VATNA > JÖKULL

Water > Ice. Iceland’s changing giants.

In a place so profoundly influenced by glaciers and glacial change, I found it impossible to separate people and ice, it is here around the ice cap Vatnajökull, southeast Iceland, that I began to truly understand the relationship humans share with glaciers and just how interconnected we are. In Fall 2020, I travelled to Iceland and stayed in Hali, Hornafjörður, just a few kilometers from Breiðamerkurjökull. I was quickly exposed to the islands changing glaciers and to the lives of those who are centered around glaciers. Through experiencing and learning about Icelanders interaction with glaciers and perceptions of glacial change, I developed a sense of how powerful these bodies of ice were. Coupled with moments walking along the ice, the crunch of my crampons interrupted by the deep and full echos of moving ice, pulsating glacial streams, and the loud thud of ice calving off the glacier terminus and into the water, I began to understand why some Icelanders perceive glaciers as alive. The intense beauty of the ice that would stop me in my tracks, as I paused to breathe with the glacier, to feel and listen to its heartbeat, and try to comprehend what was before me. This glacier demands my respect, our fates tied together, and through that connection, it was hard not to feel its aliveness myself.

“Perhaps thinking about a glaciers aliveness is to think about living, about what living means, about how we respond to the livingness of the world around us. In many ways, thinking about glaciers is also thinking about us.”

Dr. M Jackson