Döda fallet

Döda fallet (English: the dead fall) is a former whitewater rapid in of the river Indalsälven in Ragunda Municipality in the eastern part of the province of Jämtland in Sweden. Glacial debris had blocked the course of the Indalsälven at Döda fallet for thousands of years, creating a reservoir of glacial meltwater 25 km (16 mi) long known as Ragundasjön (English: Ragunda lake), which overflowed over a natural spillway that bypassed this dam of debris, in a long high steep rapid known as Gedungsen or Storforsen (English: the great rapid). It was one of the most impressive rapids in Sweden with a total fall height of about 35 meters (115 feet) and a large water discharge.

The lake disappeared and the falls went dry in the 1796 Ragunda lake burst disaster after a flood rerouted the river through a small canal constructed to bypass the falls, carving a new channel and emptying the lake in four hours.

Original situation

The Indalsälven flows through a valley between mountains in Jämtland province of Sweden. In one place its course before the Ice Age went southwest of a high rock spur with Qvarnodden hill on its end sticking out of the valley's northeast side. In the Ice Age its course past that spur was filled with glacial and periglacial deposit with an esker on top, so high that, after the ice retreated, the river backed up into a lake, later named Ragundasjön, 25 km (16 mi) long, which overflowed further northeast, over the neck of the spur, and flowing down from the spur caused the Storforsen rapids with a total 30 meters (94.5 feet) drop full of projecting rocks and big eddy potholes, destroying or damaging floating logs; over the millennia it eroded a gully in the rock. The waterfall was usually called Gedungsen, but sometimes Storforsen or Ragundaforsen, or popularly Gedunsen, or in older documents Getamsen.