Snæfellsjökull and the stories glaciers carry

There are landscapes that shape us quietly, over time, and there are others that strike like lightning. Leaving an imprint that feels almost cosmic. Snæfellsnes and the national park around Snæfellsjökull is both. Rising from Iceland’s western edge, this glacier topped volcano holds stories written in ice and ash. Its layered geology a record of Earth’s story that unfolded over thousands of years. During my time at Arctic Canvas, it became a living metaphor for the creative process itself. Slow, potent, and deeply transformative.

I have always wanted to explore the mountain, but since I travel to Iceland in winter, it hasn’t ever been accessible. I always feel a bit of a nervousness around doing something that you’ve held with such anticipation for so long. Driving the mountain pass that cuts through Snæfellsjökull a few times during the residency, I felt as if I was moving through time. On one side, the glacier stretched towards the sea, luminous under the rising moon. On the other, lava fields unfurled in dark, jagged waves undulating down towards the sea, flows of frozen fire. Each journey revealed something new. The way mist curled around the peaks, how shadows gathered in the valleys, and how the mountain seemed to breathe with the rhythm of the ocean in the distance. These were moments of dialogue with the land.

The glacier as a keeper of stories

Glaciers are ancient storytellers. They carry sediments, fossils, and air bubbles that hold the atmosphere of millennia past, archives of climate, time, and transformation. To stand beneath Snæfellsjökull is to feel the weight of that memory. Its presence is both grounding and otherworldly, reminding us of the messages it holds, frozen in time.

In my work, photography becomes a way of listening. The glacier’s creaks and sighs mirror the quiet unfolding of creativity, the patient gathering of thoughts before they find their form. There is a rhythm to this. Like the slow movement of ice carving its way through rock, or an idea forming beneath the surface before it finds its moment of eruption.

Amid the quiet of Arctic Canvas, conversations unfolded that shook the foundations of what I thought possible. The magnitude of their potential feeling too big for one person to hold. Illuminating seismic shifts on the horizon, profound moments setting ripples in motion that I know will shape the years to come.

Glaciers remind us that change is both inevitable and some things can their time and there is something to savour about that. They expand and retreat, shape valleys and coastlines, create ecosystems and dissolve into them. They teach us that creativity, too, is a process of evolution. That the work, like the ice, must melt and reform to reveal new truths.

The alchemy of creativity

Creativity often feels like glacial movement, slow, unseen, gathering energy in stillness. Then, without warning, what’s been bubbling away below the surface erupts: clarity, flow, fire. At Arctic Canvas, this alchemy was woven into every day. Arriving under the midnight sun, the landscape itself became part of the creative process, holding space for introspection and wild expression. The retreat offered what our modern world often forgets: time to listen to the quiet hum of nature and the wild edges of our imagination.

The movement of a glacier mirrors the cycles of creativity. There are times when we feel frozen, as if nothing is moving. Yet beneath the surface, immense forces are shifting, building pressure, preparing for release. Then comes the breakthrough, the eruption, the flow, the moment of clarity that feels like standing before molten lava, watching it transform the world around you.

At Arctic Canvas, this rhythm was everywhere: in the way the light moved across the landscape, the sound of water trickling through moss, filling lakes and meeting the open Atlantic Ocean, the conversations that unfolded under the fiery red skies of forever daylight. Immersed in the wild, every sense opened wider, attuned to the subtle messages of the landscape.

It was here in the wee small hours, gazing out at the glacier that something quite profound struck me: Creativity, is a paradox, like ice, it is shaped by its environment and it shapes its environment.

Snæfellsjökull as a symbol of liminality

Snæfellsjökull has long held mythic resonance, Jules Verne imagined it as the entrance to the centre of the Earth, and Icelandic folklore tells of spirits dwelling within its icy core. Standing beneath its peak, it’s easy to understand why. This mountain feels like a threshold, a place between worlds where geology, mythology and ecology meet.

In that liminal space, I felt the presence of the moment, a groundedness between earth, sea and sky. We are made of the same elements that build mountains and move tides, and when we create, we activate this elemental wisdom. The glacier became a mirror for that truth: vast, ancient, alive.

It is this space between, the wild edge where science meets spirit, that fuels my work. As I explore through my lens, I am drawn to those moments of transition: ice turning to water, darkness softened by moonlight, stillness dissolving into motion. Snæfellsjökull embodies this liminality, reminding us that transformation is the language of nature itself.

If you’ve read my Manifesto: Rewilding Our Connection to Nature, you’ll know how deeply I believe that storytelling can reawaken our sense of belonging within this living system. Standing at the foot of the glacier, the words of that manifesto came alive. Curiosity, awe, and wonder ignited.

Creativity as planetary dialogue

To tell stories of glaciers is to tell stories of time, and of the urgency that defines our moment. Snæfellsjökull, like so many glaciers, is retreating. Its meltwater carries both beauty and warning. The more we listen to these landscapes, the more we understand that creativity and climate are entwined.

Through storytelling and visual art, we can bridge that gap, translating awe into awareness, and awareness into action. At Arctic Canvas, this understanding flowed through everything. The space was created to nurture a deep connection with place, inviting artists and thinkers to slow down, listen, and respond to the subtle invitations of the land. That intentional design allowed the glacier, the lava fields, and the sea to become part of our conversations about creativity and care.

It reminded me that creativity is not about product, but process. It’s a dialogue, between elements, between people, between what is seen and unseen.

Memory, place and responsibility

Whilst at Arctic Canvas, I created Ghost Fluke: a story of coastline and creation – a lifesize humpback whale fluke made from ghost plastic picked up from the coastline. As I walked the cliffs and coast to gather the gear, I explored how memory is embedded in landscape, whilst making my own. My time here just a tiny dot on the vast timeline of this landscape, while the ocean, like the glacier, remembers everything that went before us. Snæfellsjökull reminded me that the stories we tell about nature are also stories about ourselves.

The glacier doesn’t just hold memory. It reflects ours back to us. Its retreat is a measure of time, but also of choice. Standing before it, I felt an ache, that bittersweet awareness that what we love is fragile. Creativity becomes a way of honouring that fragility, of giving voice to what might otherwise go unseen or unheard.

This is what drives my visual storytelling, to amplify nature’s messages and messengers, to reawaken wonder, and to remind us that we are not separate from the world we document. Every image, every story, is an act of remembrance and responsibility.

Creativity as communion

Snæfellsjökull became a collaborator, like a guardian and guide and reminded me that creativity, like ice, is always in motion. It taught me that when we make space for nature, we make space for the stories that want to emerge through us. Stories that carry both the wisdom of the past and the hope of what might still be saved.

At Arctic Canvas, surrounded by the glacier, ancient lava fields and sea, I was reminded that creativity thrives in communion. It asks us to slow down, to listen, and to trust that the work will reveal itself in its own time. Like the glacier, it holds memory and movement, patience and power. And when it finally shifts, when that deep, unseen energy breaks the surface, what emerges feels nothing short of alchemy.