Time and Water (2026) Movie Script
1
[pickaxe thudding]
[equipment rattles]
[something opens]
[film projector whirring]
[gentle music playing]
[gentle music playing]
[microphone tapping]
[Andri] Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
I hope that this will reach you.
We will never meet because
we live in different times.
I cannot send you a glacier,
but at least I
can send you this.
[theme music playing]
[projector whirring]
[jungle birdsong]
[water lapping]
[insects chirping]
This capsule could have
been filled with snakes
from the Amazon.
This boa constrictor on
my shoulders belongs to my
favorite uncle, John.
15 years later,
he invites me to help him
research the mating habits
of the giant anaconda
in Venezuela.
I would have been here,
but these plans conflict
with my own mating habits.
[baby exclaims]
So I stay in my own
habitat here in Iceland,
writing poetry and
science fiction.
[host] Andri
Snaer Magnason's book,
"The Story of the Blue Planet"
has garnered
significant attention.
This is perhaps the most
political Icelandic novel I've
read in a long time.
[Andri] Hulda!
Over there is the
glacier tongue, look.
Whoops!
Over there is the glacier.
[Elin] Over there!
[Andri] The first thing I'm
sending you is a story that I
used to tell my own kids.
It's about our home.
[stirring music playing]
First, there was the void.
[asteroid whooshing]
Then, fire met the ice.
[explosion booms!]
[water rushing]
In the chaos rose Auohumla,
a cow made of frost and snow.
From her body came
hundreds of glaciers...
...that carved
mountains and valleys.
From her udders ran four
rivers that nourished the world.
Her ice made a home
here in Iceland,
and Iceland became a
home for all of us.
[birds chirping]
[waves crashing]
[bright ethereal music]
[dog barking]
[children chattering]
[bright music playing]
We have lived with
the ice for 1,000 years.
[Andri] Smile!
'Isgland'... Isgland?
Is this correct?
[Eilin] Yes.
[Andri] Good job.
[Eilin] Iceland.
[Andri] But that was
just the beginning,
and you will need many stories.
[Andri] I can capture
the Northern Lights!
Wow!
Look, they're moving.
Wow!
They disappeared - whoa!
[Eilin] They're
over here now.
[gentle music playing]
[water rushing]
[Andri] I don't know
how old you will be when
you receive this.
I am 53, speaking to
you from the year 2026.
And this is what
Iceland looks like now.
[stirring music playing]
[lava roars]
[Andri] I don't think I've ever
seen anything as beautiful.
How do you like it, girls?
[both] It's awesome.
[bright music playing]
[water rushing]
[Andri] This is
such a beautiful path.
[bird hoots]
[Andri hoots back]
- Andri, are you with us?
- Yes.
[birds screech]
[bright music playing]
[Andri] My love for this place
comes from those who raised me,
my parents and my grandparents.
We are a family of
firsts and lasts.
Grandpa Jon was the last
in a 1,000-year line to be
born on this farm.
Grandma Disa was
the first to laugh always.
[laughter]
[overlapping chatter]
And Grandma Hulda,
the first woman
to fly in Iceland.
Grandpa Arni,
one of the first
to explore Iceland's glaciers.
But I became the first
to say goodbye to something
we never thought
we could lose.
[wind]
[wind]
[overlapping chatter]
[singing in foreign language]
[Andri] Now, it's 2019.
My youngest of four kids,
Hulda, is turning 11.
[Andri] Wow!
[overlapping chatter]
[Andri] And my
last grandparent,
also named Hulda,
is still alive.
[Andri] You are living
up to high expectations, Hulda.
[Hulda] We Huldas here.
[camera shutter clicks]
[Andri] Grandma Hulda had been
married to my grandfather Arni
for 60 years.
Now, the things they
love most in the world are
beginning to die.
[reporter] In 2014, Ok
Glacier was the first glacier to
die due to climate change.
Now, a funeral commemorating
it will be held in August.
This funeral is the first
of its kind in the world.
[Andri] A funeral for a
glacier feels surreal,
like my sense of home
is slipping away.
I had been collecting my
grandparents' glacier stories
since I could remember.
And now, suddenly, I
see them in a new light.
I have this urge to
gather up all of them,
thinking they may be
useful for the future.
Let me send you
my favorite one,
how my grandparents
fell in love on the ice.
This is their footage.
Here they are on their
honeymoon in 1956.
And here they are in 2004,
2010, and 2017.
[Hulda] From a young age,
I just craved going
to the mountains.
In the springtime,
strangely enough,
I start to smell
a glacier scent.
[Andri] What
is a glacier scent?
[Hulda] Well,
I can't describe it.
- It was something
special.
There was just this smell -
it was exhilarating.
[Andri] And
when did you meet?
[Hulda] It was a
meeting of mountaineers.
[Arni] I liked
her right away.
[Hulda] I used
to say to my mom,
"Oh, I wish I was a boy,
then I could do this and that."
To have more adventures.
I was just up for anything.
Arni says to me, "We are going
up to the Vatnajokull glacier."
And I say, "Listen,
can I go with you?"
[Arni] The local
skiers asked if I was crazy,
taking a woman up
to Vatnajokull.
Thats completely ridiculous!
[host] The largest
glacier is Vatnajokull,
which covers about one twelfth
of Iceland's surface
and is the largest
glacier in Europe.
Trips up to
Vatnajokull are an act of daring
only for well-equipped and
highly experienced mountaineers.
[Hulda] We spent a
whole week on the glacier.
[Arni] I dont think
we have parted since.
[Hulda] We got
married on Friday,
and left early the next
morning for a three-week trip.
After that, we often went
up to Vatnajokull Glacier
with the Icelandic
Glaciological Society.
[Arni] This was the
beginning of the surveying.
These are the same measurements
they are taking today.
[gusting wind]
[Arni] Were you ever cold?
[Hulda] No, never cold.
We were newlyweds!
[Andri] Do you consider the
glacier to be your second home?
[Hulda] I do.
Its a different world
being on top of a glacier.
Everything is white.
It's just endless.
[film reel unspools]
[Andri] How
old are you now?
- I've forgotten
everything.
- You're
turning 95, my Arni.
- 95?
- Yes.
[Arni] Yes, you
keep track of this for me.
[Hulda] Yes, yes, I do.
[Arni] Completely.
And you always do.
I don't know how I would have
gone through life
if I hadn't had her with me.
[Andri] I want you to know
glaciers as my grandparents did.
[wind]
As I do.
[wind]
[distant wind]
[wind and microscopic debris]
[gusting winds]
[blizzard wind]
[ice creaking]
[ice creaking]
[ice creaking]
This is how a glacier sounds.
You can't quite see it,
but it's moving.
[ice creaking]
[ice creaking]
When snowfall stacks up long
enough, year after year,
the ice grows heavy and starts
to move under its own weight.
That movement is what
defines a glacier,
ice that has come alive.
[ice rumbling]
A glacier's life unfolds
in geologic time,
over centuries and millennia
instead of months and years.
Blue is the color
of the aged ice.
The deeper the blue,
the deeper the time.
As long as winter snowfall
exceeds summer melt,
the glacier will keep flowing.
This cycle brings
life to the land.
[gentle music playing]
[birds chirping]
[water rushing]
My grandparents thought
glaciers would always be there.
I had thought this too.
But then one day in 2014,
this is on the news.
[host] Ok Glacier was on
a mountain in Western Iceland.
It was always known as
Iceland's smallest glacier
but it will not be considered
a glacier anymore
because glaciologist
Oddur Sigurosson is on his way
up the mountain
to issue a death
certificate for the glacier.
[Oddur] I put down the cause of
death as extreme summer heat.
Ok Glacier was only about
700 years old at its demise.
That is to say, a mere
infant among glaciers.
Around the year 1900 it was
about 15 square kilometers.
