'The world's fundamentals are shaking': The extraordinary story of an Icelandic glacier's funeral

It’s certainly not your everyday conundrum. And yet, for many Icelandic residents, this once philosophical question has become their new reality.

A nation bearing witness to the demise of some of the world’s oldest and most spectacular natural wonders, ice fields that have defined its landscape for generations, are now vanishing at a record pace. For Icelanders, rising temperatures have all but ensured that day-to-day life is accompanied by a silent, yet ever-present sense of grief.

“How do you write about an issue that is larger than language?” admits writer and environmental activist Andri Snær Magnason, an Icelandic native whose memories are punctuated by the imposing glaciers. The key, he believes, is to combine scientific fact with mythology and the age-old art of storytelling.

“People don’t understand data, they understand stories,” explains Andri, revealing his decision to tackle this numbers-driven subject through the lens of own family’s experiences on the glaciers.

“If I told people I was writing about the climate crisis, people would reply: ‘oh, kill me’. But if I told them it was about time and water, they would say, ‘wow, that's interesting’.”

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“When I try to explain the difference between mythology and history - history being kings, queens, empires, science, art and culture and mythology being about the creation of stories, somebody's always dragging the sun with a chariot. It's about the fundamentals. And now, we are in an era where the fundamentals are shaking.”

His new big screen documentary, Time and Water - an adaptation of his novel of the same name, is a project some 10 years in the making. Much like photography and human memory, ice captures fragments of the past - a living time capsule if you will. It’s an apt metaphor, given the nature of his latest project, immortalising the death of Iceland’s first glacier on the big screen.

Working alongside Oscar-nominated nonfiction filmmaker Sara Dosa (Fire of Love, Seer & The Unseen) who directed, produced and write the documentary, Time and Water acts as a “time capsule”, distilling the science behind the climate crisis and combining it with historic moments captured on 16mm film.

A project was born out of “encouragement” from scientists, Andri admits he was initially reluctant to tackle such a subject: “My father's a doctor - and he hates it when normal people give medical advice”.

Entrenched in folklore and enveloped in mysticism, glaciers are the elders of this frozen land. The lifespan of a human pales in comparison to that of Iceland’s most imposing ice flows - and yet, having survived longer than any homosapien, rising temperatures will all but ensure their disappearance within our lifetime.

Data suggests that date to be 2100. But despite this knowledge, politicians, CEOs and leaders around the world are still refusing to say the quiet part out loud. Humans are, in essence, opting to prematurely turn off the glaciers’ life support, imposing a death sentence on these vast, moving marvels.

“I'm an American and I've seen my government undo everything,” admits filmmaker Sara Dosa. “I find it absolutely infuriating. It's a tremendous injustice that will reverberate for generations.

"So, I look for acts of repair wherever I can find them. I see tremendous work being done through activism, as well as storytelling. And that's where I, as a filmmaker, come in.”

The film sees locals planning their first glacial funeral, commemorating Iceland's Okjokull ice sheet with plaque - and Andri is the man to pen its inscription. “My grandparents thought glaciers would always be there, I had thought this too,” the writer poignantly admits.

The first glacial death at the hands of global warming, Andri finds himself contemplating whether his own great-grandchildren will ever witness the wonders of the vanishing ice caps. A cyclical tale, dramatic archive imagery of his grandparents' ‘glacial honeymoon’ - a three week adventure that marked the founding trip of the Icelandic Glacial Research Society - forms a central part of this remarkable time capsule.

“They had to create something that didn't exist before. They were creating the rescue squads in Iceland because aeroplanes were crashing in the Highlands and they needed some kind of initiative to save people,” explains Andri of his family’s alternative honeymoon.

“I think from that generation we learn a lot, like you have to create things to meet new challenges. And hard things are often what brings the best out of you.

“These trips were not easy. They were super complicated and difficult. And to seek discovery and face things with initiative, I think that's something that we can learn from. We have to use unusual measures to meet our world’s uncertainties in the future.

Remarkable footage captured on 16mm film shows Andri’s grandparents, Arni and Hulda, taking part in a historic expedition, carving out some of Iceland's first ice cores in a bid to understand the secrets of the glacier. Andri’s only thought was: “this must become a documentary”.

The research process saw Andri trawling through 70 years of family archives, digitizing hundreds of feet of film and reopening family photo albums. Intimate clips of Andri’s daughter interacting with his grandmother shed light on the speed at which the earth has changed.

He explains that talking about climate change is alienating “when all the science points to future dates like 2100. Culturally that is meaningless. That's Blade Runner, Hunger Games, Mad Max.”

“So, when my grandmother sits with my daughter, it's almost like this flip-over effect - my daughter and my grandmother, they sort of mirror each other. The past and the future.”

"I hope that viewers can together experience the life of a glacier and mourn the death of this one glacier, in the hope that we can prevent the further deaths of ecosystems around the world."

Sara goes on to explain the documentary “shows the myriad losses, as well as the love for home that underpins this feeling of ‘eco grief’ that so many people are experiencing around the world”.

It’s a point that Andri agrees with, noting that the current allure of “nostalgia” play an important role in the project.

“We can see it in music, we can see it even the manosphere - that’s some kind of a distorted nostalgia, like some kind of an idea of a role of a man that never was. "

"So, I think we might be offering some kind of constructive optimism; constructive nostalgia if you like. It’s bringing the past and then handing that over in the future,” he continues.

“This nostalgia reflects a glorious time, when women were brave and they went on glacial journeys. People were exploring and falling in love.

"It's a nostalgia of connecting to nature, a nostalgia of discovery," he explains.

"A nostalgia that we maybe have to learn from.”

Time and Water is in UK cinemas now