Norwegian Glacier Ice Cubes Are a Thing You Can Buy Now

This article originally appeared in the May 2015 issue of VICE.

A Norwegian start-up is getting into the lucrative ice-cube business. But instead of selling your basic freezer cubes, Svaice offers 1,000-year-old luxury ice cubes from a massive glacier.

“Our product is 100 percent natural, more than a thousand years old, and very luxurious,” boasts Svaice on its website. The company plans to excavate ice from Svartisen, Norway’s second-largest glacier. Svartisen spans 142 square miles but has been—in many places—reduced significantly since 2000 and is expected to disappear within a hundred years.

The project is getting a lot of backing locally. Per Swensen, the mayor of the nearby town Meløy, is a keen supporter of Svaice and hopes it will generate much-needed jobs in the area. The ice mongers have already seen some cash flow: $50,000 in grant money for the initial excavation operation.

Heidi Katrine Bang of World Wildlife Federation Norway is clueless about why the project is getting such positive responses. “We think that it’s a bad business idea. Svartisen is shrinking because of climate change, and it seems strange that it should be given public support to chop bits off to be sold,” she told VICE.

Svaice claims they will only excavate ice that is going to melt anyway, meaning that they won’t make the glacier disappear faster. The company says that the production of a million gallons of ice per year is “virtually nothing.” “The amount of ice that we are going to take out is literally just a cup of water in the ocean,” Svaice claims on its website.

Want to Read Some In-Depth Stories from the New Issue?

1. Shane Smith on the Need to Protect the Earth from Environmental Catastrophe
2. We’ve Damaged the Planet So Badly It’s Entering a New Epoch
3. Writers, Scientists, and Climate Experts Discuss How to Save the World from Climate Change
4. Trucks and Children Are Sucking the Beaches of Morocco Dry