But in the last 15 years,
it has shrunk faster than I
imagined glaciers could shrink.
It has declined remarkably fast.
It doesnt move anymore
and that's why it is "dead ice."
[water trickling]
[Andri] I wonder if the death
of a glacier will seem as
historic to you
as it does to me.
[water trickling]
For me, this is when
the horizon collapsed.
The future we were warned
about is no longer distant;
it is here.
Time is running out.
The first time I felt this way,
I picked up a camera.
And, without knowing it,
began making this time
capsule for you.
It's 1997, my girlfriend Magga
has just given birth to our
first child, Hlynur.
[Andri] This is Hlynur's
first bath
with his mother.
Isn't this beautiful?
[Andri] At the same time,
my other grandfather, Jon,
tells us he may be dying.
So we all come running
to his seaside home.
[Andri] Here we have four
generations lying on the grass.
The heirs to the throne.
The oldest man, with his
oldest son, and his oldest son,
and his oldest son.
- The oldest of them all.
[Andri] Look how cool he is.
I'm not ready to say goodbye.
Earlier that summer, I take a
job at the National Archives,
a place that preserves the
oldest records in Iceland.
Each archive is a portal that
sends me to another time.
I travel through
the Eddas to 1220,
when our myths of gods and the
cosmos are first transcribed.
The Book of Settlements
takes me to 874,
when the first humans
settled in Iceland.
Now, I'm in 1862, in a
folktale about elves.
Here, an elf has lured
a shepherd into her home
inside the rocks.
Then, I land in the living room
of an old woman born in 1918.
She is singing one of the
oldest art forms in Iceland,
song poems called rimur,
the Icelandic word for rhyme.
[singing in foreign language]
[singing in foreign language]
[singing in foreign language]
[Andri] Rimur feels like such a
discovery that I share it on TV.
- I had never
heard anything like it.
But when I started listening
carefully to the lyrics,
it contained such sorrow.
It was...
about the collapse
of the old ways.
As I listened to the
constant repetition and rhythm,
I became enchanted by it.
[Andri whistling Rimur tune]
[Andri] I play the recordings
for my son when he gets fussy.
He calms down as soon as
the melodies start up.
This old woman singing my son
to sleep revives a world lost
to me, until now.
[Andri] We're filming him
now, when he can't do anything,
and when he starts
talking and being fun,
we won't take any
photos of him at all.
But I'll always have this.
[overlapping chatter]
[Andri] I was never a proper
nerd with a proper camera.
But thinking of
Grandpa Jon's last summer,
I just grab what is
handy and hit record.
- Andri, is there a
zoom lens on that thing?
- Yeah.
- Are you sure?
- Yeah.
[Andri] When you look
back over the last 50 years...
what stands out?
[Jon] What?
It's how fun it is
to make mistakes.
[Andri] It's fun to make
mistakes? - Yeah.
That stands out.
That stands out?
- Yeah.
And it never pays to save money.
- It never
pays to save money.
No.
- No.
[Andri] The more I film,
the more I can hold on to
Grandpa's every word.
It's as if recording him can
transport him into the future,
where I can meet him once again.
[Jon] It was the loveliest
proposal and confession
I've ever
heard from a woman.
[Disa] Is that so?
[Jon] No Icelandic woman has
ever said anything half as
beautiful.
[Andri] What did she say?
[Jon] You want
to know what she said?
[Disa] That's a secret.
[Jon] The loveliest
proposal I've ever heard.
It's a secret.
- It's a secret.
[Jon] But we should
definitely tell Andri.
[Disa] No!
[laughter]
[laughter]
[Andri] From this
point forward,
I keep the camera rolling and
record everything that I love.
[Andri] Everything's
covered in flowers.
Petur Jonsson's gymnastics show.
That's Bosi, he's
going swimming.
It's approaching midnight.
Grandma!
They're playing dodgeball.
A can of whipped cream.
The beautiful cake.
It's 11 o'clock.
Time for the boot toss.
Mmm, the steak is ready.
Hello Magga.
- Hi.
[Andri] Hello Hlynur.
- Hi.
How old are you now?
- Four.
[Andri] How
old are you, Hlynur?
[Hlynur] Five.
Six years old.
[Andri]
Hey Kristn Lovisa.
Are you turning six months old?
Hulda Filippia,
are you one year old today?
Elin Freyja, how old are you?
- Two years old.
[Kristin] Now I am three.
[Andri] Have
you gone nuts?
[Kristin] I
am a wild child!
[Hlynur] I'm
only one year old.
[Magga] Oh
my, the tiny baby.
[Andri] Magga, look
how young you are now.
Only 30 years old.
- Aw, 31.
[Andri] And how old am I?
[Hlynur] You're
five years old!
[laughter]
[laughter]
[Andri] In our family, Grandpa
Arni was our first archivist.
[gentle music playing]
Through his records, I can
step into his memories.
And so many of his
memories transport me to the
place he loves most.
[Andri] You took such
special photos on the glaciers.
[Arni] Yeah, I did...
[Andri] When I was a kid,
Grandpa Arni would put on
slideshows and tell us
tales of adventures.
Each photo jogs Arni's memory.
With this slide, he recalls
Hulda's happiness as the ice
mingles with the clouds.
With this one, he remembers
places waiting to be named.
The glacier plays tricks
on his memory too.
"That's how it is on a glacier,"
Grandpa Arni says.
"You think you've walked
this path before, but then,
all of a sudden,
there's a crevice."
[slide projector clacking]
And every once in a while, a
dahlia from his garden bursts
into the picture.
With this slide, Arni talks
about a certain kind of peace.
All these years later,
I understand just
what this peace means.
[Andri] What
is your first memory?
[Arni] I actually remember
quite well when my dad died.
[Andri] How old
were you when he drowned?
[Arni] 12 years old.
It naturally...
was a very big shock.
[Andri] I always
thought that this memory
pushed him away from
the ocean and far uphill.
For Hulda, glaciers were
a place of solace too.
[Hulda] First, I was...
engaged to another and
had twins with him.
Two lovely girls.
He went to study in
the United States.
And he found himself
an American
and just broke up with me.
That was naturally
a bit of a shock.
[Andri] She found strength
in the sky and in the ice.
[gentle music playing]
Grandpa Arni likens
photography to glaciers;
they also record
the passage of time.
Our glaciers contain:
a volcanic eruption from 1918,
another from 1983,
one from 2004,
and 2011.
Bubbles in the ice hold
ancient air that tells stories
of seasons passed.
Their warmth, their cold,
their precipitations,
their pollens,
their pollutants.
My grandparents were some
of the first to touch this
archive of deep time.
[host] Another milestone
was reached in the research
of Vatnajokull Glacier.
[Hulda] They were drilling to
reach the ice core down there.
I was an assistant...
There I am.
This was fantastic.
[host] Finally, an
ice core has been obtained
containing valuable information
about the internal
structure of temperate glaciers
and information on climate
changes in Iceland
back to the year 1500.
[Arni] That was,
and is, quite special.
[repeated tapping]
[Andri] Arni and Hulda would
tell me that to hold an ice core
is to hold the Earth's
memories in your hand.
[ethereal music playing]
[ethereal music playing]
[wind]
[overlapping chatter]
[Andri] Smile!
I'm making a video.
[Magni] Happy
birthday, champ!
It's your birthday today.
That is why we sing a song.
on the same day
you were born
Congratulations on your
lucky day, my lucky fellow.
[Andri] Grandpa Arni
won't remember this party.
When I tell him he
had a birthday, he says,
"How fun. How old am I now?"
[Andri] My Grandfather,
do you remember the honeymoon?
[Arni] Do I remember-
[Andri] The honeymoon
up on Vatnajokull?
[Arni] Oh no, I
don't remember that.
[Hulda] It's ok, go ahead.
