ABSTRACT
Good documentary data can provide the most exact information about the timing of glacial fluctuations during the Little Ice Age period, but by no means all documentary data are reliable. In the absence of satisfactory archival material, glacial fluctuations can be dated approximately if the ages of the associated moraines can be determined. Glaciers and ice caps in northern Norway and Sweden are generally remote and far from farming settlements, and consequently very few records are to be found relating to their positions at times earlier than the late 19th century. Little Ice Age history must be pieced together almost entirely from field evidence of one sort or another. Lichenometric dating is insufficiently precise to differentiate between the time of recession and the previous period of glacial expansion, except over periods covered by lichen growth curves so well based that narrow error limits have been obtained.
