Effects of solar forcing and North Atlantic oscillation on the climate of continental Scandinavia during the Holocene

10,000-year-long varved sediment records from lakes Nautajärvi and Korttajärvi, Finland provide evidence of climate and environment oscillations at multi-decadal to millennial timescales. We used two independent methods to extract periodic features from these time series of clastic laminae and assess their statistical reliability. Analyses revealed that seasonal sediment fluxes correspond to environmental changes with statistically significant periodicities of 1500-1800, 1000, 600-800, nearly 300, nearly 200, 150-170, nearly 90 and 47 years, showing variable coherency with different climate forcing factors and other palaeoproxy records in the Northern Hemisphere. Results indicate that the Holocene winter climate in continental Scandinavia was forced by a combination of several factors, at least by solar variability and the North Atlantic ocean-atmosphere circulation-patterns, with varying influences through time.