ABSTRACT
The last hundred years have seen European glaciers retreat from the advanced positions they had occupied in the middle or towards the end of the nineteenth century. The question arises as to whether the Little Ice Age, on which we now look back across the more genial twentieth century, was a global phenomenon. It is always tempting to seek for universals, and they are easier to promote when the data are imprecise than when they are firmly established. However, the fact that glaciers in Europe reached their most advanced positions at times which vary between the late sixteenth century and midnineteenth century in the Alps and the mid-eighteenth century in Scandinavia provides good reason to pause and take heed of the possibility that Little Ice Age synchroneity is unlikely to exist globally. On the other hand, the almost universal retreat of montane glaciers in the course of this century is sufficiently well established and dramatic to encourage an attempt to look into the whole question. No critical review of the assumptions and evidence has so far been attempted elsewhere.
