Stunning images show Arctic glaciers’ dramatic retreat

 

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Swedish photographer Christian Aslund is riding a small boat along the coast of Spitsbergen, an island in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. Here, deep into the Arctic Circle and midway between Norway and the north pole, he is investigating the health of the glaciers, by comparing them to what they looked like in archival photos.

He takes a picture, trying to place his boat in the exact position occupied by an explorer who took a similar photograph over 100 years ago. But the difference is striking: in the shot from 1918, the boat is heading towards a massive glacier. In the image Aslund took in 2024, he is heading toward what looks like almost bare land.

The comparison is part of a series that Aslund worked on in collaboration with the Norwegian Polar Institute and Greenpeace, to document the retreat of Svalbard’s glaciers over the last century. He visited the area twice — in 2002 and in 2024 — and picked which sites to photograph based on historical images that he found in the institute’s archives.