He has become so forgetful.
[Andri] He says it just
happened one day, like a crack;
he couldn't remember
a single detail.
[fireworks exploding]
[fireworks exploding]
[Andri] You have to kiss!
[Andri] Now I can't blink
without a month passing me by.
[Andri] There you go!
Great! Great!
[Magga] How long
did she practice? 15 minutes?
[Andri] 15 minutes.
Oh, oh, oh...
[Andri] It's seven o'clock
and our thermometer shows...
[Magga] 36. (97F)
- 36?
[Magga] The thermometer
on the house is at 50 (122F).
[Andri] What
country are we in?
[rushing water]
[wind]
[Andri] I thought
I had more time.
There's so much I
want to ask Arni,
and so much more
I will never know.
[host] Beneath the
Vatnajokull Glacier lies a
restless family of volcanos.
[eruption]
[Andri] Our unpredictable
island holds many unknowns,
like when a volcano might erupt
and unleash a glacial flood.
[host] We see the water from the
glacier flowing down the slope.
A formidable force.
[Andri] We've always contended
with the elements here,
and adjusted our
lives around them.
[host] The flood tore massive
icebergs from the glaciers edge
and hurled them far
across the sands.
Those standing here sense
how small humankind is in
comparison to all of this.
[Andri] Reverence for
these forces is embedded in
the stories of my grandparents.
Their tales reflect a way
of seeing the world where
nature is alive...
...and full of mysteries.
[Hulda] Before we
changed the landscape here,
there were these cliffs.
I saw Hidden People
in the old days.
We once saw a Hidden Man
suddenly appear...
and then disappear.
[Arni] He disappeared?
- Yes.
[Jon] "I'm an
elf woman," she says.
Some of us live in cliffs..."
"while others live
inside rocks."
She said,
You can never fully see me"
"because it takes so much of
my energy to appear to you.
"But if I draw more energy,
I can speak to you."
"And even influence you."
- How are the new pants?
[Andri] They're nice pants.
- I had them shortened.
[Andri] Yes.
[Disa] They were too long.
[Jon] I cannot resist
the will of the elf woman.
She will keep appearing
until I give in.
For example, she
ordered me to marry Disa.
And I did it.
[Andri] So many of my
grandparents' generation have
stories like this.
Each hillock has a legend.
Every river, a folktale.
Every glacier, a hidden world.
When I worked at
the National Archives,
I found this recording,
a farmer telling a legend of a
mythical forest inside the ice.
[Ragnar] Hundreds of
years ago they found birch logs
at the edge of the glacier.
It's very strange.
I don't understand it, but
I'm not saying it isn't true.
[Andri] For centuries,
those living at the base of
Vatnajokull Glacier notice
logs thawing from the ice.
This is a strange sight in
our nearly treeless country,
sparking rumors of a
forest inside the glacier.
A place that hides
outlaws and trolls,
where time stands still.
But there is truth
to this legend.
It's around the year 900.
Our first ancestors just
arrived and encountered
trees growing here.
They name it Breioamork,
the Wide Forest.
Over the years,
a glacial tongue flows
down the mountain and freezes
the trees in time.
It's 2026 and that
tongue is still here,
now called Breioamerkurjokull,
the Wide Forest Glacier.
A name that ties this
living ice back to the founding
of Iceland itself.
[gentle music playing]
[gentle music playing]
[thuds and ice shattering]
[host] A glaciologist
expressed concern with the
retreat of Icelandic
glaciers in recent decades.
He says the country will have
no glaciers in 200 years,
possibly much sooner.
[Oddur] Such bad news
is unprecedented in history.
And it constantly surprises
us how it keeps receding
faster and faster.
This is the same phenomenon
happening in Antarctica,
Greenland, the Himalayas and
all areas with glaciers.
Iceland's glaciers are
1,000 years old now,
which in some
sense means that
we lose 5 years
of history every year.
[Andri] I struggle with
the death of one glacier.
And here is the news,
they all will be gone.
Glaciers are leaving
geologic time.
Changes that once took hundreds,
thousands, even
millions of years are now
unfolding in a
single human lifetime.
[slide projector clacking]
[slide projector clacking]
Grandpa Arni has been
spending his days photographing
flowers from his garden.
[slide projector clacking]
All he can really remember
is that he loves Hulda.
[slide projector clacking]
[Hulda] There's
a whole box there.
Let's see.
This is when we all
went to the Highlands.
[Arni] Yes.
[Andri] He's been
losing his balance,
so we move him to
a care facility.
Upon one visit, I find
him in front of the TV.
He asks me, "Why is the
slideshow moving so fast?"
He slowly starts to fade away.
[reflective music playing]
[reflective music playing]
And then, he's gone.
[Andri] Tell me your name.
[Arni] Arni Kjartansson.
[Andri] When were
you born?
[Arni]
November 26th, 1922.
[Andri] And
what day is today?
[Arni] Its the
27th of March, 2004.
[Andri] We are collecting
sources and biological samples
so you can be cloned
in the 22nd century.
[Andri] All these years,
I thought my filming
was a way to bottle each
and every moment.
But, really, I was just
watching the past flicker
behind glass, noticing the
effects of time on camera tape.
Now, I see it for what it was,
holding on to dear
life as it charges forward,
trying to stop all that I
loved from slipping away.
I see the impulse to
hold on everywhere.
This is the Library of Water
in western Iceland.
It stores melted ice
from our glaciers.
[futuristic music playing]
[futuristic music playing]
Here is water from
Poris Glacier.
Here is Snaefells Glacier.
And this one is Ok Glacier,
collected just before it died.
Perhaps, in the form of water,
the ice could still
travel through time.
It's the same water, after all.
As ice, it holds memories.
As liquid, does it lose them?
[lighthouse softly pulsates]
[water dripping]
[wind blows]
[ice and ash crumble]
[water dripping]
[water running]
[emotional music playing]
I often think about
the unsettling quiet of
a glacier's death.
It's like a summertime
that just came and
stayed and stayed.
[water rushing]
[pensive music playing]
[pensive music playing]
[waves lap on the iceberg]
[air bubbles releasing]
[air bubbles releasing]
Will your oceans be
made of our glaciers?
Your rain of our seas?
Your water is my water.
Your time, also mine.
In my family,
Grandpa Jon's horizon is
his grandfather's horizon.
And his grandfather's
before that.
[singing in foreign language]
[singing in foreign language]
[Andri] Here he is
singing "Dreamland,"
an ode to the seaside plains
where he made his home.
...there is
the land of my dreams
[Andri] Jon's love for
his home is intertwined with
the way he speaks about it.
He can transport me
there with a single word.
I think of this
one term he used...
...fuglabjarg, the Icelandic
word for "bird cliff."
[loud squawking]
[loud squawking]
It also means "a
noisy gathering."
He used it to describe
my parents' wedding.
It was a total
fuglabjarg in there.
You couldn't hear
a single thing.
But the bird cliffs that
Jon knew are no longer the
bird cliffs that I know.
[reporter] Seabirds
are finding it hard to adapt
to climate change.
Recent figures indicate that
the Icelandic puffin population
has declined by 70% since 1995.
Biologists say the
main reason is the rise of
ocean temperature...
[waves lapping]
[Andri] Will this word
for noise, for me,
now reference a
silent place for you?
Maybe fuglabjarg will
become kind of a ghost word,
where speaking it will
elicit a memory of birds who
no longer exist.
I wonder about the name Iceland.
In 200 years,
will saying my country's
name also summon a ghost?
[overlapping chatter]
[friend] Your
dad is videoing you.
[Hulda] I know.
[friend] Why?
It's so special to see an
11-year-old girl eating cake.
And ice cream.
- And ice cream.
What do you think about that?
