Roadsides is a diamond Open Access journal designated to be a forum devoted to exploring the social, cultural and political life of infrastructure.
Drawing on ethnographic research in High Mountain Asia, the European Alps and the Arctic, we highlight how melting glaciers, shifting precipitation patterns and unstable sea ice reshape livelihoods, mobility and local identities. In the Karakoram, reduced snow fall limits glacier replenishment and undermines water storage; in the Alps, it threatens tourism economies and prompts technocratic adaptations; in Greenland, diminishing sea ice disrupts hunting, travel and social life and reveals its role as lived infrastructure and cultural anchor. Engaging critical and Indigenous scholarship alongside the anthropology of ice as vital matter, the introduction conceptualizes the cryosphere as non-built infrastructure. It foregrounds snow and ice as relational assemblages co-produced by humans, animals, spiritual and other non-human beings and physical processes. These slow, embodied interactions engage the senses and emotions, reveal situated ecological knowledge and underscore the cryosphere’s ever-emergent character.
Copyright (c) 2026 Anna-Maria Walter, Sophie Elixhauser https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
dis/comfort considers the multidimensionality of how one may be responding to and/or experiencing comfort or discomfort at any given time. Architecture, worldview, identity, the physical environment, or stories told of the icescapes in Northern locales can invoke dis/comfort for insiders (inhabitants of Northern regions) and outsiders (visitors or newcomers from Southern locales). In her recent book Ice Geographies: The Colonial Politics of Race & Indigeneity in the Arctic, Dr. Jen Rose Smith writes “ice is consequential always, not only through its melting.” Complex stories emerge when examining contemporary and relational art incorporating ice through an “anti-spectacle” lens. Through selected artworks, I show ice as family and home, real and unreal, and as messy and complicated. Artworks depicting anti-spectacle ice narratives oKer a needed comfort to ‘weather’ ongoing colonialism, geopolitical posturing, and the eKects of a rapidly changing climate. As curator of dis/comfort in the North, an exhibition for my master’s degree in Arctic & Northern Studies at University of Alaska-Fairbanks, I examine how dis/comfort becomes an aesthetic intervention on how the North is often imagined by considering the views of insiders alongside outsiders. I put forward dis/comfort as an analytical tool to interrogate outsider artistic practices that imagine the Circumpolar North from a distance or through brief encounters. This submission will include selected imagery from the exhibition, featuring more than fifty artists from sixteen countries.
Copyright (c) 2026 Katie Ione Craney https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Glacier funerals are presumed to bring awareness to glaciers, acknowledge climate issues, and provoke change. Yet in the area surrounding Okjökull, the site of the first and perhaps most famous glacier funeral on the planet, the “dead” glacier’s remains are relatively ignored, infrequently visited, and silenced, even as its ice is still visible and melting. This paper wonders: what happens to a glacier after its funeral? I trace the meltwater of Okjökull glacier to a local luxury spa where the glacier’s death is promoted online, but ignored in person. In contrasting the experience of bathing in the unnamed meltwater remains of Okjökull with the publicity of the glacier funeral and local glacier tourism opportunities more broadly, I argue that glaciers are commodified for elite consumption by certain privileged groups and that the selective employment of climate change narratives and publicity by these groups calls into question the enduring meaning of glacier funerals. If glacier funerals and their narratives disappear as fast as the glacier, then who are these funerals actually for, and what do they, and glacier tourism infrastructures, accomplish? This paper (1) summarizes the Okjökull funeral and its stated purpose; (2) analyzes the spa experience and infrastructural access to the “dead” Okjökull glacier in and around Húsafell; and (3) looks more broadly at regional and global glacier tourism to expose a widespread pattern of dead glacier infrastructures of publicity, of consumption, of silencing, and of forgetting. Ultimately, dead glacier infrastructures expose what is happening to glaciers not just after their death, but while they are dying, and show when, how, and for whom climate change narratives are harnessed or hidden.
Copyright (c) 2026 Nicole Schaub, Mark Carey https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Glacial Hauntologies is an interdisciplinary collaboration between artists and glaciologists that traces how ice – past ice, current melt, and future glacial change – reoccurs as a persistent hauntology across 20th– and 21st–century landscapes, scientific research, media, and day-to-day life. Interweaving glaciology with artistic practice across print, sound, textile, movement, fieldwork, and physics, we translate, subvert, and repurpose tools from many disciplines to explore geophysical data, glaciological archives, and alternate ways of relating to glaciers.
