glaciers, as found in Finland. They are round inselbergs rising from the otherwise flat surroundings. The tree line can be at a rather low altitude, such as 600 m in Enontekiö, owing to the high latitude. The fells in Finnish Lapland form vestiges of the Karelides mountains, formed two billion years ago. The term tunturi is also generally used to refer to treeless plains at high altitudes in far north regions.

The term tunturi, originally a word limited to far-Northern dialects of Finnish and Karelian, is a loan from Sami, compare Proto-Sami *tuontër, South Sami doedtere, Northern Sami duottar, Inari Sami tuodâr "uplands, mountains, tundra", Kildin Sami tūndâr, which means "uplands, treeless mountain tract" and is cognate with Finnish tanner ("hard ground"). From this Sami word, the word "tundra" is borrowed, as well, through the Russian language.

Hills that are over 50 m high, but do not reach the tree line are referred to as vaara, while the general term for hills including hills of 50 m or less is mäki.

In place names, however, tunturi, vaara and vuori are used inconsistently, for example: Rukatunturi is technically a vaara, as it lacks alpine tundra.

Norway

In Norway, fjell, in common usage, is generally interpreted as simply a summit or area of greater altitude than a hill, which leads to a great deal of local variation in what is defined as a fjell. Fjell is mostly used about areas above the forest line. Distinct summits can be referred to as et fjell (a mountain). High plateaus (vidde landscape) such as Hardangervidda are also regarded as fjell. Professor of geography at the University of Bergen, Anders Lundeberg, has summed up the problem by stating, "There simply is no fixed and unambiguous definition of fjell."

Ivar Aasen defined fjell as a "tall berg", primarily referring to a berg that reaches an altitude where trees do not grow, lower berg are referred to as "berg", ås (hill, ridge) or hei (moor, heathland). The fixed expression til fjells refers to mountains (or uplands) as a collective rather than a specific location or specific summit (the "s" in til fjells is an old genitive form remaining only in fixed expressions). According to Ivar Aasen, berg refers to cliffs, bedrock and notable elevations of the surface underpinned by bedrock; berg also refers to the substance of bedrock.

For all practical purposes, fjell can be translated as "mountain" and the Norwegian language has no other commonly used word for mountain.

Sweden

In Sweden, fjäll generally refers to any mountain or upland high enough that forest will not naturally survive at the top, in effect a mountain tundra. Fjäll is primarily used to describe mountains in the Nordic countries, but also more generally to describe mountains shaped by massive ice sheets, primarily in Arctic and subarctic regions. There are however dialectal differences in usage, with comparatively low mountains or plateaus, sometimes tree-covered, in Bohuslän and Västergötland (e.g. Safjällets naturreservat and Kynnefjäll) being referred to as "fjäll", similar to how the word is used in Norwegian

The Swedish Academy gave the following definition in 1924:

"Fell – mountain (or mountain range) of such height that it exceeds the tree line; sometimes especially of a mountain that reaches above the snow line (high fell) as opposed to those that do not reach there (low fell); compare alp, highland; in some areas (especially in Bohuslän and Dalsland) also of lower mountains (of a comparatively bare or wild and desolate nature); in the definite plural especially of the North Scandinavian mountains, formerly sometimes approaching the sense of a proper name, synonymous with the Scandinavian Mountains

Despite the 1924 source's claim that the definite plural form, fjällen, "formerly" approached being a proper name for the North Scandinavian mountains, the term has lived on as an informal proper name for the Scandinavian Mountains, now also being used in a singular collective sense: de svenska fjällen: "the Swedish fells", vs den svenska fjällen, "the Swedish fell collectively". The term is often used in conjunction with going on holiday to ski resorts in Fennoscandia, as is given by the Swedish 1998 music hit Vi drar till fjällen ("We're headin' to fjällen).

A related term is vål, which roughly mean "highland", found in placenames such as Fjätervålen, Vålådalen, etc.