[Andri] Shortly after
Hulda's birthday in 2019,
I was asked to write something
to memorialize the dead
Ok Glacier for its
upcoming funeral.
The words would go
on a copper plaque on
the mountain where the
glacier once lived.
[interviewer] It's kind
of a writer's dream,
and also a writer's nightmare.
You've got four lines.
How can you say something
that's going to be meaningful?
- Yeah, and you're
writing in copper.
So you don't have a easy delete
button if you make a mistake.
It's like when you make a
gravestone in a cemetery,
you, uh, somebody's
gonna read it in
200, 300, 400, 500 years.
Copper lasts longer than stone,
so maybe 6,000 years.
I'm not sure how
to approach this.
[explosion]
Once I wrote
about the destruction
of another landscape.
I called upon Icelanders
to stop the construction of
a dam that would
choke a glacial river.
But I never thought the source
of the river itself could die.
And this time,
not because of a
local power company,
but due to the world's
hunger for power.
I have never written a
memorial for a glacier.
No one has.
How do you say goodbye
to what you never thought
you could lose?
When Grandpa Arni died,
I could not stop
writing his obituary.
I had too many words.
I never felt closer to Arni.
And yet, he's gone.
I could see how saying
goodbye could allow his memory
to live on.
Grandpa Arni lived a long
life worthy of celebration.
But Ok Glacier's life
was cut short by us;
there's no celebrating that.
How can I express the
scale of this loss in a way
that reaches the future?
[waves crashing]
[haunting music playing]
The death of Ok Glacier
is not a single event.
It threatens the life
of everything in our
interconnected world.
Our beaches, our forests,
our seasons, our loved ones.
Our language.
When upheaval happens
on this scale,
only myths feel big
enough to hold it.
In our mythology, the
world is born in ice,
but ends in the ocean,
by way of the sea monsters.
The Serpent of Midgard,
he is the ocean
and the planet itself.
In the Eddas, Thor tries
to conquer the serpent.
But just as he slays him,
the serpent kills Thor.
The waters rise,
and the serpent's venom
infects the seas.
Their mutual deaths trigger
the death of all the gods,
and a total destruction
of everything.
How can I tell the future
the extent of what we have
lost if the future
may not even exist?
[churning waves]
[wind gusting]
[overlapping chatter]
[fireworks exploding]
[Magni] Look at this here.
A little more.
No...
Leave it there!
When this light goes out,
then start it.
Now you can start it.
[Coach] Clear the ball!
[Magni] Yes, well done.
[Coach] And
forward, forward!
[applause and cheering]
[audio rewinding]
[Hulda singing in Icelandic]
[Andri] Let me
send you this song,
a rima that can transport
you through time.
Its patterns of rhyme helped
people to remember long stories
before recording
technology existed.
- There were women
learning strange poems from
their grandmothers.
Who learned it from
their grandmothers,
who in turn learned it
from their grandmothers.
You can feel how time
shrinks down to nothing
when you look at it through
these old women.
[Hulda singing in Icelandic]
[Hulda singing in Icelandic]
[Andri] Rimur transmits
our ancestral stories
across centuries,
each verse a vessel for
keeping the past alive.
Maybe generational memory is
the closest way that humans can
experience the depth of time.
Happy birthday Hulda Filippia
she has a birthday today.
Hi Grandma.
[Hulda] How
was the wedding trip?
- It was incredibly fun
and challenging.
We experienced all kinds
of weather on the glacier.
- Yes.
- We were there
for three weeks.
- Three weeks?
- Yes, on the glacier.
- Wow.
That's a long time.
- It was a fun time.
[Andri] Can you ask
her to calculate for you?
When she'll be 96 years old?
- Do you want to figure out
when you'll be 96 years old?
- Yes, yes.
[Andri] We forgot to
turn on the camera there.
Now, lets do it once again.
- Andri.
Should I say it?
- Yes, you should ask.
- When will
you be 96 years old?
- 2104.
- 104.
- Yes.
- It will be fun to know
what will have happened by then.
- Yes.
[Andri] 2104.
Looking at it this way, a
future beyond my own life is
beginning to come clear.
It's a place where
my own daughter might
be a grandmother,
and where my own grandmother's
memory can live on.
I can touch time,
stretching back to Grandma
Hulda's birth in 1924,
all the way through 2104,
where we may reach you.
It's like a handshake
of generations.
That was one of the last times
I filmed with Grandma Hulda.
Soon, she too would pass away.
It's a generational
shift in my family.
But from time to time,
I can meet them
all once again.
I can still revisit
the way light reflects off
Grandpa Jon here.
And Arni.
And Disa.
[Andri] Hi Grandma.
[Jon] It's
then that I realized,
it's the same with
people as with flowers.
They wither into puffballs
and spread their seeds.
But from the root,
new life grows.
[Andri] I didn't record
much from their funerals,
only a couple of clips.
[Eilin] ...but I think it's good
for me to see her like this.
[somber music playing]
[waves lapping gently]
[Andri] What jacket
are you wearing, Hlynur?
- Grandpas jacket.
[Andri] Yeah, nice.
[Hlynur] The
jacket of the plains.
- Go!
[reflective music playing]
[Andri] I want you to see
how our lives move in rhymes.
Funerals live in sunsets.
Birthdays in sunrises.
Weddings live in
fellow creatures.
Our summer migrations
live in streams.
Harvests in the floodplains.
All this time, nature keeps
records all around us.
In these cycles
of time and water,
I feel a direct connection
to all ancestors and
to all descendants.
But our time is unlike
any time before.
[water trickling]
[wind]
[wind]
[rain falling]
[raindrops]
The singers of the swan
songs are wrestled down by Time.
The new era erases the
footsteps of our rhymes
The only way to keep the verses
of the mother tongue alive...
...is to put this into
the mouths of children
[Andri] Hlynur.
[Andri] This rima that lulled
my son to sleep is an elegy,
a goodbye to the life
the singer held dear.
She urges the listener to
care for what still remains.
Her words of sorrow traveled
into a future that, to her,
seemed foreclosed, but
they still reached me.
[somber music playing]
I had the honor to write
the text on this plaque.
And it's a strange situation
for a writer to write,
in copper, something that
will outlast all paper.
It will even last
longer than this stone.
This is pointing inwards,
and it's also pointing
into the deep future.
And so, people come up here,
and they can
look at the horizon.
But they will also
look at the words,
which we ask here
on this plate,
is that we acknowledge that
we know what is happening.
And we know what
needs to be done,
but only those that will
read the words will know
if we actually stood up
to that challenge that
we were given.
[pensive music playing]
Standing in the place
where the ice once was,
I look across the valley to
the neighboring mountain.
A thick patch of ice,
for now, still a glacier,
is moving slowly down the slope.
[Andri] Hey,
what are you doing?
Its out of focus.
- I know, very out of focus.
Wasn't it supposed
to be in focus?
It's not focusing.
[Andri] Before Hulda died,
my kids were becoming
the camera people.
We helped Hulda in the
garden many afternoons.
[Hlynur] Here it comes.
[Andri] What do
you think about time?
[Hulda] Time?
- Yes.
[Hulda] Time
passes incredibly fast.
There's always plenty to do.
I never feel alone.
And I often just
start talking...
I feel like he is sitting
in the chair next to me.
We've had a very enjoyable life.
It's good to have the memories.
I start to smell the
glacier in April
and I look forward to going.
But now it's been a
long time since I went.
I would need to go up
with a plane, I think.
[water rushing]
[emotional music playing]
[Andri] I cannot
send you a glacier,
but at least I
can send you this:
A portal to a time when
glaciers are still alive,
held open so they
can continue to be.
I wish in some way I could
know how you received it,
but only time will tell.
