A winter storm brings fierce winds and snow to the summit of the icecap. A snowflake is whipped across the surface before nestling behind a drift. Year-round freezing temperatures ensures that this snowflake never melts, but gets buried and compressed under successive falls of snow until transformed into solid ice, fusing with neighbouring crystals. It adds to the two mile thickness of ice that perches over Greenland like a huge domed shell, the tremendous weight of which presses down the Earth’s crust to well below sea level.
Under intense pressure the ice begins to shift and flow, creeping its way towards the coast. Hills and mountains are down there, hundreds of meters below, and as the ice buckles and twists over and around them, it is wrenched apart and giant fissures appear – great yawning chasms, filtered light casting eerie blue tints upon the smooth walls above the pitch black depths below.
The coast is getting near, the icecap is thinning and rugged mountaintops, or ‘nunataks’, protrude through the surface and are picked apart by the ice as it flows relentlessly by. Gradually the mountaintops become closer together and eventually merge to form jagged chains of peaks and ridges. Still the ice moves on, directed into a single snaking glacier now, gouging out a sheer-sided valley and all the while bending and crevassing, pulling itself apart in an attempt to conform to the landscape. From high in the mountains above, smaller glaciers born in their own miniature icecaps, form tributaries and merge with the great icy river. A polar bear pads up the glacier following a route to better hunting grounds, and an Inuit hunter follows with his dogs – these are the highways of the north.
The coast is almost in sight, and temperatures rise. Summer comes and strips the glacier of its cloak of snow, revealing a chaotic surface of crevasses and moraine. Sunlight eats into the ice and melt water rushes along turquoise chutes that wind across the glacier before plunging into a fissure to erode weird subterranean tunnels.
The blue ocean appears at the end of the valley, and the long journey across Greenland is nearly over. Ice is buoyant and so the glacier finds itself flowing out over the sea, straining against the force of the tides. The strain becomes too much, and after 100,000 years the crystal that nestled behind a snowdrift has to part company with its neighbours. With a crash and a roar a million-ton chunk of ice tumbles into the sea, disappearing beneath the surface before slowly rising up again, rolling and finally settling, as if making itself comfortable in its new watery home.
The ice is at the mercy of the winds and tides now, and its destination is determined by these. The ‘berg, bigger and heavier than any manmade creation, is slowly carried down the fjord. Whales and seals pass by, birds colonise it, hunters steer their boats around it and kayakers paddle past keeping a wary but marvelling eye on it. It could roll without warning as it loses stability, the bulk of it rising up from beneath the water and crashing down again to regain balance.
All the while the iceberg thaws and erodes, sometimes even splits apart. It forms weird, wonderful and graceful forms, its surface sculpted and fluted by water and the sun and chance encounters with other ‘bergs.
The cold and darkness of winter arrives, and the sea surface becomes thick with a skein of ice. The ‘berg ploughs on regardless, whilst the ice becomes thicker and thicker. Eventually the resistance of the winter ice becomes too great and the ‘berg is trapped, its progress halted. Hunters, back on dog sleds now and the only sign of movement in this frozen icescape, pass by once more. The ‘berg waits quietly. Finally winter ends, light floods back from the south, and the warmth of the late spring sun begins to split the ocean’s frozen crust, releasing the iceberg so that it can resume its journey.
It finds its way to the open ocean, and is picked up on strong currents that sweep it southwards. It joins an armada of other ‘bergs and sea ice from all over the Arctic, and together they make their terminal voyage to warmer climes. But this is not death for the ‘berg – merely a return to another state. Maybe, one day, some molecule from the ‘berg will find its way drifting skywards and floating back onto the roof of Greenland to start the journey once again, reincarnated.