{"id":797,"date":"2023-09-22T12:53:44","date_gmt":"2023-09-22T19:53:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/?p=797"},"modified":"2024-03-06T12:25:29","modified_gmt":"2024-03-06T19:25:29","slug":"fire-ice-prophesy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/fire-ice-prophesy\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire, Ice, Prophesy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>In the Medieval Old Norse poem,\u201cV\u00f6lusp\u00e1,\u201d the god Odin listens to the V\u00f6lva prophesy the world\u2019s birth, death, and rebirth. 2021 marked a massive eruption of the Fagradalsfjall volcano near Reykjav\u00edk, eclipsed by the most recent one in December 2023. Nine years earlier in Iceland, the Okj\u00f6kull glacier was declared dead due to climate change.<\/h6>\n

Finally, at the end of Bioneers 2023, it was time for the panel I\u2019d been eagerly anticipating: “Can Storytellers Help Save the World: From Fictional Narrative to Real World Change.”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was excited about it because I deeply love words and the transformative power they possess. And I wanted to meet the activist artist Andri Sn\u00e6r Magnason, author of On Time and Water.<\/em> This panel of writers, filmmakers, and provocateurs also featured Keenan Norris and the moderator, Laleh Khadivi.<\/p>\n

Laleh posed marvelously insightful questions that wove both Andri and Keenan\u2019s diverse lives together. She opened with this one: \u201cWhy, to write about the future, do you both go backwards?\u201d She pointed out both their novels begin in libraries. Kennan\u2019s opening for Chi Boy<\/em> places him in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale, where the black luminary Richard Wright\u2019s archive reveals correspondence and original manuscripts including Native Son<\/em> and Black Boy<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In his novel, Andri\u2019s soul-searching through deep time starts as a student in the \u00c1rni Magn\u00fasson Institute for Icelandic Studies at the University of Iceland. There, he holds the revered Medieval Old Norse manuscript (ca. 1270): the Codex Regius<\/em>, the \u201cKing\u2019s Book.\u201d Within it lies the Poetic Edda<\/em>, which includes one of the most treasured poems of Norse mythology, \u201cV\u00f6lusp\u00e1.\u201d This is the Icelandic creation myth of the world\u2019s birth, death, and rebirth prophesied by a seeress, a v\u00f6lva. Andri deciphers this chilling script:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sun goes dark, the lands sink, the shining stars disappear from the skies, the great ash will burn and fierce heat will lick the skies.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Throughout the panel, I listened closely to Andri’s provocative responses to Laleh\u2019s prompts. She focused on the role of stories to manifest change on social, scientific, and ecological scales and the enduring impacts of language used in spoken, written, and digital mediums in all forms from mythologies to poems to manifestos. Finally Laleh asked this: \u201cGiven the environments you’ve lived in during your life, how do extremes influence and shape you as a storyteller?\u201d<\/p>\n

A question began to form within me shaped by the vast, raw, mercurial Icelandic landscape that Andri, his children, and generations of his family before him were documenting, exploring, and witnessing. I sensed something vital was missing in this public conversation.<\/p>\n

In On Time and Water<\/em>, Andri\u2019s stories shock us into relationship with time and the earth in an age of ecological crisis. He tells the terrifying truth that geological time is beginning to move at the speed of human time. Think about it. Pause to consider how the pace of change is accelerating beyond anything familiar in the linear, chronos construct of this reality, right now, right in this precious moment of your life.<\/p>\n

In order to bring about a planetary paradigm shift, Andri urges, \u201cWe need new ways to see and imagine ourselves into the future.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I muse, perhaps consulting a contemporary v\u00f6lva might give us some life-saving visions pointing to our planetary rebirth. Perhaps we need to take our place as seers. What if we are the ones who can shift consciousness and balance between the worlds of ordinary and non-ordinary realities with access to spirits offering essential knowledge, healing, and guidance? This would mean navigating the cyclical kairos of timelessness and translating it into real world change.<\/p>\n