[singing rima in Icelandic]
[singing rima in Icelandic]
[singing rima in Icelandic]
[singing rima in Icelandic]
[singing rima in Icelandic]
[pickaxe thudding]
[equipment rattles]
[something opens]
[film projector whirring]
[gentle music playing]
[gentle music playing]
[microphone tapping]
[Andri] Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
I hope that this will reach you.
We will never meet because
we live in different times.
I cannot send you a glacier,
but at least I
can send you this.
[theme music playing]
[projector whirring]
[jungle birdsong]
[water lapping]
[insects chirping]
This capsule could have
been filled with snakes
from the Amazon.
This boa constrictor on
my shoulders belongs to my
favorite uncle, John.
15 years later,
he invites me to help him
research the mating habits
of the giant anaconda
in Venezuela.
I would have been here,
but these plans conflict
with my own mating habits.
[baby exclaims]
So I stay in my own
habitat here in Iceland,
writing poetry and
science fiction.
[host] Andri
Snaer Magnason's book,
"The Story of the Blue Planet"
has garnered
significant attention.
This is perhaps the most
political Icelandic novel I've
read in a long time.
[Andri] Hulda!
Over there is the
glacier tongue, look.
Whoops!
Over there is the glacier.
[Elin] Over there!
[Andri] The first thing I'm
sending you is a story that I
used to tell my own kids.
It's about our home.
[stirring music playing]
First, there was the void.
[asteroid whooshing]
Then, fire met the ice.
[explosion booms!]
[water rushing]
In the chaos rose Auohumla,
a cow made of frost and snow.
From her body came
hundreds of glaciers...
...that carved
mountains and valleys.
From her udders ran four
rivers that nourished the world.
Her ice made a home
here in Iceland,
and Iceland became a
home for all of us.
[birds chirping]
[waves crashing]
[bright ethereal music]
[dog barking]
[children chattering]
[bright music playing]
We have lived with
the ice for 1,000 years.
[Andri] Smile!
'Isgland'... Isgland?
Is this correct?
[Eilin] Yes.
[Andri] Good job.
[Eilin] Iceland.
[Andri] But that was
just the beginning,
and you will need many stories.
[Andri] I can capture
the Northern Lights!
Wow!
Look, they're moving.
Wow!
They disappeared - whoa!
[Eilin] They're
over here now.
[gentle music playing]
[water rushing]
[Andri] I don't know
how old you will be when
you receive this.
I am 53, speaking to
you from the year 2026.
And this is what
Iceland looks like now.
[stirring music playing]
[lava roars]
[Andri] I don't think I've ever
seen anything as beautiful.
How do you like it, girls?
[both] It's awesome.
[bright music playing]
[water rushing]
[Andri] This is
such a beautiful path.
[bird hoots]
[Andri hoots back]
- Andri, are you with us?
- Yes.
[birds screech]
[bright music playing]
[Andri] My love for this place
comes from those who raised me,
my parents and my grandparents.
We are a family of
firsts and lasts.
Grandpa Jon was the last
in a 1,000-year line to be
born on this farm.
Grandma Disa was
the first to laugh always.
[laughter]
[overlapping chatter]
And Grandma Hulda,
the first woman
to fly in Iceland.
Grandpa Arni,
one of the first
to explore Iceland's glaciers.
But I became the first
to say goodbye to something
we never thought
we could lose.
[wind]
[wind]
[overlapping chatter]
[singing in foreign language]
[Andri] Now, it's 2019.
My youngest of four kids,
Hulda, is turning 11.
[Andri] Wow!
[overlapping chatter]
[Andri] And my
last grandparent,
also named Hulda,
is still alive.
[Andri] You are living
up to high expectations, Hulda.
[Hulda] We Huldas here.
[camera shutter clicks]
[Andri] Grandma Hulda had been
married to my grandfather Arni
for 60 years.
Now, the things they
love most in the world are
beginning to die.
[reporter] In 2014, Ok
Glacier was the first glacier to
die due to climate change.
Now, a funeral commemorating
it will be held in August.
This funeral is the first
of its kind in the world.
[Andri] A funeral for a
glacier feels surreal,
like my sense of home
is slipping away.
I had been collecting my
grandparents' glacier stories
since I could remember.
And now, suddenly, I
see them in a new light.
I have this urge to
gather up all of them,
thinking they may be
useful for the future.
Let me send you
my favorite one,
how my grandparents
fell in love on the ice.
This is their footage.
Here they are on their
honeymoon in 1956.
And here they are in 2004,
2010, and 2017.
[Hulda] From a young age,
I just craved going
to the mountains.
In the springtime,
strangely enough,
I start to smell
a glacier scent.
[Andri] What
is a glacier scent?
[Hulda] Well,
I can't describe it.
- It was something
special.
There was just this smell -
it was exhilarating.
[Andri] And
when did you meet?
[Hulda] It was a
meeting of mountaineers.
[Arni] I liked
her right away.
[Hulda] I used
to say to my mom,
"Oh, I wish I was a boy,
then I could do this and that."
To have more adventures.
I was just up for anything.
Arni says to me, "We are going
up to the Vatnajokull glacier."
And I say, "Listen,
can I go with you?"
[Arni] The local
skiers asked if I was crazy,
taking a woman up
to Vatnajokull.
Thats completely ridiculous!
[host] The largest
glacier is Vatnajokull,
which covers about one twelfth
of Iceland's surface
and is the largest
glacier in Europe.
Trips up to
Vatnajokull are an act of daring
only for well-equipped and
highly experienced mountaineers.
[Hulda] We spent a
whole week on the glacier.
[Arni] I dont think
we have parted since.
[Hulda] We got
married on Friday,
and left early the next
morning for a three-week trip.
After that, we often went
up to Vatnajokull Glacier
with the Icelandic
Glaciological Society.
[Arni] This was the
beginning of the surveying.
These are the same measurements
they are taking today.
[gusting wind]
[Arni] Were you ever cold?
[Hulda] No, never cold.
We were newlyweds!
[Andri] Do you consider the
glacier to be your second home?
[Hulda] I do.
Its a different world
being on top of a glacier.
Everything is white.
It's just endless.
[film reel unspools]
[Andri] How
old are you now?
- I've forgotten
everything.
- You're
turning 95, my Arni.
- 95?
- Yes.
[Arni] Yes, you
keep track of this for me.
[Hulda] Yes, yes, I do.
[Arni] Completely.
And you always do.
I don't know how I would have
gone through life
if I hadn't had her with me.
[Andri] I want you to know
glaciers as my grandparents did.
[wind]
As I do.
[wind]
[distant wind]
[wind and microscopic debris]
[gusting winds]
[blizzard wind]
[ice creaking]
[ice creaking]
[ice creaking]
This is how a glacier sounds.
You can't quite see it,
but it's moving.
[ice creaking]
[ice creaking]
When snowfall stacks up long
enough, year after year,
the ice grows heavy and starts
to move under its own weight.
That movement is what
defines a glacier,
ice that has come alive.
[ice rumbling]
A glacier's life unfolds
in geologic time,
over centuries and millennia
instead of months and years.
Blue is the color
of the aged ice.
The deeper the blue,
the deeper the time.
As long as winter snowfall
exceeds summer melt,
the glacier will keep flowing.
This cycle brings
life to the land.
[gentle music playing]
[birds chirping]
[water rushing]
My grandparents thought
glaciers would always be there.
I had thought this too.
But then one day in 2014,
this is on the news.
[host] Ok Glacier was on
a mountain in Western Iceland.
It was always known as
Iceland's smallest glacier
but it will not be considered
a glacier anymore
because glaciologist
Oddur Sigurosson is on his way
up the mountain
to issue a death
certificate for the glacier.
[Oddur] I put down the cause of
death as extreme summer heat.
Ok Glacier was only about
700 years old at its demise.
That is to say, a mere
infant among glaciers.
Around the year 1900 it was
about 15 square kilometers.
