Funeral for lost ice: Iceland bids farewell to glacier

It was a funeral for ice.

With poetry, moments of silence and political speeches about the urgent need to fight climate change, Icelandic officials, activists and others bade goodbye to what once was a glacier.

A monument is unveiled at the site of Okjokull, Iceland's first glacier lost to climate change in the west of Iceland on August 18, 2019. [Photo: AFP via VCG/Jeremie Richard]

Icelandic geologist Oddur Sigurðsson pronounced the Okjokull glacier extinct about a decade ago. But on Sunday he brought a death certificate to the made-for-media memorial.

After about 100 people made a two-hour hike up a volcano, children installed a memorial plaque to the glacier, now called just "Ok," minus the Icelandic word for glacier.

The glacier used to stretch six square miles (15 square kilometers), Sigurdsson said. Residents reminisced about drinking pure water thousands of years old from Ok.

This combination created on August 9, 2019 shows a NASA handout image taken on September 7, 1986 showing the Okjökull glacier atop the Ok Volcano in Iceland (top), and a NASA handout image taken on August 1, 2019 showing the top of the Ok Volcano where the Okjokull glacier has melted away throughout the 20th century and was declared dead in 2014. [File photo: NASA/AFP via VCG]

"The symbolic death of a glacier is a warning to us, and we need action," former Irish president Mary Robinson said.

This was Iceland's first glacier to disappear. But Sigurdsson said all of the nation's ice masses will be gone in 200 years.

"We see the consequences of the climate crisis," Icelandic Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir said. "We have no time to lose."

An Icelandic girl poses for a photo with a "Pull the emergency brake" sign near to where a monument was unveiled at the site of Okjokull, Iceland's first glacier lost to climate change in the west of Iceland on August 18, 2019. [Photo: AFP via VCG/Jeremie Richard]

Jakobsdottir said she will make climate change a priority when Nordic leaders and German Chancellor Angela Merkel meet in Reykjavik on Tuesday.

"I know my grandchildren will ask me how this day was and why I didn't do enough," said Gunnhildur Hallgrimsdottir, 17.

A monument is unveiled at site of Okjokull, Iceland's first glacier lost to climate change in the west of Iceland on August 18, 2019. [Photo: AFP via VCG/Jeremie Richard]

The plaque, which notes the level of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, also bears a message to the future: "This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it."