The Storegga tsunami
A vast submarine landslide off Norway sends a wave across the North Sea into Mesolithic Britain.
- When
- Known to
- ± 100 years
- Era
- Neolithic, Holocene
Around 6200 BCE a section of the Norwegian continental shelf some 300 kilometres long collapses, displacing enough sediment to generate a tsunami that reaches 20 metres in the Shetlands and runs far inland along the Scottish coast, where its sand layer is still traceable in peat. It struck a populated coastline. Recent work suggests parts of Doggerland survived it, but the combination of the wave and continuing sea-level rise ends the region as habitable land.