But in the last 15 years,
it has shrunk faster than I
imagined glaciers could shrink.
It has declined remarkably fast.
It doesnt move anymore
and that's why it is "dead ice."
[water trickling]
[Andri] I wonder if the death
of a glacier will seem as
historic to you
as it does to me.
[water trickling]
For me, this is when
the horizon collapsed.
The future we were warned
about is no longer distant;
it is here.
Time is running out.
The first time I felt this way,
I picked up a camera.
And, without knowing it,
began making this time
capsule for you.
It's 1997, my girlfriend Magga
has just given birth to our
first child, Hlynur.
[Andri] This is Hlynur's
first bath
with his mother.
Isn't this beautiful?
[Andri] At the same time,
my other grandfather, Jon,
tells us he may be dying.
So we all come running
to his seaside home.
[Andri] Here we have four
generations lying on the grass.
The heirs to the throne.
The oldest man, with his
oldest son, and his oldest son,
and his oldest son.
- The oldest of them all.
[Andri] Look how cool he is.
I'm not ready to say goodbye.
Earlier that summer, I take a
job at the National Archives,
a place that preserves the
oldest records in Iceland.
Each archive is a portal that
sends me to another time.
I travel through
the Eddas to 1220,
when our myths of gods and the
cosmos are first transcribed.
The Book of Settlements
takes me to 874,
when the first humans
settled in Iceland.
Now, I'm in 1862, in a
folktale about elves.
Here, an elf has lured
a shepherd into her home
inside the rocks.
Then, I land in the living room
of an old woman born in 1918.
She is singing one of the
oldest art forms in Iceland,
song poems called rimur,
the Icelandic word for rhyme.
[singing in foreign language]
[singing in foreign language]
[singing in foreign language]
[Andri] Rimur feels like such a
discovery that I share it on TV.
- I had never
heard anything like it.
But when I started listening
carefully to the lyrics,
it contained such sorrow.
It was...
about the collapse
of the old ways.
As I listened to the
constant repetition and rhythm,
I became enchanted by it.
[Andri whistling Rimur tune]
[Andri] I play the recordings
for my son when he gets fussy.
He calms down as soon as
the melodies start up.
This old woman singing my son
to sleep revives a world lost
to me, until now.
[Andri] We're filming him
now, when he can't do anything,
and when he starts
talking and being fun,
we won't take any
photos of him at all.
But I'll always have this.
[overlapping chatter]
[Andri] I was never a proper
nerd with a proper camera.
But thinking of
Grandpa Jon's last summer,
I just grab what is
handy and hit record.
- Andri, is there a
zoom lens on that thing?
- Yeah.
- Are you sure?
- Yeah.
[Andri] When you look
back over the last 50 years...
what stands out?
[Jon] What?
It's how fun it is
to make mistakes.
[Andri] It's fun to make
mistakes? - Yeah.
That stands out.
That stands out?
- Yeah.
And it never pays to save money.
- It never
pays to save money.
No.
- No.
[Andri] The more I film,
the more I can hold on to
Grandpa's every word.
It's as if recording him can
transport him into the future,
where I can meet him once again.
[Jon] It was the loveliest
proposal and confession
I've ever
heard from a woman.
[Disa] Is that so?
[Jon] No Icelandic woman has
ever said anything half as
beautiful.
[Andri] What did she say?
[Jon] You want
to know what she said?
[Disa] That's a secret.
[Jon] The loveliest
proposal I've ever heard.
It's a secret.
- It's a secret.
[Jon] But we should
definitely tell Andri.
[Disa] No!
[laughter]
[laughter]
[Andri] From this
point forward,
I keep the camera rolling and
record everything that I love.
[Andri] Everything's
covered in flowers.
Petur Jonsson's gymnastics show.
That's Bosi, he's
going swimming.
It's approaching midnight.
Grandma!
They're playing dodgeball.
A can of whipped cream.
The beautiful cake.
It's 11 o'clock.
Time for the boot toss.
Mmm, the steak is ready.
Hello Magga.
- Hi.
[Andri] Hello Hlynur.
- Hi.
How old are you now?
- Four.
[Andri] How
old are you, Hlynur?
[Hlynur] Five.
Six years old.
[Andri]
Hey Kristn Lovisa.
Are you turning six months old?
Hulda Filippia,
are you one year old today?
Elin Freyja, how old are you?
- Two years old.
[Kristin] Now I am three.
[Andri] Have
you gone nuts?
[Kristin] I
am a wild child!
[Hlynur] I'm
only one year old.
[Magga] Oh
my, the tiny baby.
[Andri] Magga, look
how young you are now.
Only 30 years old.
- Aw, 31.
[Andri] And how old am I?
[Hlynur] You're
five years old!
[laughter]
[laughter]
[Andri] In our family, Grandpa
Arni was our first archivist.
[gentle music playing]
Through his records, I can
step into his memories.
And so many of his
memories transport me to the
place he loves most.
[Andri] You took such
special photos on the glaciers.
[Arni] Yeah, I did...
[Andri] When I was a kid,
Grandpa Arni would put on
slideshows and tell us
tales of adventures.
Each photo jogs Arni's memory.
With this slide, he recalls
Hulda's happiness as the ice
mingles with the clouds.
With this one, he remembers
places waiting to be named.
The glacier plays tricks
on his memory too.
"That's how it is on a glacier,"
Grandpa Arni says.
"You think you've walked
this path before, but then,
all of a sudden,
there's a crevice."
[slide projector clacking]
And every once in a while, a
dahlia from his garden bursts
into the picture.
With this slide, Arni talks
about a certain kind of peace.
All these years later,
I understand just
what this peace means.
[Andri] What
is your first memory?
[Arni] I actually remember
quite well when my dad died.
[Andri] How old
were you when he drowned?
[Arni] 12 years old.
It naturally...
was a very big shock.
[Andri] I always
thought that this memory
pushed him away from
the ocean and far uphill.
For Hulda, glaciers were
a place of solace too.
[Hulda] First, I was...
engaged to another and
had twins with him.
Two lovely girls.
He went to study in
the United States.
And he found himself
an American
and just broke up with me.
That was naturally
a bit of a shock.
[Andri] She found strength
in the sky and in the ice.
[gentle music playing]
Grandpa Arni likens
photography to glaciers;
they also record
the passage of time.
Our glaciers contain:
a volcanic eruption from 1918,
another from 1983,
one from 2004,
and 2011.
Bubbles in the ice hold
ancient air that tells stories
of seasons passed.
Their warmth, their cold,
their precipitations,
their pollens,
their pollutants.
My grandparents were some
of the first to touch this
archive of deep time.
[host] Another milestone
was reached in the research
of Vatnajokull Glacier.
[Hulda] They were drilling to
reach the ice core down there.
I was an assistant...
There I am.
This was fantastic.
[host] Finally, an
ice core has been obtained
containing valuable information
about the internal
structure of temperate glaciers
and information on climate
changes in Iceland
back to the year 1500.
[Arni] That was,
and is, quite special.
[repeated tapping]
[Andri] Arni and Hulda would
tell me that to hold an ice core
is to hold the Earth's
memories in your hand.
[ethereal music playing]
[ethereal music playing]
[wind]
[overlapping chatter]
[Andri] Smile!
I'm making a video.
[Magni] Happy
birthday, champ!
It's your birthday today.
That is why we sing a song.
on the same day
you were born
Congratulations on your
lucky day, my lucky fellow.
[Andri] Grandpa Arni
won't remember this party.
When I tell him he
had a birthday, he says,
"How fun. How old am I now?"
[Andri] My Grandfather,
do you remember the honeymoon?
[Arni] Do I remember-
[Andri] The honeymoon
up on Vatnajokull?
[Arni] Oh no, I
don't remember that.
[Hulda] It's ok, go ahead.
