Fifty Words for Snow is a journey to discover snow in cultures around the world through different languages. The climate is a prism through which to view the human world – just as language can be. It is possible to see back into the distant past and trace the historical movement of people through a single unit of meaning: in Europe, for example, many words (snow, snee, nieve, etc.) stem from the same root, the ancient Latin nix and Greek nipha – the initial s comes and goes, without concealing the close connection.
Inevitably, a book about climate also looks forward, considering what we miss, as every winter in many countries we see fewer and fewer snowflakes, and some years now, none at all. Just as the ecosystem is changing, so are the languages that describe it and the way they are understood. Greenlandic was added to the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger in 2010, the same year that it became the country’s official language and the country secured Home Rule from Denmark. In this land that had been a Danish colony since the nineteenth century, language and independence are closely interwoven. The popular concept of the many ‘Eskimo words for snow’ is an urban myth, dismissed by linguists in the 1980s. But the traditional knowledge enshrined in highly differentiated vocabularies like Greenlandic is vital not only to the lives of those who work on the ice-edge, but also to scientists building an understanding of climate change. While many of the languages in this book, such as Spanish and Urdu, can be heard spoken around the globe, others, such as the Inupiaq dialect of Wales, Alaska, are remembered mainly by elders in relatively small communities.
I started to write this book in September 2019 amid debates about Brexit and the climate crisis, while attending Fridays for Future marches in Germany. I finished it six months later, a week before gathering with other masked and silent Black Lives Matter protestors in the UK. The process of tracing a single theme across many languages new to me seemed a powerful way to overcome the borders that were going up around the world. Even under lockdown in a pandemic, it was still possible to voyage around the world through dictionaries. Ironically, one of the first entries I researched concerned the photograph of boys in a snowball fight taken by Robert Capa in war-torn Hankou (modern-day Wuhan) in 1938. Within weeks, the location had become infamous for the outbreak of COVID-19.
Seaŋáš
granulated snow
(Sámi)
Reindeer are creatures of the polar north, living in areas such as Guovdageaidnu in Norway, where snow covers the ground for more than half the year. All through the long winters, during which temperatures can reach as low as minus 30° Celsius, the reindeer graze on the high plateau. They dig down through the snow using their hooves or antlers to find lichens to eat. In spring, lush grasses begin to emerge from the deep snowdrifts on the coast, and it is time for the reindeer to start their great annual migration north to summer feeding grounds by the sea. They are guided by the Sámi people, who have long subsisted in this harsh climate as fishers, trappers and reindeer herders. The spring weather and depth of snow decide when herders begin to move and how fast. They know that cold, crisp ground provides ideal conditions to move their animals swiftly across the plains to the coast. They will often drive the reindeer through the night, waiting for the evening frost to form a light crust on the snow, or skavvi, after the sun has thawed the surface during the day. They will rest when the afternoon sun causes soavli, or slushy snow. While they are on the move, the reindeer – or at least their traces – are visible on the snow, so that animals might be found again if they go wandering or join other herds.
The Sámi language reflects the herders’ intimate relationship with their environment. The rich terminology for snow and ice includes words to describe the way snow falls, where it lies, its depth, density and temperature. One of the most significant types of snow for the Sámi is seaŋáš, or loose granulated snow, which forms at the bottom of the snowpack from January to April. Snow takes on seaŋáš consistency during a cold winter, and it improves grazing conditions: it is easy for reindeer to dig through seaŋáš to the lichen growing beneath. Since seaŋáš melts rapidly, it also provides a vital clean water supply for the travellers. It’s not surprising that some Sámi terms for snow relate to its influence on the lives of reindeer, such as the unwelcome state of moarri, which is ‘the kind of travel surface where frozen snow or ice breaks and cuts the legs of animals’. But while there are around one hundred Sámi terms for snow, the words relating to reindeer are estimated at over a thousand.
