Nordic Geological Winter Meeting 2022

Congrats to the organisers of the 35th Nordic Geological Winter Meeting in Reykjavík, Iceland on a very successful conference! Þorsteinn Sæmundsson, Halld´ór Geirsson, Ásta Rut Hjartardóttir and the company SENA did a really good job in creating not only an interesting meeting but also a very good and relaxed conference atmosphere. Thus, it was a very enjoyable meeting to take part in. Erik definitely had his time in the lime light at this conference. Not only was he a ‘surprise’ plenary speaker on the 2nd day, but also the toastmaster at the conference dinner, and giving Paul Seaman’s Ikka talk the last day of the meeting. People found his plenary talk about ‘Geologists in Movies’ hilarious. Just like Erik, I was also a stand-in for one of our Ikka colleagues, Bjørn Buchardt who couldn’t make it to the meeting due to a broken ankle. Erik talked about the new multi-beam mapping of the ikaite columns in Ikka Fjord, SW Greenland, whereas I talked about the hydrology results of the Ikka Fjord area including how we determined the composition of the Ikka column water and its origin. At the conference dinner it was announced that Ólafur Ingolfsson was awarded this year’s Nordic Geological Award, very much deserved. He is not only an excellent scientist but also a really good teacher and a highly appreciated colleague – now retired from the University of Iceland. We congratulate Óli on this award accompanied by an art piece, which artist Anna Lindal had made from lava from Fagradalsfjall. We had standup comedian Ari Eldjárn entertaining us during the conference dinner making fun of all the Nordic countries, their people and languages. This was just so funny, I was almost crying from laughing so much. Eydís Salome Eiriksdóttir came up with a new tradition for these Nordic Winter Meetings, a mini Eurovision for the Nordic countries. Hence, each country had to stand up singing a song from the home country. We were neither that many Danes or Swedes and didn’t do particularly well, but the Icelanders, Finns and Norwegians did well, and in the end Finland won with a rather complicated song no one else understood, but beautiful. In January 2024, the next Nordic Geological Winter Meeting will be held in Svenska Mässan in Gothenburg, Sweden.