The Fascinating Sounds of Glaciers

What does a glacier sound like?

You might be surprised to hear that glaciers have personalities. Some of them can be pretty chill (!) and seemingly inert. If you walk up on Vatnajokull in winter, things will look and feel quite still. Once the wind picks up, the only thing you can hear is the buffeting and any snow/ice/debris that the wind brings along. Maybe at dusk or dawn there will be some rare cracks as the ice is slowly expanding or contracting.

On my recent expedition to Iceland I wanted to experience a loud and dynamic glacier soundscape. With the help of my friend Þorvarður Árnason and expedition support from Haukur Ingi Einarsson at Glacier Adventure, I ventured out on the frozen lagoon with my wife. We were looking for the spot where the glacier meets the lagoon, as that tends to be the noisiest and most active spot. It was windy and snowing when we got there so I only heard the sounds once we were a few meters from the glacier.

The ice makes loud and unsettling cracks as it slowly moves down under the forces of gravity and entropy. Since this movement is very slow, it’s not something you can easily see. Most of the time the gigantic blocks of ice move a few centimeters per day. On occasion there might be visible changes as big cracks appear or blocks fall off, but those events are quite rare. I spent many hours over four days at the bottom of this glacier and only saw a bit of water surfacing through large cracks in the ice.

Luckily I was able to set up a few recording rigs on the ice itself, and I left them there for at least 24 hours at a time. The wind was pretty heavy and there were only a few quiet moments, so most of my recordings are drowned in wind noise. In the few breaks that I managed to capture there were some amazing series of loud cracks as the ice moved.

The most unsettling part is that you can’t see much change while this is happening. This disconnect between what you can see and what you can hear makes the experience very eerie and surreal. Setting up the rig on the ice was a complex process that took hours, and I was often startled by these loud cracks. Even on the 4th day, after having spent many hours there, I still found it unnerving and would flinch every time there was a louder sound.

This time of the year the day is short in Iceland, especially if it’s a bit overcast. The long walk from my vehicle to the glacier took at least half an hour and involved walking across a frozen river and on the frozen glacier lagoon. We had to be careful and didn’t want to be doing this in the dark. Even so, once I had set up the recording rig, I found it difficult to stop listening and to walk back to the car. This soundscape is truly fascinating and mesmerising. What a privilege to experience it in person.