Slingshots of the oceanic

The last ice merchant

As glaciers melt, a writer considers what stories can do that data cannot

The Icelandic writer and environmental activist Andri Snær Magnason traces both his love of storytelling and his concern for the natural world back to his grandparents. Amateur explorers, they volunteered on scientific expeditions to the Vatnajökull ice cap, even setting off the day after their wedding in 1956. Their stories, and the footage filmed by Magnason’s grandfather, shaped Magnason’s imagination and, later, his sense of urgency about climate change.

In this film by Emergence Magazine, the California-based filmmakers Adam Loften and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee follow Magnason as he returns to Vatnajökull with his son, retracing his grandparents’ journey. Weaving together the........

© Aeon