Copyright (c) 2026 Elizabeth Case, Andrew Hoffman, Hannah Mode, Tyler Rai https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
In 1928, surveyors attached to a joint German-Soviet expedition to the Pamir Mountains produced the first detailed scientific map of the Fedchenko Glacier, the largest non-polar glacier in the world. More than a cartographic record, the map was an infrastructural act that translated the glacier’s crevassed mass into a legible form that could be circulated in atlases, mobilized in geopolitical claims, and embedded within Soviet projects of high-mountain science. This paper examines how the Fedchenko map materialized a new relationship between state, science, and ice. As infrastructure, the map enabled the Soviet regime to envision the glacier as a reservoir of future meltwater, a node in global scientific exchange, and a symbol of Soviet presence in a remote highland frontier that was still only tenuously within Moscow’s grasp. The map thus exemplifies the co-production of cryospheric infrastructures across scales: Pamiri landscapes, Soviet territorial imaginaries, and transnational scientific networks. It also shows how ice itself resisted its infrastructural capture and, in its dynamism, constantly remade the terms of human engagement.
Copyright (c) 2026 Stewart Weaver, Tatyana Bakhmetyeva https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
In 2024, a group of scientists published a landmark report on glacier geoengineering. The group endorsed further research into technological interventions to stop or slow glacial melt and subsequent sea-level rise. This speculative fiction piece departs from their landmark report, taking the form of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story in which readers navigate proposed technological solutions to glacial melt. Fissures reflects on the illusion of personal choice in navigating climate catastrophe, techno-optimist logics of proposed geo-engineering solutions, and the importance and limits of imagination for alternative climate futures.
Copyright (c) 2026 Annika Bowman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Prior to the advent of mechanical cooling, ice was shipped from North America and Norway to tropical regions to fulfill Western demands for comfort and health. Scholarship on the global ice trade has often framed it as a colonial project, in which ice acted as an agent for imposing Euro-American ideals of purity, hygiene, and civilization on non-Western populations, highlighting colonial hegemony and reinforcing racial and class hierarchies. This perspective, however, has largely overlooked indigenous knowledge in shaping transnational encounters during the nineteenth century. In Ningbo, on China’s east coast, a treaty-port city opened to foreign trade and residence in 1842, Western expatriates accessed an abundant and inexpensive supply of ice from local farmers, who harvested it from paddy fields in winter to support the summer fishing season. Travelers, botanists, and geographers from abroad extensively documented these vernacular landscapes, and accounts of Ningbo icehouses, praised for their economy and efficiency, were disseminated in Britain and the United States through the flourishing horticultural and agricultural journalism. These reports resonated with readers amid the expansion of the ice trade, providing reference for the harvesting industry and informing a growing public seeking improved storage techniques. Ningbo icehouses were also showcased as crucial infrastructure for supply logistics at international fairs, including the Berlin (1880) and London (1883) Fishery Exhibitions, and the Louisiana Exposition (1904), further amplifying their visibility during the intensifying competition between natural ice harvesting and manufactured ice production before the latter ultimately prevailed. Ningbo icehouses, which remained in use until the late 1970s, thus offer a lens to explore a more interconnected history of the cryosphere beyond the dominant colonial narrative, as locally grounded customs and methods became intersected with global networks and environmental imaginaries, revealing diverse pathways through which practices and technologies circulated across geographies, climates, and cultural contexts.
Copyright (c) 2026 Zhengfeng Wang https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
This article examines the lessons of resilience and subversion embedded in a folktale about the frozen Zanskar River, also known as the Chadar, which has long served as the only winter route into and out of the Zanskar region. The story of King Rkyalzos’s cook, who faces the peril of melting ice and ultimately escapes cannibalism, offers insight into the intersections of contemporary climate change, adaptation interventions, and local practices. Drawing on this folktale and on how Himalayan residents navigate the challenges of climate change today, the article suggests that resilience can emerge from an appreciation of the vitality of ice. Moreover, the folktale’s subversion of traditional power dynamics—where the cook’s ingenuity disrupts established hierarchies—echoes how residents’ practices often operate at the margins of dominant climate knowledge production and adaptation efforts in the region. Through this exploration, the article offers a counternarrative to the pervasive trope of loss in climate change discourse and the expectation of technocratic rescue amid visions of decline and dystopian futures.
