We have an active Nordic branch of the International Glaciology Society.
The next meeting (2008) will be organized by Finland
The 2007 Nordic meeting was held in Uppsala and and also the address list of the particpants and program
The 2007 Nordic IGS meeting
was attended by about 70 people in Upsala on 25-27 October 2007. That the meeting was tremendously enjoyable was due to the sterling efforts of Rikard Pettersen, Ulf Johnsel and Veijo Pohjola. It is remarkable how far a registration fee of 250 SEK goes to advancing the girth of the participants, and no matter how long some of the lectures seemed to be, there was the soon-to-be-realized hope of more chocolate cake, beer and fruit (for the health conscious glaciologist) to steady the ship.
This is no doubt why the esteemed secretary-general continues to enthusiastically participate in these meetings. And indeed this meeting was not punctuated by the sound of loud snoring that one usually associates with Magnus. Or perhaps it was because there was a large group of Icelanders at the meeting - and it was in my humble opinion Thomas Johansson who provided the highpoint of the scientific content of the meeting with his description of drilling through the Krefla ice caldera to the sub-glacial lake. There was a "modest" jokaloup that collapsed the 2 km wide caldera camp site 2 months after the season ended that would have ended the research (and other more valuable items) prematurely had it occurred slightly earlier.
The more realistic highlight of the meeting was certainly the glaciology beat combo Johnny Clash - Sledgehammer Sam alias Jack Kohler Bass
Henrik on drums,
Matthias on rhythm guitar,
Jim Hedfors on acoustic guitar,
Matti Pohjola on cornet,
and veijo pohjola on vocal / guitar. They turned out a variety of Clash/Cash/Undertones mixes tunes and lyrics. The encore featured Venkata Gandikota singing the popular Bollywood hit "Chaiyya Chaiyya" to extemporized musical backing. This was a great relief after the tortuous performance art drummed up by Magnus where every nationality represented at the meeting had to perform a drinking song - as there were 17 nationalities, the impact on sobriety can be imagined.As far as the talks were concerned, many were given by students as that is the main aim of the meeting - introducing students to the demands of public presentations, usually in non-native English. Many of the talks were on traditional mass balance surveys of glaciers, but there were also talks on remote sensing, Antarctic blue ice areas, paleo-ice streams, and finite element modeling of glaciers. The broadening of glaciology was represented by talks on the inter-linking of the physical and biological cryospheres via cryoconites. Several talks featured video clips, raising the bar on entertaining powerpoint shows. The entertainment probably climaxed with simultaneous performance translation by Peter Keupers Munneke of himself in Dutch on video into English (both at top volume level). The IPY Kinnvika and Glaciodyn projects were well-represented in talks and also by the showing of the 1957 Swedish documentary on the Kinnvika station activities - which certainly shows how much better supported IGY activities were than the IPY funding levels are 50 years later. A depressing reflection on the political will to do research on the polar areas despite, or perhaps even because of, the high impact climate change science that we produce. However the meeting, the youngsters and the science being done were both encouraging for Nordic glaciology in the future. The next meeting will be organized by Finnish members at an exciting, exotic and cheap location possibly far away from Nordic taxes.