How We Discovered the Ice Age

Searching for evidence of the ice age in Norway, and exploring the history of its discovery.

Further Reading:

Illustrations:
Wellcome Collection:
Library of Congress:
Thomas Fearnley - The Grindelwaldgletscher, 1837
Francisco de Goya - The Snowstorm (Winter), 1786-1787
Hendrick Avercamp - Skating Near a Town, 1610-1620

Maps/Graphics:

0:00 - Intro
2:22 - Early Theories
4:38 - Switzerland
6:38 - Scotland
9:04 - Norway
13:05 - Completing the Puzzle
15:03 - Outro

The links above are affiliate links, from which I gain a small monetary compensation when purchases are made. They help keep the lights on ;)

[CaptSnacko]

"I don't hear the silence of death... I hear water" is such a cool line

[staiain]

As a norwegian, what is almost as impressive as your cinematography and narrative skills are what looks like a complete absence of tourists in your shots.

[yashvrdnjain]

The storytelling here is just freaking mind-boggling! 🤯

[cornstalks]

I grew up on the western coast of norway, and it's so wonderful to see people appreciating the land there. I can't be convinced that there's anywhere more beautiful than home. There's just nothing quite like quiet days in the fjords.

[Coffeepanda]

As a Norwegian geography student, what I remember the best from when we studied glaciology was that as late as the 1800s, Norwegians believed erratics (those out-of-place boulders they couldn't explain) must have been placed there by trolls. They were _that_ inexplicable.

[HistoryDose]

I love the feeling of adventure and cinema your videos convey, Aidan. Also at 08:05 I needed to see that thing fall to confirm we're not stuck in the Inception dreamworld. Now I'll never know!
~Chris

[owengarceaumedia]

The little details in this film, my goodness. The blue color shift when you are talking about earth getting colder, the spinning top representing the earth rotation, the moment of silence at the end... incredible work Aidin. Keep sharing these amazing stories

[spaceswordsman]

this video is absolutely incredible dude, keep it going

[SamWhitlock]

Everything from the concept, story, cinematography, to editing and beyond as absolutely astounding, doubly so considering this is just one dedicated guy and not a huge-budget professional TV station!

[youngerbrotherpictures]

A perfect blend of educational and entertaining. Landscapes, compositions, B-Roll...it all checks out. Sensational work as always Aidin.

[zolacnomiko]

Your videos have a look like nothing else on YouTube. Really high production values, beautiful cinematography and direction of photography. Your YouTube channel feels like a BBC Earth production. Fantastic way to deliver science and history...compelling storytelling combined with images so beautiful I can't look away!

[norwegianroads]

I learned about these processes in school, but I didn't know that the ice age was discovered here in Norway. When I think about it, it makes sense. The ice age is so recent here that the land is still rising

[JacobtheTree]

Best films on YouTube, thank you mr. Robbins!

[reetrofilms]

This is one of your best intros, designed impeccably.

[glacieractivity]

This is really solid pop science and storytelling! Kudos. I have only one suggestion (for a post-script). The calculations of Milancowich were solid more than a hundred years ago, but it took more than 50 years to demonstrate their impact on the natural variability of the global climate. Most of us will say that the theory was settled in 1976, by empirical data presented by Hays, Imbrie and Shackleton (1976). "Variations in the Earth's Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages". Science. 194.

This is a tale we often see in science but it is rarely commented upon. Science is a very slow and very elaborate human cooperation. Generations of small incremental advances are needed: Learning how to core the deep ocean, how plankton fractionate Oxygen isotopes and how global ice volume alters the ratio of O16 and O18 in the global ocean water. Learning how to clean and measure the ocean samples. Learning how to date the sediment cores .... this list of needed scientific quickly becomes long.

We have seen the same with the Higgs Boson. It was theoretically outlined in the early 1960s, but we had to wait half a century before one could confirm it by measurements in 2012.

Einstein implicitly showed that gravity waves were a thing in General Relativity. That one took a century to confirm by observations...

News is filled with "scientists have discovered" headlines - as if something completely new just dropped out of the sky while in reality, pretty much every single little observation made is sitting on the tail end of a long and deep collaborative history of science itself.

(An extra PS: It took until 1993 before science really got a hold of well-known (and non-orbital) glacial changes (such as the well-described "Younger Dryas" described already around 1900 as a sudden cold reversal at the end of the last glacial).

To truly start to get a handle on these rapid events, known to exist for almost a century, the ice-coring communities and the ocean-coring communities had to work for decades on how to get enough temporal resolution out of the data so that one could have multiple independent data-points to describe violent and rapid events with statistical significance. Others had been developing "tephra-chronologies" that allowed for much better "cross data-set" timing control than radiometric methods can allow. Others had turned the effing magnetic field of our planet into global chronological points of reference for the same reason.

I am not a storyteller, but you are. I think your sensibilities and communication skills can make even these side stories into something interesting for a wider audience since I believe all these stories from the tiny (the standard theory) to the large (general relativity) to the planet we walk on individually illustrate how time itself is necessary for advances of our collective understanding.

To quote my favourite science communicator of all time, Carl Sagan (and his wife and co-author Ann Druyan): 'If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe". This is the humble pie every publishing scientist is bowing to in the reference list at the end of papers (cut very short, since no one can not reference the entire works of Maxwell and Fourier (or Pythagoras) and what followed every time details are shared).

I thoroughly enjoyed this "essay". Thank you.

[prakharkhandelwal]

dude the quality of this guys video is AMAZINGG. i’ve legit never seen better videos on youtube.

[sturlajonsson]

Thank you for making this video, it truly touches me. I am an Iceland, raised between the Glaciers of the west, langjökull and eyríksjökull to my east, and snæfellsjökull to my west, all visable from a hill near my childhood home, but now they have all started to shrink, and will be gone in 6 generations time, snæfellsjökull in only 2… thank you, truly

[sitiesito]

I love the Werner Herzog vibe, and the sense of spirituality from natural wonders that your videos convey.

[swedendude]

This is such a beautiful video Aidin.
Thank you for making this, it really struck a chord with me.
The silence when you showed the landscape at 15:50 gave perfect room for me to cry a little bit.

Thank you.

[slimpickle]

This is an absolute masterpiece. Thanks for taking me to another world again, and reminding me how intricate our history is.