During the Lateglacial and early Holocene, abrupt, millennial-scale climatic variations are recorded in a wide range of high-resolution proxy records from marine and terrestrial archives in NW Europe. Our review of the evidence for these rapid climate events do not show an apparent link to possible forcing factors such as long-term, orbitally induced variations in solar radiation, short-term variations in solar activity as inferred from ¹⁴C, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, or volcanic sulphate as recorded in the GISP2 ice-core record. There is, however, a remarkable degree of similarity with the number, duration and timing of episodes of increased flux of fresh water to the north Atlantic and Arctic Oceans from the Laurentide ice sheet and from the Baltic ice lake in SW Sweden. These freshwater outburst events occurred when continental runoff from the Laurentide ice sheet was rerouted from the Mississippi River to the Hudson River, St Lawrence River, Hudson Strait and along the Mackenzie River to the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, and when the Baltic ice lake in SW Sweden drained to Skagerrak. Periods of increased freshwater flow to the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans may thus provide a mechanism to explain the abrupt and significant Lateglacial and early Holocene climate events in NW Europe. The idea that freshwater outbursts might drive abrupt climate events is not new, but previous work may have underestimated the extent of support from proxy data and overestimated the influence of the Laurentide ice sheet.