Science records, registers and decodes the world around us. Art interprets, explains and marvels. At the Icefjord Centre a meeting between art and science takes place in an installation, that through sound, images and a tactile universe both challenges and expands our perception and understanding of the ice sheets vast range and its significance for the world we are all part of. Besides the permanent exhibition, created by JAC Studios, you can experience the art installations “Eleven Movements of the Cryoscape”, by Louise Foo and “Inside the Greenlandic Ice sheet” by Anna Domnick. 

Through thousands of years inuit have lived in the Disko Bay in spite of the extreme climate and the dark nights in polar circle. Inuit culture has learned to adapted its way of life to co-exist with the ice and the harsh conditions of the greenlandic nature. The technology that the inuit has developed for hunting, fishing, clothing production and transport are a clear example of how humans and nature always have and will be tied together.

A central element of the exhibition are the displays of ice cores from the ice sheet telling a story about culture and climate from today and back to 124.000 years BC. The Ice sheet has been shaped by layers of snow, culminating year after year until it is eventually compressed by the weight of the endless layers of snow. Each layer conceals small bobles of air in the snow that are preserved and stored in a frozen state. Today we can read the ice cores as a book tracing back in time and learning about grand events like eruptions from volcanos or meteor impacts that have been forgotten by time. These events can be discovered and recorded through the ice cores. We can learn the effect of the greatness and the downfall of civilizations and we can become wiser in our journey to understanding climate change and how it impacts our daily lives. When we forget the ice remembers. 

The story of the ice is therefore also the story about how life has been formed here in the Disko Bay. It is the history of the unfathomable weight of the ice sheet that through thousands of years crushes the bedrock under it and pushes it in front of it on its steady and inevitable journey to the ocean. Here the ice delivers the crushed bedrock which releases nutrition to the ocean where it flourishes. The ice also means life for the humans and animals, as they need the ice for hunting and fishing grounds. Here the ice is both the foundation for man and for nature.