Sheen
Snow
(Kashmiri: शीन्)
Water is abundantly present in the landscape of Jammu and Kashmir, a state that boasts such beautiful scenery that it is widely known as ‘Heaven on Earth’. Water in its solid state can be seen on the peaks of the mountains that form the westernmost ranges of the Himalayas, and in the glaciers on their slopes, the forerunners of which once carved out the fertile valleys below. Its liquid state is ever present in the torrents of meltwater that race down from the watershed, gathering as they go into sparkling ice-cold rivers and waterfalls. The water vapour rises again, forming clouds that in turn become rain, refreshing the fields and orchards; this particular paradise is known for its apple industry. In the ‘Apple Basket’, the crops are ready for harvest in October, but many farmers wait until November as apples fetch a higher price around Diwali, the festival of lights. Every orchard owner makes their own decision about how long to keep fruit on the trees. They are aware that cold weather can damage the crops, but heavy snow doesn’t usually fall until December, by which time all the fruit has been picked and sent to market. But the farming calendar is having to adapt to an increasingly unstable and unpredictable climate. The valley has seen droughts and floods, and years without snow as well as heavy snowfall.
One November evening in 2019, snow fell swiftly overnight, burying the orchards in deep drifts. According to the weather station in Srinagar, rain and snowfall that November reached 118 mm, the highest it had been since 1980. That single snowfall damaged around half the state’s 7 million apple trees. Newsfeeds were buzzing with reports of the snow, or शीन् in Kashmiri – a language spoken by (coincidentally) an estimated 7 million people in the state. The apples that had fallen to the ground, or were waiting to be packed away, were buried in drifts; their bright red skins developed dark blotches, ice crystals forming inside the protoplasm of their cells. Mature trees collapsed as the weight of the snow split the gnarled trunks; branches broke away; other trees were completely uprooted; newly planted saplings destroyed. As well as the visible destruction, frost worked its way deep into the trees’ woody tissue and xylem cells. As the wood oxidised, it grew discoloured and was soon invaded by wood-rotting organisms. The loss of crops meant a harsh year for many farmers, and to compound the disaster, they knew how much time the devastated orchards would take to rebuild. Five years for an apple sapling to begin to bear fruit; at least a decade before it matures and yields fully. Wealth comes like the falling snow, wealth goes like the melting snow, an ancient Kashmiri proverb has it: ‘Yiwawani daulat pēwawún shín; Tsalawani daulat, galawún shín’. Riches accrue slowly, yet they may disappear in a moment.
Penitentes
penitent-shaped snow
(Spanish)
At high altitude and in bright conditions an expanse of snow can be transformed into an eerie forest of attenuated blades the height of a human being. The slim shining forms stand close together, the tip of each pointing in the general direction of the noonday sun, giving the masses an orderly, regimented appearance. Out of the corner of one eye, they can seem more like ghosts than glaciers, and so it is fitting that their name recalls the tall, white-pointed hoods worn by brothers of religious orders in the processions of penance during Spanish Holy Week.
The first recorded sighting of penitentes was described by Charles Darwin, on 22 March 1835, as he crossed a snowfield near the Piuquenes Pass in the Andes, on the way from Santiago de Chile to the Argentine city of Mendoza. ‘These frozen masses,’ he wrote, ‘during the process of thawing, had in some parts been converted into pinnacles or columns, which, as they were high and close together, made it difficult for the cargo mules to pass.’ Darwin believed the formations, which were known to hinder travellers, were caused by wind.
In fact, it is now known that penitentes are caused by the sun’s radiation, and that their formation draws on the innate character of the snow itself. An expanse of snow is not entirely flat: there are small dips and dimples in the surface. On a bright, dry day the snow in each dip will concentrate the sun’s radiation, heating more quickly than the snow around it. Little by little the snow in these dips evaporates. Once a hollow has begun to form, it attracts much more solar radiation than the surrounding snow. Eventually the hollow grows so deep that the snow on which it rests entirely disappears, leaving only the sharp pointed peaks alongside.
The formation of penitentes relies on the water molecule in its most mysterious process of transition: ablation, the passage from a solid to a vapour state without taking liquid form. Ablation is a form of sublimation, which in alchemy was considered one of the twelve core processes. A substance was heated to a vapour, and immediately collected as sediment on the neck of the glass alembic. Separation through sublimation was thought to be ruled by Libra, the astrological sign that regulates the balance of the seasons and the length of days.
The penitentes are formed from deep snowdrifts, the kind that have fallen day after day, perhaps year after year, the compression of layers of storm memory. It is only through the disappearance of the surrounding snow that the shape of each penitente can evolve: the vanished vapour is their lost twin. Nor are the penitentes themselves destined for longevity. They are in the league of sundogs, fata morgana and other mirages once experienced by polar explorers: objects forged from the equivocal play of light and water vapour, visions that disappear in air as fast as ice melts. What they are making atonement for, nobody knows.
Fifty Words for Snow by Nancy Campbell is available to buy now for £9.99