As the close of that afternoon session at Bioneers neared, I was granted the last question. I directed it to the panel of storytellers who had made a compelling case for time-traveling on the wings of world-saving stories.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to deepen this conversation by looking at the relationship between place and being. Andri, I begin with you.\u201d You are from the island of extremes\u2014fire and ice.<\/p>\n

In your country, the first glacier on our planet, the Ok (Okj\u00f6kull) Glacier, went extinct. You wrote a eulogy for it. In 2021, a vast volcanic eruption near Reykjav\u00edk occurred. Your family along with many Icelanders were there to experience the awe.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo my question is this: How has the coldness of glacial absence and the heat of volcanic presence shaped your soul?\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is the essence of Andri\u2019s edifying response, somewhat paraphrased: \u201cAfter the Okj\u00f6kull glacier died, we had a funeral to draw attention to the consequences of climate change. The commemorative plaque I wrote was installed with this inscription.\u201d<\/p>\n

A letter to the future<\/em><\/p>\n

Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier.<\/em>
\nIn the next 200 years, all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path.<\/em>
\nThis monument is to acknowledge that we know<\/em>
\nwhat is happening and what needs to be done.<\/em>
\nOnly you know if we did it.<\/em><\/p>\n

August 2019<\/em>
\n415ppm CO2<\/em><\/p>\n

Andri continued with a startling counterpoint, “The Fagradalsfjall volcano was a Disneyesque event, a \u201ctourist eruption.” Many Icelanders went there with our families. Some warmed their hands and roasted marshmallows.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Iceland, seasons have been replaced with the geology that shapes us. It has immense beauty. What we witness brings the realization of how small we are and illuminates the vastness of our role, which becomes how to survive in it and help save it.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Andri\u2019s answer crystallized deeper questions in me. (I\u2019m waiting for his response.)<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it seems your soul is being shaped by the spirit of a land in the midst of simultaneous extinction and creation?<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cPerhaps this soul-shaping is also occurring for Audhumla, the Holy Cow from Nordic mythology. In Time and Water<\/em>, you share that she came to you in a childhood vision \u2018begging for help, on its own behalf and that of all its dependents.\u2019 Over time, you\u2019ve discovered the Hindu narrative of \u2018the mother of materialism and spirituality.\u2019 You\u2019ve come to know her as the World Cow who is embodied as the earth. You say you speak on her behalf.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, in the language of Sea Change Design: \u201cWould you say you speak from the expansive state of Design Consciousness? This would mean you are co-creating with humanity, nature, spirit, and time in an eternal flow of infinite transformations\u2014in service of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, and one last question, Andri. \u201cWould you say you are a seer?\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

The transformative power of language can startle us into relationship with deep time, ancient manuscripts,\u00a0 a glacier’s eulogy, the Holy Cow\u2014and our innate ability to shift consciousness and “see” our planetary rebirth.<\/p>\n

I agree with Andri Sn\u00e6r Magnason: \u201cNow you could say the paradigm has shifted. What needs to be done is obviously in front of us, and it’s not essentially negative to be a generation that has to rethink and reinvent and redesign almost everything.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

_________________________________
\nPhoto credits, Left to right:
\nFagradalsfjall volcano \u00a9Brian_Emfinger
\nOdin and the V\u00f6lva (1895) by Lorenz Fr\u00f8lich
\nDead Ok (Okj\u00f6kull) glacier by AFP\/Nasa<\/h6>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Medieval Old Norse poem,\u201cV\u00f6lusp\u00e1,\u201d the god Odin listens to the V\u00f6lva prophesy the world\u2019s birth, death, and rebirth. 2021 marked a massive eruption of the Fagradalsfjall volcano near Reykjav\u00edk, eclipsed by the most recent one in December 2023. Nine years earlier in Iceland, the Okj\u00f6kull glacier was declared dead due to climate change. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1667,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14,15,16,18,20],"tags":[85,84,86,87],"class_list":["post-797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design-consciousness","category-evolutionary-potential","category-humanity","category-nature","category-spirituality","category-transformation","tag-andri-snaer-magnason","tag-bioneers","tag-climate-change","tag-storytelling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1667"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":967,"href":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions\/967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}