Iceland is throwing a massive party inside a glacier before it melts forever

BY: TYLER FYFE

The Langjökull glacier in Iceland is the second largest glacier in Europe. It’s also melting at an accelerated rate according to a 2015 peer-reviewed scientific journal by the American Geophysical Union. So in June 2016, ravers, a sound system and Europe’s best underground DJs will be packing inside Iceland’s biggest glacier to get plastered and sloppily slide on an ice floor that is 200 metres thick.

In June 2016, ravers, a sound system and Europe’s best underground DJs will be packing inside Iceland’s biggest glacier to get plastered and sloppily slide on an ice floor that is 200 metres thick.

The glacier is a 10,000 year old ice form cradled by a mountain range in the interior highlands of Iceland. As ravers descend through a tunnel into the belly of the glacier by the aroma of vodka and the light of glow sticks and neon LED bulbs, they will literally be walking back in time. The ice closest to the core is the most ancient. But most party-goers will not just be going for the consuming soul of deep house and the indie rock of Of Monsters and Men. As patrons make out pressed against smooth walls of ice, the incremental water droplets remind them that this will soon be a giant puddle. The Secret Solstice Festival is a sort of Epicurean activism.

As ravers descend through a tunnel into the belly of the glacier by the aroma of vodka and the light of glow sticks and neon LED bulbs, they will literally be walking back in time.

Iceland is under particular threat when it comes to climate change.

Since the 1980s Iceland’s temperature has been steadily increasing according to records. At most the ice cave of Langjökull has a lifespan of 10 to 15 years. The small volcanic island is also perched at the mouth of the rapidly melting Greenland Ice Sheet. More arctic landmass has been lost in the last two decades than over the previous 10 millennia. Within the last 200 years, the Industrial and Second Industrial revolutions have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 40 percent and methane by a factor of three according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Within the last 200 years, the Industrial and Second Industrial revolutions have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 40 percent.

“Antarctica and Greenland are now contributing three times as much ice to sea levels as they were 20 years ago,” said Andrew Shepherd, a Professor of Earth Observation for the University of Leeds in an interview with DW.

This is what a crumbling Arctic ice sheet looks like real-time:

Tickets are just $269 and recently, WOW Air launched $99 flights from North America to Iceland. It’s a relatively fair price for the once in a lifetime hang-over of emerging from an ice tunnel from 40 feet below the surface to a sunrise over the snow-capped peak of the Snæfellsjökull volcano. Here is to hoping that the body heat of grinding bodies and sweaty first bumping won’t increase the speed of the melting.