Iceland is home to 269 named glaciers of nearly every type. Amongst them, Vatnajökull – Europe’s largest by volume – is unmatched in size, covering 8% of the country’s total landmass. However, since 1900, Icelandic glaciers have lost around 20% of their surface area, with almost half of that loss occurring since the turn of the millennium. The effects are both local and global, contributing to rising sea levels and influencing volcanic systems. In December 2025, scientists issued stark warnings that Iceland’s hidden “ice volcanoes”, like Bárðarbunga, could be showing signs of renewed activity after a decade of relative quiet.
“Our northern hemisphere glaciers function as barometers for global warming,” explains Kristján Maack, a photographer who has devoted his career to capturing Iceland’s dramatic landscapes. Maack’s best-known project is a book focused on the inside of the Thríhnúkagígur volcano near Reykjavík, highlight- ing its “volatile beauty and geological significance” through images taken beneath the Earth. The pages are filled with awe-in- spiring abstractions of its walls: deep red, rust, purple and yellow.
The series Sleeping Giants, made during the winters of 2020- 2023, and now on view at Reykjavík Museum of Photography, takes a similar approach to foregrounding the “profound beauty, fragility and urgency” of disappearing glaciers. Maack’s shots are stunning, showing shimmering formations bathed in blue, pink and white light. Many zoom in on textures and patterns, whilst others focus on scale and majesty. The images are breathtaking and unsettling at the same time, like stepping onto the surface of another world.
Maack contributes to the growing body of contemporary art bringing attention to Icelandic landscapes under threat. In 2007, for example, Katie Paterson installed a live phone line to Vatnajökull via an underwater microphone. Calls to the number 07757001122 could be made from anywhere in the world, and the listener would hear the sound of the glacier melting. Likewise, Olafur Eliasson’s Glacier Melt Series (1999/2019) paired aerial photographs of several dozen sites in Iceland, taken 20 years apart, to show the dramatic scale of ice loss caused by global warming. It was part of his popular In Real Life retrospective at Tate Modern in 2019, which brought the message to wider audiences. This is exactly what Maack seeks to do: remind us that our planet is a shared responsibility – and that protecting it is imperative.
Kristján Maack: Sleeping Giants is at Reykjavík Museum of Photography until 5 April.
Words: Eleanor Sutherland
Image Credits: Sleeping Giants © Kristján Maack
