Fjord is a Scandinavian word describing the long creeks that are dominant along nearly all Norwegian coasts and, generally, in all polar areas, like Canada, Groenland, Alaska (U.S.A.) and, in the opposite side of the world, along the coasts of Southern Chili and Anctartic Peninsula,
The section of these creeks has an "U" shape and they are the continuation into the sea of the valleys coming down from the nearer mountains.

The origin of fjords is due to the powerful excavation of enormous glaciers during the various glaciations occurred during the last million of years, covering with thick ice caps just the regions listed above.
Those glaciers tended to slowly slide downwards, from the mountains of the inland, so carving and deepening the already existing valleys, often much below the sea level.
So, after many thousands of years, when the glaciations finished, the ice has withdrawn letting these wide and deep glacial valleys, partially invaded by the sea to form fjords.

In some cases, fjords have been filled up by the sediments of rivers forming valleys or even wide planes downwards the mountains among which there were fjords and the deepest fjords has become lakes.
It's just what happened in the Northern Italy, where, after the end of the first glaciations, that covered the whole Alps, the first fjords and the big gulf once existing between the Alps and the Appennins was filled by rivers sediments and by morenic materials (directly carried down by glaciers), forming the Padus Plane from Turin to Venice and the beautiful lakes of Garda, Como, Maggiore, Iseo, etc.

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