He has become so forgetful.
[Andri] He says it just
happened one day, like a crack;
he couldn't remember
a single detail.
[fireworks exploding]
[fireworks exploding]
[Andri] You have to kiss!
[Andri] Now I can't blink
without a month passing me by.
[Andri] There you go!
Great! Great!
[Magga] How long
did she practice? 15 minutes?
[Andri] 15 minutes.
Oh, oh, oh...
[Andri] It's seven o'clock
and our thermometer shows...
[Magga] 36. (97F)
- 36?
[Magga] The thermometer
on the house is at 50 (122F).
[Andri] What
country are we in?
[rushing water]
[wind]
[Andri] I thought
I had more time.
There's so much I
want to ask Arni,
and so much more
I will never know.
[host] Beneath the
Vatnajokull Glacier lies a
restless family of volcanos.
[eruption]
[Andri] Our unpredictable
island holds many unknowns,
like when a volcano might erupt
and unleash a glacial flood.
[host] We see the water from the
glacier flowing down the slope.
A formidable force.
[Andri] We've always contended
with the elements here,
and adjusted our
lives around them.
[host] The flood tore massive
icebergs from the glaciers edge
and hurled them far
across the sands.
Those standing here sense
how small humankind is in
comparison to all of this.
[Andri] Reverence for
these forces is embedded in
the stories of my grandparents.
Their tales reflect a way
of seeing the world where
nature is alive...
...and full of mysteries.
[Hulda] Before we
changed the landscape here,
there were these cliffs.
I saw Hidden People
in the old days.
We once saw a Hidden Man
suddenly appear...
and then disappear.
[Arni] He disappeared?
- Yes.
[Jon] "I'm an
elf woman," she says.
Some of us live in cliffs..."
"while others live
inside rocks."
She said,
You can never fully see me"
"because it takes so much of
my energy to appear to you.
"But if I draw more energy,
I can speak to you."
"And even influence you."
- How are the new pants?
[Andri] They're nice pants.
- I had them shortened.
[Andri] Yes.
[Disa] They were too long.
[Jon] I cannot resist
the will of the elf woman.
She will keep appearing
until I give in.
For example, she
ordered me to marry Disa.
And I did it.
[Andri] So many of my
grandparents' generation have
stories like this.
Each hillock has a legend.
Every river, a folktale.
Every glacier, a hidden world.
When I worked at
the National Archives,
I found this recording,
a farmer telling a legend of a
mythical forest inside the ice.
[Ragnar] Hundreds of
years ago they found birch logs
at the edge of the glacier.
It's very strange.
I don't understand it, but
I'm not saying it isn't true.
[Andri] For centuries,
those living at the base of
Vatnajokull Glacier notice
logs thawing from the ice.
This is a strange sight in
our nearly treeless country,
sparking rumors of a
forest inside the glacier.
A place that hides
outlaws and trolls,
where time stands still.
But there is truth
to this legend.
It's around the year 900.
Our first ancestors just
arrived and encountered
trees growing here.
They name it Breioamork,
the Wide Forest.
Over the years,
a glacial tongue flows
down the mountain and freezes
the trees in time.
It's 2026 and that
tongue is still here,
now called Breioamerkurjokull,
the Wide Forest Glacier.
A name that ties this
living ice back to the founding
of Iceland itself.
[gentle music playing]
[gentle music playing]
[thuds and ice shattering]
[host] A glaciologist
expressed concern with the
retreat of Icelandic
glaciers in recent decades.
He says the country will have
no glaciers in 200 years,
possibly much sooner.
[Oddur] Such bad news
is unprecedented in history.
And it constantly surprises
us how it keeps receding
faster and faster.
This is the same phenomenon
happening in Antarctica,
Greenland, the Himalayas and
all areas with glaciers.
Iceland's glaciers are
1,000 years old now,
which in some
sense means that
we lose 5 years
of history every year.
[Andri] I struggle with
the death of one glacier.
And here is the news,
they all will be gone.
Glaciers are leaving
geologic time.
Changes that once took hundreds,
thousands, even
millions of years are now
unfolding in a
single human lifetime.
[slide projector clacking]
[slide projector clacking]
Grandpa Arni has been
spending his days photographing
flowers from his garden.
[slide projector clacking]
All he can really remember
is that he loves Hulda.
[slide projector clacking]
[Hulda] There's
a whole box there.
Let's see.
This is when we all
went to the Highlands.
[Arni] Yes.
[Andri] He's been
losing his balance,
so we move him to
a care facility.
Upon one visit, I find
him in front of the TV.
He asks me, "Why is the
slideshow moving so fast?"
He slowly starts to fade away.
[reflective music playing]
[reflective music playing]
And then, he's gone.
[Andri] Tell me your name.
[Arni] Arni Kjartansson.
[Andri] When were
you born?
[Arni]
November 26th, 1922.
[Andri] And
what day is today?
[Arni] Its the
27th of March, 2004.
[Andri] We are collecting
sources and biological samples
so you can be cloned
in the 22nd century.
[Andri] All these years,
I thought my filming
was a way to bottle each
and every moment.
But, really, I was just
watching the past flicker
behind glass, noticing the
effects of time on camera tape.
Now, I see it for what it was,
holding on to dear
life as it charges forward,
trying to stop all that I
loved from slipping away.
I see the impulse to
hold on everywhere.
This is the Library of Water
in western Iceland.
It stores melted ice
from our glaciers.
[futuristic music playing]
[futuristic music playing]
Here is water from
Poris Glacier.
Here is Snaefells Glacier.
And this one is Ok Glacier,
collected just before it died.
Perhaps, in the form of water,
the ice could still
travel through time.
It's the same water, after all.
As ice, it holds memories.
As liquid, does it lose them?
[lighthouse softly pulsates]
[water dripping]
[wind blows]
[ice and ash crumble]
[water dripping]
[water running]
[emotional music playing]
I often think about
the unsettling quiet of
a glacier's death.
It's like a summertime
that just came and
stayed and stayed.
[water rushing]
[pensive music playing]
[pensive music playing]
[waves lap on the iceberg]
[air bubbles releasing]
[air bubbles releasing]
Will your oceans be
made of our glaciers?
Your rain of our seas?
Your water is my water.
Your time, also mine.
In my family,
Grandpa Jon's horizon is
his grandfather's horizon.
And his grandfather's
before that.
[singing in foreign language]
[singing in foreign language]
[Andri] Here he is
singing "Dreamland,"
an ode to the seaside plains
where he made his home.
...there is
the land of my dreams
[Andri] Jon's love for
his home is intertwined with
the way he speaks about it.
He can transport me
there with a single word.
I think of this
one term he used...
...fuglabjarg, the Icelandic
word for "bird cliff."
[loud squawking]
[loud squawking]
It also means "a
noisy gathering."
He used it to describe
my parents' wedding.
It was a total
fuglabjarg in there.
You couldn't hear
a single thing.
But the bird cliffs that
Jon knew are no longer the
bird cliffs that I know.
[reporter] Seabirds
are finding it hard to adapt
to climate change.
Recent figures indicate that
the Icelandic puffin population
has declined by 70% since 1995.
Biologists say the
main reason is the rise of
ocean temperature...
[waves lapping]
[Andri] Will this word
for noise, for me,
now reference a
silent place for you?
Maybe fuglabjarg will
become kind of a ghost word,
where speaking it will
elicit a memory of birds who
no longer exist.
I wonder about the name Iceland.
In 200 years,
will saying my country's
name also summon a ghost?
[overlapping chatter]
[friend] Your
dad is videoing you.
[Hulda] I know.
[friend] Why?
It's so special to see an
11-year-old girl eating cake.
And ice cream.
- And ice cream.
What do you think about that?
[Andri] Shortly after
Hulda's birthday in 2019,
I was asked to write something
to memorialize the dead
Ok Glacier for its
upcoming funeral.
