Why the West Troms Complex? 

What makes the complex exceptional? The West Troms Complex of northern Norway preserves extensive exposures of Archaean TTGs and metabasalts along the North Atlantic coast. Long-term uplift, repeated glacial erosion and continuous wave action have created outstanding three-dimensional exposures of the Archaean basement. These exceptional outcrops allow geological relationships to be traced over long distances and across large areas, providing an outstanding natural laboratory for studying the architecture and field relationships of the Archaean continental crust. 

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Why does this matter scientifically? Extensive coastal exposures provide an exceptional foundation for integrating structural geology, petrology, geochemistry and geochronology. Together, these complementary datasets make it possible to reconstruct the crust-forming processes through which partial melting of basalt generated the TTG magmas that built Earth's earliest continental crust.