Confluence of Experience and Research: Writing Process

As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, researching a book is a state of bliss. Jon Gertner’s The Ice at the End of the World is no exception, detailing a history of European exploration on Greenland’s ice sheet over the past couple of hundred years.

The details of various expeditions including Fridtjof Nansen’s intial crossing in 1888 and Knud Rasmussen’s establishment of Thule at the northern-most tip are fascinating as the description of scientists Georgi and Lowe spending an entire winter dug into the middle of the ice sheet.

Johannes Georgi and Fritz Lowe in their mid-Greenland ice cave

However most interesting to me personally is the description of the Jakobshavn Glacier calving several icebergs in two days, cutting five miles from the glacier’s front, in 2015.

Disko Bay with a typical amount of icebergs

I had visited the glacier at that very same time and witnessed the result of the calvings, Disko Bay suddenly clogged with ice as far as the eye could see.

It was a stunning thing to witness, almost apocalyptic, the entire world transformed in moments.