The Icelandic nation has held a funeral and presented a plaque to commemorate the once huge Okjokull glacier, now lost as a result of the climate change.
The nation has come together to bring awareness to the issue, seeing scientists warn that there are hundreds of other ice sheets on the subarctic island which are at risk on the same fate. The country has mounted a bronze plaque onto the bare rock that is laid in the barren terrain where there once the Okjokull glacier existed. Almost 100 people walked up to the mountain for this ceremony, including:
Jakobsdottir has said, "I hope this ceremony will be an inspiration not only to us here in Iceland but also for the rest of the world, because what we are seeing here is just one face of the climate crisis."
The plaque bore the inscription 'A letter to the future', in both English and Icelandic, that is intended to raise awareness of the decline of glaciers and the effects of climate change - adding, "In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it."
Iceland loses around 11 billion tonnes of ice per year, and scientists fear that if this is to continue there will be no more left of the 400 plus glaciers by as soon as 2200. These glaciers cover around 11% of the country's surface. The glacier reduced from 16 square kilometres in 1890, to just 0.7 square kilometres by 2012. By 2014 it had its status of glacier removed.
"We made the decision that this was no longer a living glacier, it was only dead ice, it was not moving”, says Oddur Sigurdsson - a glaciologist with the Icelandic Meteorological Office.
