“The Icelandic writer and environmental activist Andri Snær Magnason traces both his love of storytelling and his concern for the natural world back to his grandparents. Amateur explorers, they volunteered on scientific expeditions to the Vatnajökull ice cap, even setting off the day after their wedding in 1956. Their stories, and the footage filmed by Magnason’s grandfather, shaped Magnason’s imagination and, later, his sense of urgency about climate change.

“In this film by Emergence Magazine, the California-based filmmakers Adam Loften and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee follow Magnason as he returns to Vatnajökull with his son, retracing his grandparents’ journey. Weaving together the family’s archival footage with present-day images of Magnason and his son at the ice cap, the film makes stark the dramatic changes that have taken place over the past seven decades. Throughout, the film shows how stories move us in a way that abstract ideas and data cannot . . . .”

40 minutes

https://aeon.co/videos/as-glaciers-melt-a-writer-considers-what-stories-can-do-that-data-cannot