HLJÓÐMYND – SOUNDIMAGE

The remarkable thing happened in the winter of 2022-2023 in Iceland, at least in the southwest, that there were many consecutive days with severe frost. The winter was undeniably reminiscent of the winters of the 1970s and 1980s, when catastrophic or global warming had neither become tangible nor existed in the dictionary.
This gave me the opportunity to record under ice, which I hadn’t done before.
I invested in a proper ice drill and managed to make three trips to Skorradalsvatn lake to record under and over the ice. But the lake is located about an hour’s drive from Reykjavík.
It was surprising that the sounds from frozen lakes are not produced by the frost alone and the variable expansion of the ice. Rather, it primarily depends on the wind strength, size and depth of the lake.
Although everything seems flat and there are no waves visible on the ice surface, there is a lot going on. Especially under the ice, where there is clearly significantly more noise than on the surface. On the surface, you hear mainly „drone squeals“ and occasional clicks and breaks, which are also interesting to record.
The following recording was recorded approx. in 8 meters depth, not far from the place where the lake is deepest, or about 60 meters. Many things can be said about this recording. I’m not entirely happy with it, which I’m not going to mention here. But recording ice on lakes is clearly a very interesting subject. Something I hope to be able to do much more often in the future.
Depth and size of the lake. Shape of the lake and lake bed, volume of wind and snow, ice thickness and ice temperature, everything matters if I like to catch these amazing sounds.
I’m always traveling alone, so I didn’t take any risks by going far out on the ice this time. But I will definitely try it sometime if mother nature and luck gives me such a perfect winter again.
Quality open headphones are recommended while listening at low to mid volume. There are a lot of very powerful sounds in this recording that can easily damage your hearing and speakers. I therefore do not recommend high volume
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  (mp3 256kbps / 66Mb)

Recorder: Sound devices MixPre6
Mics: Benthowave BII-7121
Pix: Samsung S22

Weather: Windy 5-8m/sec, clear sky, -8¨C
Location: 64.515130, -21.505672