Copyright (c) 2026 Karine Gagne https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Each year during the Santiago festival, residents of the Mantaro Valley of Junín, Peru travel to the Cordillera Huaytapallana to pay respects to mountain deities known as Apus through offerings at the feet of glaciers and glacial lakes. Arriving by the hundreds, those who partake are known for boisterous partying, and are widely seen as responsible for the accumulation of plastic, glass, and organic litter throughout the area. This presents a challenge, as the Huaytapallana comprises the headwaters of the Shullcas River, the primary water source for the regional capital city of Huancayo. In response to the contamination, the Junín government prohibited the 2025 Santiago pilgrimage, closing the Huaytapallana Regional Conservation Area. However, most public facing messaging justifying the prohibition only mentions trash in passing, focusing instead on the concerns over disappearing glaciers and diminishing dry season freshwater resources. This amalgamation of factors presents a conflict wherein cultural traditions based on reciprocal relations with the mountain cryosphere are positioned in opposition to the management of glacio-hydrological infrastructure, even while both paradigms seek to honor the mountains and ensure the continuity of their life-giving resources. Hydrological monitoring confirms that despite making up less than 30% of the total watershed area, the glacier-fed portion of the Shullcas basin provides nearly half of the water that reaches Huancayo’s water treatment plant during the driest time of year. Conserving the integrity of these headwaters in a low-to-no-ice future is therefore critical for maintaining regional water availability. This is a broadly shared goal across the paradigms introduced above, but challenges persist in reconciling diverse priorities.
Copyright (c) 2026 Tal Shutkin https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
This piece/paper explores the spiritual, cultural, and ecological relationships between communities of Gilgit-Baltistan, northern Pakistan, and their surrounding glaciers, positioning these interactions within the frameworks of ecocriticism, new materialism, and indigenous epistemologies. Gilgit-Baltistan hosts more than 13,000 glaciers, entities that are not merely natural formations but are understood locally as living, sentient beings possessing agency, breath, and soul. Historically, these communities have practiced forms of ecological spirituality through rituals of reverence and gratitude toward glaciers as life-giving forces. Drawing from ethnographic narratives, oral histories, and contemporary artistic expressions, this study examines how such cosmologies continue to evolve in the face of modernity and climate change. Central to this research is the emergence of high-altitude music festivals in Gilgit-Baltistan, a contemporary manifestation of glacier veneration in which young artists perform mystic, shamanic, and folk-infused compositions as acts of tribute. Drawing on detailed interviews, participant observation, and close listening to the music itself, including its melodies, lyrics, instrumentation, and performance aesthetics, the study examines how musicians conceptualize glaciers as companions, mentors, and co-creators of art. By attending both to the sonic textures and the cosmological meanings embedded in these performances, the research illuminates how musical practices grounded in indigenous philosophies of reciprocity and reverence articulate an eco-animistic worldview that challenges dominant anthropocentric paradigms. These performances, as understood and articulated by the musicians themselves, are acts of cultural resilience and ecological resistance through which they reclaim sacred relations with the natural world amid the accelerating climate crisis. The artists frame their melodies, lyrics, and performance practices as forms of remembrance, responsibility, and reciprocal care for the glaciers they regard as living presences. By situating music as both an aesthetic and ecological act, this research contributes to broader debates in environmental humanities, indigenous cosmologies, and affective ecologies. It argues that the artistic engagements of Gilgit-Baltistan’s youth represent not only cultural continuity but also an intentional ethical and spiritual response to environmental degradation.
Copyright (c) 2026 Hasina Hasina https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
What makes glaciers “Instagram-able”? This question about the fascination of the cryosphere to tourists is not only related to present-day smartphone and social media society, but can be traced back to the Belle Époque, when bourgeois tourists in the Alps, in Norway or in the Rocky Mountains posed on or in front of glaciers for a photograph. This paper aims at exploring the attractiveness of glaciers to alpine tourists from the late 19th century onwards. Looking at the example of the Swiss mountains, glaciers even became the drivers to construct cog railways to altitudes never reached before. In this way, wealthy tourists could just stop near the glacier, admire a spectacular view, and pose in front of this scenery or even on the ice itself. Photographers such as Arthur Gabler from Interlaken (canton of Bern) made a big business with accompanying these tourists for a professional photo. He also sold these photographs as postcards to send them home from the Bernese Oberland. In this way, an attitude similar to our today’s “Instagram society” can be observed. Based on a visual environmental history approach using photographs, postcards and poster advertisements, this paper tries to shed a light on the development of human-glacier relationships for the last 140 years. Are there significant changes of motivation why to visit glaciers and to use them as a spectacular setting for self-representation? It is assumed that in the Belle Époque the main driver had been the admiration for the “sublime Alps” and the sparkling “wild“ ice, whereas today, in times of accelerating global warming, new aspects such as “last change tourism” might be prevalent. As an outlook, it will also be asked how this alpine tourism infrastructure constructed for glacier experiences will cope with a future, when the glaciers have shrunk or totally vanished.
Copyright (c) 2026 Christian Rohr https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0