1 As the Mover loves in Iceland and has long-running interrelations with the glaciers, there is a reliance on Icelandic language and cultural heritage throughout this Motion. This in no way is intended to act as an endorsement for the concept or practice of a nation-state. That said, the Mover also co-founded the campaign Snæfellsjökul fyrir forseta (Snæfellsjökull for president), which nominated the glacier for the Icelandic presidency (Magnússon 2024; Kassam 2024; Meijer 2024; Balaguer 2024; Süddeutsche Zeitung 2024). So the Mover also acknowledges their active role in contributing to nation-state structures and rituals.

2 “Stop, collaborate, and listen (Vanilla Ice 1990).”

3 Typeset in Century Gothic Pro, a font that uses 30% less ink than similar fonts due to slender lines. Century Gothic Pro is recommended and used by many governments for legal documents.

4 ‘We’ as in any human who wishes to be included within this ‘we’. ‘We’ who relate. As in any human who is a we-body relating as an ecosystem within an ecosystem.

5 The Holocene epoch is the current interglacial period, lasting roughly 11,700 years to date.

6 “The 2025 PHC report concludes that seven out of nine Planetary Boundaries have been breached, with all of those seven showing trends of increasing pressure—suggesting further deterioration and destabilization of planetary health in the near future (Sakschewski et al. 2025).”

7 Withness is “the art of interdependent relationship (Rawlings 2024).”

8 Collective members of Snæfellsjökul fyrir forseta (Snæfellsjökull for president) approach glacial relations through an ethos of að jökla (to become-with glacier). “The neologism að jökla takes an Icelandic verb form and applies it to the word for glacier (jökull). This follows the behaviour of Icelandic seasonal verbs such as að vora (to become spring) and að vetra (to become winter), signaling metamorphic transition as their action. The glacier-verb neologism traces transition; in the case of current usage, it implies a flux in mass, leaning heavily towards transitional disappearance. The creation of this action word also allows for the empathetic embodiment of glacier experiences (Russo and Reed 2018).”

9 Even a response-ability (Haraway 2016).

10 “Obligations, duties, or responsibilities are possible without rights (Streeten 2000).” See further discussion of rights correlated with or replaced by obligations, duties, responsibilities (International Council on Human Rights Policy 1999), capabilities (Nussbaum 2004), reciprocities (Kimmerer 2024).

11 Geosemiotics denotes the communicative capacities of a plant or planet, transmitted through sensorial materialities.

12 Glaciers demonstrate their agencies through movement, performing an intricate dance with ecological partners.

13 See Schechner 2013.

14 At the start of the 21st century, there were 44 countries with glaciers. Venezuela officially became deglaciated in 2023 (International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation 2025). By 2100 with current and projected rates of warming, 50% to 80% of glaciers are predicted to disappear globally (Rounce et al. 2023; Bosson et al. 2023; Weston 2023; Zekollari et al. 2024).

15 We accumulate; we drink.

16 We secrete, excrete, discharge.

17 Be they glacier, human, river, ocean, weather, beaver, ancestor, another.

18 There are three hundred words in Icelandic that contain the word for glacier: jökull. With glaciologists predicting the complete disappearance of all Icelandic glaciers in the next 150-200 years, these words act as an archive of future loss (Rawlings 2014).

19 All human languages presented here are spoken in locations proximal to glaciers. This is but a sampling of such languages, all of which are undergoing rapid transformation of both their glacier signifieds and the affective, semantic relationship they have with their words for glacier.

20 See Exhibit Glacial Relations—specifically “Pronounce Glacier,” “Pronounce Gletscher,” and “Pronounce Jökull.”

21 Indigenous Ecological Knowledge, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Local Ecological Knowledge.

22 Revised excerpt from Að Jökla: Ecolinguistic Activism through Acoustic Ecology, Countermapping, Travel Wreading, and Conversations with Landscapes (Rawlings 2014).

23 Þing is the Icelandic word for assembly and is applied to governance entities such as a parliament (in Icelandic: alþing).

24 The first open-air parliament (alþing) was established in Iceland amidst cliffs that emerged and now pull apart from the continuous upwelling mantle plume impacting separation of the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. This cliff-valley is known as Þingvellir. Alþing meetings were founded from 930 to 1262 and were always held at Þingvellir, where deliberation and legislative pronouncements occurred at Lögberg (Icelandic for Law Rock).

25 The Room is intended to stand as an all-encompassing metonym for sites where political debates and decision-making conventionally occur in most contemporary societies. For additional context on my use of the Room, please see “How to Have a Conservation Conversation” (rawlings et al. 2014), an unperformable play which is staged both in the Room and in the Nature.

26 … which would imply all matters as humans are interdependent with more-than-humans. Therefore, a Jöklaþing would be appropriate as a term for all assemblies.

27 Exhibit (noun). (1) A document, photograph, object, animation, or other device formally introduced as evidence in a legal proceeding. (2) An attachment to a motion, contract, pleading, or other legal instrument. (3) An object or collection shown publicly, such as in a gallery.

28 As an example, Iceland might include jöklenska as a second official language of the country alongside Icelandic (íslenska).

29 Iceland has a robust language preservation practice within its legislation and history. Given that both íslenska and jöklenska are arguably threatened, Iceland would be a suitable country to implement comparable language preservation legislation for jöklenska immediately. This would support human residents of the country to learn jöklenska as a component of ecocultural heritage of necessity for glacial being, prior to the complete disappearance of all Icelandic glaciers in the next 150 to 200 years.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​