Cameo engravings from photographs of brash ice, an accumulation of floating ice made up of fragments not more than 2 m across, taken from aboard S/V Antigua in Spitsbergen, Oct 2022.
A multimodal collaboration between artists, writers, and scholars. This piece emerged from an expedition to the Arctic archipelago as part of the Arctic Circle Residency in Autumn 2022.
Cameo engravings from photographs of brash ice, an accumulation of floating ice made up of fragments not more than 2 m across, taken from aboard S/V Antigua in Spitsbergen, Oct 2022.
The loss of ice and snow from a glacier system as seen from 2022 Landsat data.
The author declares they have no competing interests.
October 14, 2022, 4:15pm, –5° C, clear, calm, cold, day length: 6:52:51
Afternoon landing, shallow bay, low tide, ice cave back lit at terminus
Observed locks of reindeer fur, feathers, whale jawbone, sand tornados.
October 13, 2022, 8:52am, –2° C, some snow, partly cloudy, day length: 7:11:06
Antigua enveloped by mountains bathed in late afternoon luminous glow
Wake of snow skipping across water surface, carried by brisk wind current.
October 5, 2022, 6:36pm, 4° C, sunny, clear, day length: 9:24:27
Anchor up, Northernmost point of voyage sailing toward southern tip
Dark waters conceal softball size, lions mane jellyfish, whale sighting.
October 10, 2022, 3:16pm, 0° C, windy, overcast, day length: 8:03:18
Tidewater, surge type glacier, rapid retreat, over 2 miles within the past 50 years
Curious kittiwakes circling overhead, bearded seal sighted, Nansen’s birthday.
October 13, 2022, 4:02pm, –2° C, sunny, steady wind, day length: 7:11:06
Beach landing, ringed with colorful seaweed, kelp, algae, short walk over hillocks
Unique ice structures, resounding glass shattering when broken, moon visible
October 3, 2022, 8:53am, 3° C, low cloud base, day length: 9:55:35
Anchored next to Dahlbreen glacier, ringed seal sighted, polar bear spotted
Sea haze obscures pinnacles, nearby glacier calving echoes thunderously off cliffs.
October 5, 2022, 11:08am, 4° C, sunny, clear, day length: 9:24:27
Morning landing, small bay, oldest rocks in the known world, 411 million years and older
7 islands of Sjuøyane viewable at sunrise, visible ice: frazil, grease, bubbles, frozen foam.
Tiny air bubbles formed at many atmospheres of pressure are compressed deep within glacier ice. As the glacier melts, these ancient air pockets are released. The air trapped being released from these specific glaciers dates from the end of the Late Pleistocene (12,000 yrs. before present) to the end of the Little Ice Age (c.1920 AD).
©2023, Felicia LeRoy. All Rights Reserved
The author declares they have no competing interests.
NOTE: Multispectral exposures are made with photographic equipment that is sensitive to both visual and infrared spectrums, creating vivid and otherworldly color combinations in camera using various archaic filters in front of the lens.
The author declares they have no competing interests.
Dahlbreen is our first. Our glacier premiere. Act I: night-hooded headlands blaze ochre-russet-rust. Act II:
We anchor in darkness, where Dahlbreen is on the rise. Dawn-drawn on deck we drink in the vision with morning coffee. Learn Norwegian “
The glacier mouths a sea pitted with island moraines. Its tongue, forked and snaky, is pierced by
From zodiacs, we land on tiny face-facing island. Disperse across the rocks with our various art-making media, colonize best prospects. I settle on photographing lapping, pooling, swamping shore with the glacier, hanging static, in the distance. Slow my exposure to capture, still-motion, the heart-stopping pulse of waves, wakes of calving.
A bearded seal swims by. Sees us seeing it. Eyeball to eyeball, I-Thou.
I last saw a bearded seal in Isortoq. Buried in ice beside a hunter’s house. Ripe for butchering all winter long. Flippers and entrails for the dogs; ribs, steaks, sweetmeats for us. Eyes long gone, swallowed fresh at kill site. No one but me sees this seal, and hungers.
In zodiacs we tour the face. It surprises S, our driver, to find so much bedrock bared since her last visit. Close to the calving, we surf small tsunamis. S cuts the motor. Ears wide-open, we hear, all around, ice-age ice melt–
no, not so, listen again–
hear
Epigraph from
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Esmarkbreen was one of the few glaciers we could walk up to. This spectacularly twisted ice form leaned perilously over but had so far refused to succumb to gravity.
To stand dwarfed at the foot of an ancient glacier is to experience those primordial beginnings of our world. Some glaciers are alive with grinding, crashing, even thundering noise and it can be difficult to tell exactly where the sound is coming from. Some calve dramatically into the sea. Esmarkbreen was quieter than others and invited us to come close, which made it all the more impressive.
We had several hours to work on the moraine on this particularly cold afternoon. Days were getting shorter by nearly twenty minutes per day and the moon was up all hours. As we worked, the sky dimmed, the moon got brighter, and cold air washed down on us from above.
©2022, Harley Cowan. All Rights Reserved.
Over the ridge from our anchorage at Hornbækpollen was this view down to Erikbreen Glacier and its massive freshwater lake. Sediment colored the water dark and brown. Fresh snow from the evening before gave texture to the landscape.
It was a very windy day that more than once threatened to sweep my camera from the heights but I found some shelter in a nook in the rocks.
Glaciers make grinding, crashing, even thundering sounds and one never knows exactly where it is coming from. This glacier was actively making noise but only once did we see the falling ice that produced it.
©2022, Harley Cowan. All Rights Reserved.
The author declares they have no competing interests.