system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why are these huge archipelagos and splotchy lakes mostly found near the poles, and not near the equator?

For example, the islands to the north of Canada, Greenland, Norway, and south-western Chile. (and bonus question: why only on the south west of Chile, and not the south east of Argentina?)

Some parts of these archipelagos look like river delta's. Did they use to be river deltas? Does it have something to do with the ice ages?

And for the lakes, I mean basically all of Finland and Canada. Are these related to the islands somehow?

What is the geological process that's at play here? And also, what happened in the places where we don't see these formations?
gpt
This type of landscape - large plains with soft elevation changes and lots of lakes - are the result of glaciers moving over the land during the last ice age(s). Thousands of years of ice scraping across the earth created these formations, which often include large boulders sitting somewhere randomly, where a glacier dragged them.  
Thus you get that sort of landscape closer to the poles.