Essay

Have you ever noticed that darkened shadow that runs along the base of an iceberg or glacier, hovering just above the water’s surface? In a painting such as Aka Høegh’s Icebergs – from the Ice Fjord (2014-15) this might be misconstrued as simply an aesthetic decision. Dark shadows and in some instances deep-blue lines separate the icy forms from the waters that carry them. Colour becomes a useful tool through which to separate spaces, draw distinctions between surfaces (ice and water), or focus attention on certain features. However, this seemingly innocuous detail is not necessarily a figment of human imagination or the aestheticization of the environment, but rather indicates a process termed waterline notching.

Waterline notching is a process by which glacier calving can occur in marine-terminating settings, excavating ice at the waterline via submarine melting. Specifically, it is the motion of water at the waterline (as a result of wind, tide and currents), along with the water temperature, that drives the melting and excavation of ice. There have been other names coined to define this process, such as melt-under-cutting, but here we think waterline notching is suitable because we just want to focus on this phenomenon at the waterline.

Excavating ice at the waterline causes instabilities in the overlying ice cliff column, culminating in a break-off (also called a calving event) and the generation of icebergs. The style of this calving is very distinctive, often with little rotation in the calving ice, more a sheet collapsing into the ocean. It is similar to how a cliff line collapses, with the waves crashing against the base of the cliff, eroding a supporting section, and the overlying rock collapses into the ocean.

This type of ice excavation is a small process compared to the huge ice shelf collapses we see in Antarctica, and the large events we see at places such as Sermeq Kujalleq (Ilulissat Glacier, west Greenland) and Helheim Glacier (southeast Greenland). However, in many settings, this is thought to be a main driving process of ice front retreat, nibbling away at the glacier front over the course of a summer season.

We also see this waterline notching in the icebergs that calve off a glacier, as might be observed in Høegh’s acrylic painting. Icebergs are often described as being on a voyage. They are both coming from and going somewhere. By observing the waterline notching in Høegh’s painting, it directs our attention to the processes that lead to and shape icebergs. Larger icebergs and bergy bits are suspended in the fjord, as the light of the sun turns the water the colour of golden sand. Or even suspended sediment content in the water, where sediment, once entrained in the ice, can be released as the surrounding icebergs melt. In the distance, icebergs merge with clouds hanging low on the horizon. Shades of blue and green turn into a mirage, are the icebergs rising into the sky or the clouds lowering themselves down into the sea? Waterline notching is visible on the different sized mounds of moving icer, to varying degrees. In the distance, dark green and blue shading gives the iceberg the appearance of balancing on the water’s surface, the overlying ice teetering on the edge as the water continues to erode at the ice from underneath.

Much like the travelling iceberg, Høegh’s own need to travel is equal to her desire to stay home. While the portability of watercolours, a common material in Hoegh’s oeuvre, make them an ideal travel companion, given the scale of Icebergs – from the Ice Fjord (120 x 240 cm) it could have only been made in a studio. When viewed in person, this large-scale painting on plywood, would give a fairly realistic sense of the scale of the icebergs as they drift past the shoreline.

A painter, sculptor, and graphic artist, Høegh is perhaps one of Greenland’s best-known and most prolific artists. Her artwork adorns government buildings and research institutes (including the interior courtyard of the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, and the entrance to Ilisimatusarfik, the University of Greenland) and graphic works respond to the legends of the sea and land, notably Sassuma Arnaa (the Mother of the Sea, which she illustrated in 1995). In Icebergs – from the Ice Fjord, the abstract shapes of sea creatures and marine mammals emerge through dark blue lines indicative of snow that has melted or been blown away, exposing the underlying coastal bedrock; contrasting the pallidity of the surround snow. Watercolours, meanwhile, were also used by Høegh to document the view from her workshop. Known as her Akia works, with akia meaning ‘the place on the opposite side’, over decades and seasons, Høegh has made watercolour studies of the island across the fjord from her studio window. As Mai Misfelt has written “The view of Akia is ever present – like a mirror for her self-portraits which are just as varied in mood and as changeable as the weather over Akia” (p.69).

Further, in a series of watercolours made by Høegh in 2013, she responds to the reopening of the uranium mine at Kvanefjeld (Kunannersuit) in Narsaq (only twenty-five kilometres from Høegh’s home in Qaqortoq), the potential to mine for other rare earth minerals, and the negative impact human extraction is having on the environment. In some of these more recent works, including Uranium (2013) and the Abandoned Town (2013), the palette is darker, these are not the hazy, golden landscapes of Icebergs – from the Ice Fjord, rather Høegh describes them as her “strange pictures,” expressing her grief and pain at what will be lost (p.203). “We’re only guests in this life," says Høegh (p.89). On the importance of such icy seas as in Icebergs – from the Ice Fjord, we might therefore also consider Høegh’s personal relationship with the landscape. How does Høegh experience the sea and her local environment? How might it be changing?

We sail a lot, and I sail a lot both alone and with others. The picture shows the sea. The entire universe is here. Nunami silaannarmi – the land and the air, and how much this means to us, every human being – that we have the great nature that helps us with everything.

Høegh’s intimate relationship with the sea is evident throughout her works. This is reflected in her attention to details in nature and its processing, such as waterline notching. Waterline notching and the associated processes with ice loss and calving have been studied by scientists intensely since the inception of Glaciology as a scientific discipline. Høegh too has been studying this phenomenon over the course of her lifetime through an exceptional, albeit alternative lens, and this is evident through many of her works including in Icebergs – from the Ice Fjord. The inherent desire to continue studying waterline notching acutely reflects the persistence of these natural processes, underlined by the unpredictably of how important this process will be in the future under a changing climate with warmer air temperatures and ocean temperatures forecast in the Arctic. Høegh accurately encapsulates this feeling, placing humans in the perspective of the vastness of Greenland and the wider Arctic region during an uncertain and unpredictable era:

“In the Greenlandic landscape, be it in the mountains or at sea, people feel small. […] The feeling of simultaneously having great freedom and being greatly exposed is typical of life in the Arctic.” (125)