Imagine a music festival that’s had to move because the weather wasn’t cold enough, and which features four musicians in a giant igloo playing instruments that melt as they play.
If that sounds inviting, put it on your next-year calendar, because you just missed this year’s 13th Norway Ice Music Festival, now located in the mountain village of Finse, because its previous home at a ski resort could no longer be counted on to be cold enough. In Finse, it was -24°C.
The instruments are carved from ice blocks mined from a frozen lake: xylophone, wind instruments and claves, a percussion instrument. Even a string bass (though the strings are not ice). As frosty as the wind players’ breath is, it’s warm enough to begin melting the instruments.
While the village is tiny, by the way, it’s not without a history: It stood in for the snow planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back, and was used by Ernest Shackleton and Fridtjof Nansen as the training base for their Antarctic expeditions.
For more pictures and even some music, try the festival website
