Nordic Glaciers

IVAR Studios

In partnership with Stockholm University

In development
Format
Fulldome documentary, 8K dome master
Running time
25–30 minutes
Audience
Ages 12+, schools and families
Languages
English and Swedish
Filmed in
Tarfala valley, Sápmi (Swedish Lapland)
Science partner
Stockholm University
Stage
Development, filming under way
Premiere
2028

What does it feel like to watch giants of ice melt away over a lifetime - or three? A grandfather, a father and a son from one Swedish family have recorded the same glaciers since 1946. Today the scientists at Tarfala Research Station continue to spearhead this important work, extending the world's longest unbroken record of how a glacier grows and melts - Storglaciären by Kebnekaise.

In 1946, Valter Schytt began measuring Storglaciären, in the Tarfala valley below Kebnekaise. He started scientific rituals that his son-in-law and grandson continue, and established methods still used today. Nordic Glaciers is a fulldome documentary that takes the audience out into the wind and onto the ice. They rope up with the glaciologists, cross Storglaciären between blue crevasses and dig down through the winter snow - and we travel back more than 100 years in time through the historical photographs of these glaciers. Here, climate change is not a graph. It is the ice under your feet. We make the film in partnership with Stockholm University. We have filmed in the valley for three seasons and plan the premiere for 2028.

Development is partly financed. We now need a co-producer and financing for the 2027 shoots and post-production, and dome partners for the 2028 release. Treatment and production plan on request.

Contact producer Fredrik Edström →
Nordic Glaciers highlight

Storglaciären has the world's longest continuous mass-balance record. Each year since 1946, glaciologists have measured how much snow it gets in winter and how much ice it loses in summer. Nordic Glaciers puts the dome audience on that ice.

The film

In the Tarfala valley, the same rituals happen every year. In late winter, glaciologists measure the snow on Storglaciären. At the end of summer, they read the stakes in the ice, as Valter Schytt first did in 1946. Each summer since 1974, Per Holmlund, Valter's son-in-law and former student, has photographed the glaciers from the same boulder, E-stenen. Today, Stockholm University glaciologists also scan the glaciers in 3D from drones. Per's son, Erik Schytt Mannerfelt, uses photographs to rebuild glaciers of the past.
Per Holmlund on E-stenen in August 2025. He has photographed the glaciers from this boulder every summer since 1974.
Per Holmlund on E-stenen in August 2025. He has photographed the glaciers from this boulder every summer since 1974.
These rituals are the film's time machine. A grandfather, a father and a son each recorded the same ice in their own way. Their work takes the audience back through the decades, to the first pictures of the valley from 1910. Then every journey lands in the present, on the ice with Nina Kirchner and the scientists of Tarfala Research Station. The film ends with a question: who will measure the ice next, and how much will be left?
Glaciologist Per Holmlund smiling in the Tarfala valley, snow-streaked mountains behind him
The IVAR Studios fulldome camera rig on a tripod in the Tarfala valley
A glacier tongue descending between dark mountains to a turquoise meltwater lake
A rope team in helmets climbing down from the moraine onto the snow of the glacier
A crew member with trekking poles walking across Storglaciären towards the team, the Kebnekaise massif behind
A crew member in a helmet carrying camera gear across Storglaciären under a blue sky
A filmmaker in a red hooded jacket holding the fulldome camera on a misty slope
Storglaciären stretching between dark peaks, seen from the rocky moraine

Animated 3D sequences

IVAR Studios specialises in 3D scanning of large landscapes. We have scanned Svalbard's glaciers for Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Thingvellir in Iceland for National Geographic and Disney. For Nordic Glaciers, we scanned the full Tarfala valley from a helicopter and drones over three field seasons. GPS points on the ground align the scans, and national elevation data adds the mountains around them. The result is a 3D valley made from measurements, with enough detail for an 8K dome.
Breakdown: 962 drone photos of E-stenen become a 3D scan. The scan matches the filmed shot of Per Holmlund, and the camera flies out over his shoulder towards Isfallsglaciären.
In the whole film, filmed shots and 3D renders flow into each other. A scene on the ice changes into a rendered flight over the glacier. The flight then lands in the next filmed scene, without a cut. A dome has no frame that tells the audience where they are, but these transitions do. They show where the station is, which glacier the audience stands on and how far the ice has retreated.
Breakdown: an orbit around the Kebnekaise massif. Wireframe and terrain change into our 3D scans, and then into the glaciers as they were in 1910.
The renders also let the film travel in time. We put historical photographs back where they were taken, and Valter Schytt's photograph of Storglaciären is already in place. Erik Schytt Mannerfelt has made a 3D model of the glaciers as they were in 1910. With it, the audience sees the 1910 ice in the valley and how much of it is gone today.

With Stockholm University

Nordic Glaciers is made in partnership with Stockholm University and its Tarfala Research Station. The station has done the mass-balance measurements on Storglaciären since 1946. Nina Kirchner, professor of glaciology, is the director. The station's glaciologists take us onto the ice, tell the present-day part of the story and check the science in the film.
Tarfala Research Station, Stockholm University's field station below Kebnekaise, summer 2026.
Tarfala Research Station, Stockholm University's field station below Kebnekaise, summer 2026.
The station has been our base for three field seasons. The partnership connects the film to a working research station and to eighty years of data.

Three seasons in Tarfala

A fulldome camera sees the full sky at once. There is no place to hide a tripod, a footprint or a crew, so we plan each shot on location. We have worked in the valley for three seasons, and each season builds on the last.

  1. 2024

    Mapping from the air

    We flew over the Kebnekaise massif and mapped the valleys and glaciers from the air. The images became our first 3D model of the landscape. We also shaped the story of the film together with the glaciologists.

