Iceland officials hold actual funeral for recently lost glacier, blame man-made climate change

Leaders, scientists, and activists held a funeral for a glacier in Iceland over the weekend. Seriously.

About 100 people, including Icelandic Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir, hiked to the site of the Okjökull glacier on Sunday, where they read poetry, eulogies, and memorialized the glacier, which was declared extinct about a decade ago, The Associated Press reported.

Once there, mourners installed a plaque warning future generations of impacts from alleged man-caused climate change.

"Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years, all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path," the plaque says. "This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and know what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it."

JEREMIE RICHARD/AFP/Getty Images

Iceland, a small island-nation in the North Atlantic, has more than 260 named glaciers that cover about 11 percent of the island.

While Iceland's glaciers are indeed shrinking, like most across the globe, ice masses routinely grow and shrink with the warming and cooling of the global climate. Indeed, the Earth has a well-documented history of changing climate patterns.

In fact, scientists believe the last global "ice age" — known as the Last Glacial Period — lasted more than 100,000 years and ended just 12,000 years ago, an extremely small amount of time considering scientific evidence suggests the Earth is billions of years old.

Despite the noticeable human impact on the environment being only within the last several hundred years, beginning with the first industrial revolution, officials still attributed the glacier's loss to climate change.

"We see the consequences of the climate crisis," Jakobsdóttir said. "We have no time to lose."

Jakobsdóttir and other Nordic leaders met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Iceland's capital city of Reykjavik on Tuesday. Climate change was reportedly a priority topic of discussion.