What Can a Glacier Tell Us?
Updated: Oct 2
“Fandens bre” [Devil's glacier] has proved worthy of its name. Chasm after chasm, abyss after abyss, must be walked around.”4 Knud Rasmussen
A glacier can look like a wall of ice. From a distance, that is often what a photograph gives you. In reality, a glacier is moving, changing, and carrying evidence of the environment around it.
Glaciers are formed from snow and rain that accumulate and compress over very long periods. They move slowly across the landscape, shaping valleys and fjords as they go. There is an entire science devoted to understanding them: glaciology.
That is one reason scientists and researchers are so valuable on an expedition. The colours, shapes and structures are telling us something, but we need the right person to explain what we are looking at.
A Glacier Is Always Moving
The first thing to understand is that a glacier is not simply frozen water sitting in one place. It flows. The movement of the ice creates enormous forces. Rock is eroded and carried along with it as sediment. Valleys and fjords can be shaped over thousands of years. At the coast, a glacier may reach the sea and calve, producing icebergs.
There are details a traveler can look for. Crevasses show where the ice has fractured under movement and stress. Blue ice can indicate dense, relatively bubble-poor ice. Sediment shows what the glacier has been carrying. Meltwater tells another part of the story.
The explorers who crossed these landscapes had to learn to read many of the same physical clues simply to stay alive. During Nansen's 1888 crossing of Greenland, the apparently smooth ice quickly revealed itself as a complicated landscape of ridges, fissures and hidden crevasses. The expedition sometimes had to change direction or follow a crevasse for long distances to find a way through. Nansen also described how snow could conceal a crevasse almost completely, leaving only a thin layer between the traveler and the depths below.¹
Then there is the terminus, the front edge of the glacier, where the whole process becomes particularly visible.
The scale is difficult to understand from a photograph. I know that feeling from being on glaciers in the Alps and seeing how much they have decreased over the decades. Even with that experience, it is difficult to comprehend the size of the thousands of glaciers across the Arctic.
When Science Is Right in Front of You
This is where having scientists and researchers on board makes such a difference.
You are not sitting in a classroom looking at a diagram of a glacier. Depending on the itinerary and the conditions, you can approach by Zodiac and have someone explain what is happening while you are looking directly at the ice.
The same glacier can become a completely different subject once you understand what you are seeing. A scientist can explain accumulation, ice movement, melt, calving, sediment or climate records in language that makes sense while you are standing there.
That knowledge also changes the way we look at the landscape. The glacier becomes part of the geography around it rather than simply a beautiful background.
Learning to Read the Ice
There is a wonderful historical parallel here. Before modern instruments could tell explorers what was happening beneath or around them, they had to learn to interpret the ice from its surface, its texture and the way it behaved under their feet.
During Amundsen's South Pole expedition, skis became an essential tool for crossing broken glacier surfaces. Crevasses could be hidden beneath snow, and apparently solid ground could suddenly give way. At one point, a section broke beneath Hanssen's ski and revealed the drop below. Amundsen later wrote that the team repeatedly wondered where they would have been without their skis, because some sections would have been almost impossible to cross on foot.²
The danger was not limited to the men themselves. On another occasion, a sledge carrying thirteen dogs disappeared into a crevasse. The team used an Alpine rope to secure it, removed the dogs and eventually hauled the sledge back to the surface.³
These accounts are useful because they make the physical structure of a glacier easier to imagine. What looks smooth in a photograph can contain ridges, hollows, snow bridges and deep fractures only a few inches below the surface.
Today, scientists can investigate those same physical processes with instruments and measurements that the early explorers did not have. The basic principle, however, remains surprisingly similar: look carefully at the ice and understand what it is telling you.
The Glacier Also Controls the Expedition
Science is directly connected to the practical side of an expedition.
Glacier conditions can affect where a ship goes, whether a Zodiac can operate, the concentration of icebergs, visibility and whether a landing is possible. If a glacier is actively calving, the expedition team also has to consider falling ice and the waves it can create.
The environment therefore determines part of the itinerary.
That is one of the fundamental differences between expedition travel and a journey where every stop can be planned in advance. The landscape itself can change what happens next.
It also means that some common assumptions need correcting. A retreating glacier is not simply “melting everywhere”. Glacier behaviour depends on accumulation, melting, ice dynamics and ocean conditions. Individual glaciers can behave very differently.
And a glacier is completely different from sea ice. A glacier is land-based ice. Sea ice is frozen seawater.
Seeing What Is Actually There
The more we understand the glacier, the more there is to notice. Scale matters, but so do movement, temperature and weather. The surrounding landscape matters. So do icebergs and wildlife. Even the human presence around a glacier can be significant, particularly in places where local societies have developed around these environments.
For scientifically curious travelers, this is what makes the experience particularly compelling. The science is directly in front of you. You can see the ice, hear it, feel the temperature around it and watch how it fits into the landscape. The expedition team provides the context.
A glacier can tell us about the history of a landscape, the climate of a region and the forces that continue to shape it. It becomes much more interesting when we know how to look.
You May Also Enjoy
Choosing an Expedition With Scientists
If science is important to your Arctic experience, ask who will be on board and what they actually contribute to the expedition. A strong scientific program should connect what you are seeing outside with the knowledge being shared on board. For us, that is part of what makes expedition travel so valuable: the landscape is right there, and the people who understand it can help you see what would otherwise remain invisible.
Interested in exploring remote regions with the preparation and knowledge to understand them more deeply? Discover our approach to Expedition Travel.
1. Fridtjof Nansen, The First Crossing of Greenland. Nansen describes the crevassed terrain, hidden fissures, snow bridges and the need to change course around the ice. See also the Fram Museum's account of the 1888 crossing, which notes that the expedition encountered heavily crevassed ice near the coast and had to choose another route.
2. Roald Amundsen, The South Pole: An Account of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition in the Fram, 1910–1912, Vol. II, pp. 197–198. Amundsen describes skis as indispensable on heavily crevassed terrain and records a section breaking beneath Hanssen's ski.
3. Roald Amundsen, The South Pole, Vol. II, pp. 180–181. The expedition account describes Bjaaland's sledge and thirteen dogs disappearing into a crevasse and the subsequent rescue using an Alpine rope. The same incident is recorded in Amundsen's diary from 21 October 1911.
Comments