    Martin Edström in a helicopter cockpit wearing a headset, pointing out of the window
    Martin Edström on the photogrammetry flight over Swedish Lapland, June 2024.
    Aerial view of a river meandering in tight loops through green wetlands
    Rivers fed by snowmelt and glacier meltwater from the Kebnekaise massif, near Nikkaluokta.
    Fredrik Edström in a helicopter with a headset, filming through the open window
    Fredrik Edström photographing the landscape for the 3D model.

  2. 2025

    At the stone and on the ice

    We spent our first season filming on the ice. We worked among the crevasses of Storglaciären, followed the yearly photograph from E-stenen and filmed the scientists at work in the valley.

    Martin Edström in a blue jacket looking back at the camera while Oliver Akermo films among the crevasses of Storglaciären
    Martin Edström and cinematographer Oliver Akermo filming among the crevasses of Storglaciären, August 2025.
    Fredrik Edström in a grey fleece and cap on a boulder-strewn moraine, a glacier behind him
    Fredrik Edström on the moraine on the way to the ice.
    Martin Edström in a yellow hooded jacket packing camera gear into an orange backpack on the moraine
    Martin Edström packing camera gear before the climb onto the glacier.
    Per Holmlund standing on top of a large boulder while people gather below it
    Per Holmlund on E-stenen.
    Erik Schytt Mannerfelt in an orange jacket on a rock, watching a drone fly over the glaciers and a meltwater lake
    Erik Schytt Mannerfelt flying his survey drone over the valley.

  3. 2026

    On Storglaciären with the station team

    We came back with a camera made for the dome and spent time on the glacier with the team from Tarfala Research Station. We filmed the main shots of the film, conducted interviews and collected new 3D data of the landscape.

    A filmmaker in a cap kneeling beside a cinema camera on a tripod by a still glacial pond, red station buildings and snowy mountains behind
    Setting up the fulldome camera by the pond below the station, July 2026.
    Martin Edström in a yellow jacket holding a drone controller on the rocks beside Storglaciären, the glacier and snowy peaks behind him
    Martin Edström flying a drone at Storglaciären, July 2026.
    A small drone flying over cracked glacier ice with blue crevasses
    A survey drone over the crevasses. The 2026 scan uses more than 12,000 drone photos.
    A person in a red jacket standing on a large boulder marked with a yellow E, holding a GPS pole
    Setting a GPS control point on E-stenen.
    A man in a red jacket and blue beanie kneeling beside a camera next to a rushing meltwater stream
    Filming a meltwater stream in the valley.
    A cinema camera with a monitor on a tripod standing in a shallow mountain stream among boulders
    The fulldome camera set up in a meltwater stream.
    A yellow ice axe and a red-and-white rope lying in the snow
    Roped up for the glacier.
    Three people in winter gear on Storglaciären, among them Nina Kirchner, with a camera and tripod and a snow-covered peak behind them
    On Storglaciären with Tarfala Research Station Director Nina Kirchner.

Made for the dome

A planetarium dome is half a sphere, and a fulldome film fills all of it. The image goes around the audience to the horizon and up over their heads. The glacier is not on a screen in front of them. They stand on it. We film with a circular fisheye lens that records the full dome in one circle. We make the renders at 16K and finish the film as one master. From this master, we make 8K versions for flat and tilted domes. We make the film in English and Swedish, with a shorter version for small domes. It is for students from about 12 years, their teachers, and families who visit science centres and planetariums.
The whole sky in one circle: the fulldome camera's monitor in the Tarfala valley, July 2026.
The whole sky in one circle: the fulldome camera's monitor in the Tarfala valley, July 2026.

The team

IVAR Studios is an immersive production studio in Stockholm. The brothers Martin and Fredrik Edström founded it.

Martin Edström, director Martin, the director, is a National Geographic Explorer and photographer with more than 15 years of immersive work. He is a Fellow of The Explorers Club and has worked in more than 60 countries, from Mount Everest to the world's largest cave in Vietnam.

Fredrik Edström, producer Fredrik, the producer, has made immersive productions for National Geographic, for example Expedition Everest VR and Plastic on the Ganges. He has also worked with museums and EU-funded research programmes.

We also work in domes. With KTH Royal Institute of Technology, we built Dome Conductor for the fulldome theatre at Tekniska museet in Stockholm. In this live installation, visitors conduct the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

About the team →

Why it matters

Sweden's glaciers are shrinking. A 2025 inventory (Houssais et al.) found that eight Swedish glaciers have melted away completely. The ice cap on Kebnekaise's south summit has become so thin that the north summit is now Sweden's highest point.

Nordic Glaciers shows this change with evidence that the audience can see. They see how glaciologists measure a glacier with stakes and snow pits. They see photographs from the same point, back to 1910, that show the ice retreat.

We have letters of intent for distribution in Sweden, Canada and beyond.

"Every year since 1946, someone has walked out into this valley to measure the ice. Valter Schytt started it, and his family and the station's scientists continue it. I want the audience out there with them, to feel eighty years pass in the time it takes to read a stake."

Martin Edström

Director

Credits

  • Martin Edström - Director
  • Fredrik Edström - Producer
  • Oliver Akermo - Cinematographer
  • Nina Kirchner - In the film. Professor of glaciology, Director of Tarfala Research Station
  • Per Holmlund - In the film. Professor emeritus of glaciology, Stockholm University
  • Erik Schytt Mannerfelt - In the film. Glaciologist
  • Stockholm University, Tarfala Research Station - Science partner
  • Terrain data in the renders - © Lantmäteriet; © Kartverket; produced using Copernicus WorldDEM-30 © DLR e.V. 2010–2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014–2018 provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA; all rights reserved

Get in touch

Get in touch hello@ivar.studio +46 (0) 733 13 05 69