Greenland is home to some of the most surreal ice formations on Earth. But Icelandic photographer Hörður Kristleifsson recently found one that demanded a closer look.
During a 27-day expedition from Svalbard to East Greenland, Kristleifsson encountered an enormous tunnel running through an iceberg. He decided to send his drone inside, capturing a remarkable flight through the blue cavern and out the other side.
Check out the footage linked here and below.
Kristleifsson described the formation as “perhaps one of the longest ice caves ever documented in an iceberg,” adding that, to his knowledge, nobody had previously flown a drone completely through it. The resulting footage offers a dizzying sense of scale as the tiny aircraft disappears into the darkness before emerging into Arctic daylight.
That scale is quintessential Greenland.
The island’s ice sheet covers roughly 80 percent of its surface and exceeds two miles thick in places. Around its edges, glaciers creep toward the ocean before breaking apart—or calving—into Greenland’s fjords.
NASA scientist Josh Willis once described the margins as places where “the ice is so alive,” noting that enormous calving events can displace enough water to create “a little tidal wave.” In some cases, it’s more like a mini tsunami.
And that’s where things get particularly interesting for surfers.
Research in Greenland has documented calving waves reaching tens of meters in height, while waves generated by Jakobshavn Isbræ have been detected more than 150 kilometers from their source.
A tiny fraternity of surfers has even begun chasing them.
“When waves are formed in the ocean, they can travel thousands of miles then release all their energy on the shore,” surfer Blair Conklin explained after pursuing glacier-generated waves. With glacial waves, however, that energy can originate from ice that has spent centuries slowly traveling toward the sea.
Surfing them is exceptionally dangerous. Calving is unpredictable, and the resulting waves can arrive amid freezing water, unstable ice and debris.
Perhaps Kristleifsson’s method—via drone—seems like the considerably smarter (and safer) way to explore Greenland’s frozen underworld.
Related: Collapsing Greenland Glacier Sends Giant Tsunami Wave Crashing into Tour Boat (Video)
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