After having oompleted the investigations on the Late-Pleistocene development of the coastal distrkts of West Norway, I intended to take up for similar studies the Hardangervidda plateau in Sentral Norway, a part of mountain massif forming the "back-bone" of the Scandinavian peninsula. For military reasons, however, access to the greatest part of Hardangervidda has been forbidden for some years, and the realization of my plans consequently had to be postponed.
In order to gain some experience with regard to sub-alpine material I colleded a series of peat samples from a small bog near the Haugastøl railway station, 988 m alt. The railway here runs through Ustedalen, the topmost part of Hallingdal, along the extreme northern edge of the Hardangervidda plateau.
The bog is situated on the small peninsula between the railway station and the northernmost cove of the Jakte, Sløtfjorden (982 m alt.), in what looks like a kettle-hole in the level ground-moraine. The peninsula is covered with a Betula nana scrub. On the lower parts of the hillsides round the lake there is a belt of mountain birch forest - presumalbly B. tortuosa hybrids. The flora is the usual one of our sub-alpine hill-sides on relatively favorable soil; a short description of it has been given by Dahl ( 1908, p. 23).