How will we explain glaciers to generations who have never seen one?

In 2019, Andri Snær Magnason was tasked with a strange new project: to write an obituary for a glacier.

The Icelandic novelist, poet, playwright, and filmmaker has written about time travel in children’s books, critiqued the damming of local rivers to power aluminum smelters, and told the story of an idyllic planet invaded by an unscrupulous salesman. Though this new assignment was unlike others, he was more than qualified to complete it—especially after spending years contemplating the slow but epic lives of glaciers.

Iceland’s Okjökull Glacier perched atop an extinct volcano for thousands of years, nourished by fresh snow as it oozed down the flanks of its mountain. But over the past century, it shrunk to five percent its original size and was eventually declared dead after its ice stopped moving.

(Alaska's melting glaciers are revealing long-lost frozen bodies.)

Time and Water, Magnason’s new film based on his bestselling book, weaves the story of Iceland’s rapidly changing glaciers together with that of his family across three generations. He describes how glaciers—including Okjökull—and their gushing rivers formed the fabric of a nation’s identity and creation story, the immovable boundaries of its society, and the boogeymen of its fairytales. Using archival photos and film, he narrates the bond between these glaciers and his family, starting with his grandparents, who helped map some of them.

The film poses a difficult question: How can we explain to future generations what a glacier is if they have never seen one?

I recently spoke with Magnason about how glaciers live, how they die, and how they mingled with erupting volcanoes to shape his country.

This interview has been edited for length and clarify.

In this documentary, you tell the story of a deep, generational, emotional connection between your family and these glaciers. Can you tell me about the experiences and events that gave rise to this?

My grandparents were founding partners of the Icelandic Glaciological Society. They went on a three-week glacial honeymoon [in 1956] to measure and map almost the whole of Vatnajökull Glacier, which is about 10 percent of Iceland.

My grandfather was a photographer, and my childhood identity was very much about these very epic pictures [of glaciers] that were on the walls everywhere. In general, his archives were very expansive. Also, the windowsills were full of rocks they collected on their trips. These little treasures made my grandparents’ home very inspiring.

Can you describe the climate-related changes that you've witnessed in Iceland during your lifetime?

The glaciers are the strongest indicator of what's happening. The strongest feeling of this change was when I crossed a glacier called Skeiðarárjökull with my friends, and you could see a line on the mountain 70 meters above us, where the glacier used to [reach]. And [below that] you had 1,000 meters of snow, like [multiple] Empire State Buildings of ice [that was now gone]. You had to rearrange your brain to understand how something so massive and strong and brutal was actually fragile and receding from the force of humanity.

You’ve talked about these glaciers as being very much alive. How is a glacier alive?

A thriving glacier has a striking flow to it and the edge of it has these sharp teeth; it's almost like a predator. Out of its mouth comes these brutal glacial rivers that have made Iceland very difficult to navigate. They cut Iceland into slices of land because it was very dangerous and difficult to pass the glacial rivers.

When [a glacier] starts to die, the movement halts. And sometimes a certain patch of the glacier is detached from the main body, and that's what you call dead ice. It’s just kind of thawing silent and motionless, like a stranded whale.

You’ve talked about how these glacial outburst floods can be extremely dangerous, unleashing a flow the size of the Amazon River and wiping out roads. Do they actually have a place in Icelandic history or culture?

They even have a bigger place than the glaciers themselves because these were catastrophes that could take out a whole valley. The water level could become 20 meters high, and it would wipe out all the farms in its path.

We have plenty of folklore connected to that. There are miraculous stories, [like] about a woman who was good to the ravens, always feeding [them], and then at some point the raven started to behave strangely and got her to come to the top of a hill. And in that moment, a glacier flood came and surrounded everything, and she was the sole survivor.

On a related note, you mentioned that historically, the glaciers and their rivers cut up Iceland, creating boundaries that were difficult to cross. How has this shaped the history and society of Iceland?

Almost every single valley in Iceland has a major glacial river running through it, and these rivers would be quite brutal. We did not have resources to bridge them in the old days. So, you had to go over these rivers on horseback and that was difficult and dangerous. Some had boats over them and some had these rope ferries that went over the river.

But you could have people living within 500 meters of each other that had never met in person because they were on the opposite side of a glacial river. They could even have almost a different regional culture on each side of the river because they could not have daily communication.

(This frozen Antarctic vault will hold the remains of Earth’s vanishing glaciers.)

A glacier was not something that we saw as a favorable thing. It's not until the 20th century that some dams, built in two or three glacial rivers, started to [provide] electricity. And that would be the first time Iceland turned its disadvantages into advantages.

So you could say the forces of Iceland, the ocean, the rivers, the glaciers made living in Iceland quite a struggle. Our population did not grow for almost a thousand years [after] Iceland was founded [in 874].

Climate change impinges upon every country in the world in a different and unique way. It is viewed differently in every society. Is there a particular Icelandic perspective on climate that grows out of the country’s unique history?

Iceland is still being created [by volcanic eruptions]. And some of the greatest natural wonders here are younger than the Brooklyn Bridge. You feel like you're in an ancient landscape, but the huge lava fields in the south are less than 300 years old. One of the greatest lakes in Iceland is less than 200 years old.

We’re used to catastrophes in nature. But we have to remind ourselves that this one has nothing to do with any previous catastrophe. It’s a symbol of nature leaving geologic speed and entering human speed.