The Norwegian Channel offshore of south and southwestern Norway, and the thick North Sea Fan beyond the shelf edge (Fig. 1d, f), are generally accepted to be mainly the result of repeated ice-stream erosion and subsequent deposition during the second half of the Quaternary (Rise & Rokoengen 1984; King et al. 1996; Nygård et al. 2002; Sejrup et al. 2003). Three-dimensional (3D) seismic imaging shows that buried lineations, probably produced about 0.5 million years ago (Sejrup et al. 1995), are preserved beneath the modern Norwegian Channel on the palaeo-shelf. The pattern of these lineations suggests a complex former ice-flow regime (Rise et al. 2004).