"Through the seven days we hiked and sampled, I got a profound respect for people doing fieldwork heavy research. When you’re reading a paper, you tend to forget just how much work is behind every single measurement."

I, Silje Waaler, started my PhD journey in August 2023 at the Department of Geosciences at UiT the Arctic University of Norway.

As a part of my PhD project, I’m involved with the METALLICA project. We’re looking into the release of heavy metals, especially the toxic trace metal mercury, from glaciers to downstream systems such as rivers, lakes, and fjords.

These heavy metals can be harmful to organisms, which makes it crucial to understand under which circumstances they are released from glaciers and how they act in the downstream environments. Because of the large diversity of glacier types, bedrock composition, and downstream systems we gather data from a broad variety of glaciers and the connected surroundings.

Answering these questions requires an extensive amount of fieldwork, spanning all seasons, to ensure that any changes are captured.

An Offer You Can’t Refuse

During one of the early meetings last year with my main supervisor and project leader of METALLICA, Prof. Jemma Wadham, she proposed the idea of getting some insight into glacier fieldwork straight away. Her Postdoc researcher, Sarah Tingey, was about to set off on a trip to the glaciers Sulitjelma and Salajekna.

The ice cap from which the two glaciers flow is located on the Norwegian-Swedish border, close to the small mining city of Sulitjelma – a city previously inhabited by the Sami people. Being eager to get my hands dirty with glaciology, this approach suited me very well. A few days later we set off!

One foot in front of the other

At this time, Sarah had already managed to collect samples from mainland Norway over the melting season starting from June last year and was used to the extensive work involved in gathering these precious samples.

Me, being broad up in one of the flattest places on Earth, Denmark, had a long way to go.

We parked the car at Storelvvatn Powerplant with the wind dragging and pulling our fully packed backpacks and made our way towards Lomihytta – a small, cozy cabin owned by the Norwegian Trekking Association.

After the short trek to the cabin, we decided that following the northern coast of Låmivatnet to a privately owned cabin, which exact location and state was unsure to us, would be too risky in the stormy weather. With the wind howling outside, we stayed in the cabin, planned our next move and waited for better weather.

The next day, we started walking towards what, over the course of the night, we had named the Magical Hut due to its questionable existence.

Where the Giants Roam

This tiny cabin, placed on a promontory stretching into Låmivatnet, became our fix point during the following days.

We spend a full day blown in, and a day hiking to the Sulitjelma glacier to sample meltwater there where it escapes the darkness of the subglacial environment and accumulates into a proglacial stream that flows down the mountain side into a lake, recognizable by its milky appearance due to high inputs of silty sediments.

This was my first up-close encounter with a glacier. Being so close, feeling the cold katabatic wind swirling down from the inner parts of the ice cap and seeing the impact this icy giant has on its surroundings, lives vividly in my memory.

Follow the water

Our next assignment was sampling the water of the proglacial lake.

In this lake, we could see just how much meltwater was accumulated as the water masses turn into a broad river engulfing lumps of smaller icebergs that were once attached to the lake-terminating Salajekna glacier.

To assess how much water, heavy metals and nutrients these two glaciers release, we used non-toxic trace dye and a fluorometer capable of measuring low concentrations of the fluorogenic dye.

These discharge measurements are essential when describing the impact that glaciers have on their surroundings.

Because of the delay from two days of bad weather, we decided to continue hiking to the Swedish cabins near Pieskehaure after sampling the proglacial lake.

The rain was pouring down, but we managed to find a way through the soft sediments deposited by the glaciers and former landslides from the moraines – yet another example of the impact of glaciers.

Soaked to the core, we were greeted at the Swedish cabins by the cabin host’s smiling face. She had been awaiting us for several hours. She took us in and showed us around, while Sarah and I, still wet through all layers, tried to hide the urge to just lay down where we stood.

A Peripatetic Passage

The Swedish cabins were placed close to our last sampling location on the trip, Pieskehaure, which if you follow the lakes, streams and rivers will lead you into the deep forests of Sweden.

Now, with backpacks full of filtered sediments, rocks, and water samples, we made our way back across the border from Sweden to Norway, towards Storelvvatn Powerplant and our rental car.

Through the seven days we hiked and sampled, I got a profound respect for people doing fieldwork heavy research. When you’re reading a paper, you tend to forget just how much work is behind every single measurement – just how many borders the researchers crossed in order to push the boundary of our knowledge forward.

Once back in the warm and safe labs of the Department of Geosciences, the precious samples will be analyzed, providing crucial insights to the power behind these icy giants.

Some of the samples collected on my very first glacier fieldwork experience will feed into my PhD project where I’ll investigate how silica is released from a broad variety of glaciers in Svalbard and mainland Norway to downstream systems.

Blog author Silje Waaler is a PhD researcher at UiT the Arctic University of Norway. Her work revolves around how rock flour generated by glaciers interacts with marine biogeochemical and microbiological cycles.

Depending on the parent rock composition, the glacial rock flour can contain both nutrients and trace metals essential, but also potentially harmful to marine organisms.

Besides being part of the METALLICA project, Silje is also a doctoral candidate of the Center for Glacial Biome Doctoral Network ICEBIO, which aims to investigate the biogeochemistry and microbiology related to glaciers.

Silje shares updates on her fieldwork and life as a PhD researcher in Tromsø primarily through Instagram as @SiljeWaaler. Contact: Silje.s.pedersen@uit.no

This blog was written by Silje Waaler and originally published on the EGU blog under the title "Crossing borders – Glacier fieldwork at Sulitjelma/Salajekna". Reproduced here with minor edits under a CC-BY 4.0 license.

METALLICA and ICEBIO are two of more than a dozen research projects affiliated with the iC3 Polar Research Hub in Tromsø, Norway.