Okjökull has officially lost its status as a glacier — a fate that will befall all of Iceland's glaciers if climate change is not brought under control.
Just a hundred years ago, the Okjökull glacier, also known as Ok Glacier, extended across more than 15 square kilometres and was fifty metres thick. Today, due to rising global temperatures caused by climate change, all that remains of that glorious natural monument is a pale shadow of its former self. Its extent has shrunk to just one square kilometre, with a thickness of fifteen metres, and it has officially lost its status as a glacier. Iceland has decided to mark its disappearance with a memorial, in the hope that it may serve as a warning for the future.
"In the next two hundred years all our glaciers will be gone. This monument acknowledges that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you will know whether we did it." So reads the plaque in memory of Ok Glacier, situated on a mountain in the Borgarfjörður fjord, where the now former glacier stands, which will be unveiled on 18 August. The ceremony will be attended by researchers from the anthropology department of Texas's Rice University, Icelandic poet and writer Andri Snær Magnason — author of the words inscribed on the monument — and glaciologist Oddur Sigurðsson.
At the bottom of the plaque, a significant figure is also recorded, noting that at the time of the memorial's installation 415 ppm (parts per million) of CO2 are floating in the air. The current level of carbon dioxide emissions is unprecedented in the history of our species, is responsible for the melting of the Okjökull glacier, and is set to cause a further rise in temperatures, triggering severe chain reactions on a planetary scale.
The memorial for Ok Glacier is the first monument ever created dedicated to a glacier lost to climate change. The aim is to draw attention to what is being lost, which is indispensable both from a purely utilitarian and a cultural standpoint. "These blocks of ice are the largest reserves of fresh water on the planet," said Cymene Howe, professor of anthropology at Rice University, who studies the economic and cultural impact of global warming and ice retreat on Icelandic communities. "Frozen within them are the histories of the atmosphere, and they often play an important cultural role as well."
The bitter fate of Okjökull "will be shared by all of Iceland's glaciers," warned Dominic Boyer, also a professor at the American university, "unless we act now to radically reduce greenhouse gas emissions." The monument dedicated to the Okjökull glacier is not intended as a melancholy, nostalgic tribute to the great mass of ice now melted, but as an exhortation to prevent it from happening again. "With this memorial, we want to underscore that it is up to us, the living, to collectively respond to the rapid disappearance of glaciers and the ongoing impacts of climate change," explained Cymene Howe.
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The Okjökull glacier is also the subject of the documentary Not Ok, produced by the two American researchers and narrated by the former mayor of Reykjavik, Jón Gnarr. The film is dedicated to the disappearance of the glacier and seeks to show the impact of the climate crisis on the lives of ordinary people. Glaciers have shaped the Icelandic landscape since human settlement on the island 1,200 years ago, but since the beginning of the twentieth century they have been steadily melting, losing around eleven billion tonnes of ice every year. Ok Glacier was one of the smallest and most well-known glaciers in the country; Not Ok tells its story.