The words would go
on a copper plaque on
the mountain where the
glacier once lived.
[interviewer] It's kind
of a writer's dream,
and also a writer's nightmare.
You've got four lines.
How can you say something
that's going to be meaningful?
- Yeah, and you're
writing in copper.
So you don't have a easy delete
button if you make a mistake.
It's like when you make a
gravestone in a cemetery,
you, uh, somebody's
gonna read it in
200, 300, 400, 500 years.
Copper lasts longer than stone,
so maybe 6,000 years.
I'm not sure how
to approach this.
[explosion]
Once I wrote
about the destruction
of another landscape.
I called upon Icelanders
to stop the construction of
a dam that would
choke a glacial river.
But I never thought the source
of the river itself could die.
And this time,
not because of a
local power company,
but due to the world's
hunger for power.
I have never written a
memorial for a glacier.
No one has.
How do you say goodbye
to what you never thought
you could lose?
When Grandpa Arni died,
I could not stop
writing his obituary.
I had too many words.
I never felt closer to Arni.
And yet, he's gone.
I could see how saying
goodbye could allow his memory
to live on.
Grandpa Arni lived a long
life worthy of celebration.
But Ok Glacier's life
was cut short by us;
there's no celebrating that.
How can I express the
scale of this loss in a way
that reaches the future?
[waves crashing]
[haunting music playing]
The death of Ok Glacier
is not a single event.
It threatens the life
of everything in our
interconnected world.
Our beaches, our forests,
our seasons, our loved ones.
Our language.
When upheaval happens
on this scale,
only myths feel big
enough to hold it.
In our mythology, the
world is born in ice,
but ends in the ocean,
by way of the sea monsters.
The Serpent of Midgard,
he is the ocean
and the planet itself.
In the Eddas, Thor tries
to conquer the serpent.
But just as he slays him,
the serpent kills Thor.
The waters rise,
and the serpent's venom
infects the seas.
Their mutual deaths trigger
the death of all the gods,
and a total destruction
of everything.
How can I tell the future
the extent of what we have
lost if the future
may not even exist?
[churning waves]
[wind gusting]
[overlapping chatter]
[fireworks exploding]
[Magni] Look at this here.
A little more.
No...
Leave it there!
When this light goes out,
then start it.
Now you can start it.
[Coach] Clear the ball!
[Magni] Yes, well done.
[Coach] And
forward, forward!
[applause and cheering]
[audio rewinding]
[Hulda singing in Icelandic]
[Andri] Let me
send you this song,
a rima that can transport
you through time.
Its patterns of rhyme helped
people to remember long stories
before recording
technology existed.
- There were women
learning strange poems from
their grandmothers.
Who learned it from
their grandmothers,
who in turn learned it
from their grandmothers.
You can feel how time
shrinks down to nothing
when you look at it through
these old women.
[Hulda singing in Icelandic]
[Hulda singing in Icelandic]
[Andri] Rimur transmits
our ancestral stories
across centuries,
each verse a vessel for
keeping the past alive.
Maybe generational memory is
the closest way that humans can
experience the depth of time.
Happy birthday Hulda Filippia
she has a birthday today.
Hi Grandma.
[Hulda] How
was the wedding trip?
- It was incredibly fun
and challenging.
We experienced all kinds
of weather on the glacier.
- Yes.
- We were there
for three weeks.
- Three weeks?
- Yes, on the glacier.
- Wow.
That's a long time.
- It was a fun time.
[Andri] Can you ask
her to calculate for you?
When she'll be 96 years old?
- Do you want to figure out
when you'll be 96 years old?
- Yes, yes.
[Andri] We forgot to
turn on the camera there.
Now, lets do it once again.
- Andri.
Should I say it?
- Yes, you should ask.
- When will
you be 96 years old?
- 2104.
- 104.
- Yes.
- It will be fun to know
what will have happened by then.
- Yes.
[Andri] 2104.
Looking at it this way, a
future beyond my own life is
beginning to come clear.
It's a place where
my own daughter might
be a grandmother,
and where my own grandmother's
memory can live on.
I can touch time,
stretching back to Grandma
Hulda's birth in 1924,
all the way through 2104,
where we may reach you.
It's like a handshake
of generations.
That was one of the last times
I filmed with Grandma Hulda.
Soon, she too would pass away.
It's a generational
shift in my family.
But from time to time,
I can meet them
all once again.
I can still revisit
the way light reflects off
Grandpa Jon here.
And Arni.
And Disa.
[Andri] Hi Grandma.
[Jon] It's
then that I realized,
it's the same with
people as with flowers.
They wither into puffballs
and spread their seeds.
But from the root,
new life grows.
[Andri] I didn't record
much from their funerals,
only a couple of clips.
[Eilin] ...but I think it's good
for me to see her like this.
[somber music playing]
[waves lapping gently]
[Andri] What jacket
are you wearing, Hlynur?
- Grandpas jacket.
[Andri] Yeah, nice.
[Hlynur] The
jacket of the plains.
- Go!
[reflective music playing]
[Andri] I want you to see
how our lives move in rhymes.
Funerals live in sunsets.
Birthdays in sunrises.
Weddings live in
fellow creatures.
Our summer migrations
live in streams.
Harvests in the floodplains.
All this time, nature keeps
records all around us.
In these cycles
of time and water,
I feel a direct connection
to all ancestors and
to all descendants.
But our time is unlike
any time before.
[water trickling]
[wind]
[wind]
[rain falling]
[raindrops]
The singers of the swan
songs are wrestled down by Time.
The new era erases the
footsteps of our rhymes
The only way to keep the verses
of the mother tongue alive...
...is to put this into
the mouths of children
[Andri] Hlynur.
[Andri] This rima that lulled
my son to sleep is an elegy,
a goodbye to the life
the singer held dear.
She urges the listener to
care for what still remains.
Her words of sorrow traveled
into a future that, to her,
seemed foreclosed, but
they still reached me.
[somber music playing]
I had the honor to write
the text on this plaque.
And it's a strange situation
for a writer to write,
in copper, something that
will outlast all paper.
It will even last
longer than this stone.
This is pointing inwards,
and it's also pointing
into the deep future.
And so, people come up here,
and they can
look at the horizon.
But they will also
look at the words,
which we ask here
on this plate,
is that we acknowledge that
we know what is happening.
And we know what
needs to be done,
but only those that will
read the words will know
if we actually stood up
to that challenge that
we were given.
[pensive music playing]
Standing in the place
where the ice once was,
I look across the valley to
the neighboring mountain.
A thick patch of ice,
for now, still a glacier,
is moving slowly down the slope.
[Andri] Hey,
what are you doing?
Its out of focus.
- I know, very out of focus.
Wasn't it supposed
to be in focus?
It's not focusing.
[Andri] Before Hulda died,
my kids were becoming
the camera people.
We helped Hulda in the
garden many afternoons.
[Hlynur] Here it comes.
[Andri] What do
you think about time?
[Hulda] Time?
- Yes.
[Hulda] Time
passes incredibly fast.
There's always plenty to do.
I never feel alone.
And I often just
start talking...
I feel like he is sitting
in the chair next to me.
We've had a very enjoyable life.
It's good to have the memories.
I start to smell the
glacier in April
and I look forward to going.
But now it's been a
long time since I went.
I would need to go up
with a plane, I think.
[water rushing]
[emotional music playing]
[Andri] I cannot
send you a glacier,
but at least I
can send you this:
A portal to a time when
glaciers are still alive,
held open so they
can continue to be.
I wish in some way I could
know how you received it,
but only time will tell.
[singing rima in Icelandic]
[singing rima in Icelandic]
[singing rima in Icelandic]
[singing rima in Icelandic]
[singing rima in Icelandic]