Tag Archives for Antarctica

Happy Camper Snowhenge, Antarctica Yet Again

hulabelly snowhenge

photo by Breana Simmons, aka hulabelly, with permission

Okay, so we’ve developed a fascination with the Antarctica/snowhenge connection. How can South America have no Stonehenge replicas and Antarctica have so many? Breana’s explanation of this one goes some way toward explaining it: “Snowhenge was built by a group of researchers during Happy Camper School in Antarctica. We have to pass this course if we want to work in the field. It’s a lot of fun, but you have to keep moving to stay warm. Hence, Snowhenge.”

For those who have forgotten, here are the other Antarctica snowhenges we’ve posted: The Bushmills-Conjuring Snowhenge and Sky-Blu, plus the one we haven’t been able to post, here. And we will continue to post Antarctic snowhenges as they come down the line.

When we started we wanted to get a Stonehenge replica on Antarctica and one on the International Space Station. Turns out, the people on Antarctica were way ahead of us. Now we need one on the South American continent and one on the space station. Maybe we can get Stephen Colbert to help–he seems to have an in with NASA!

Score for this snowhenge: 6 druids. It lacks a little detail but we’ll cut people slack when they’re working in weather well below freezing!

Snowhenge the Third, Antarctica Again: Sky-Blu

booking-stonehenge

photo by Rob Jarvis, with permission

Snowhenge time again.  As some of you know, we favour Antarctic snowhenges when we can get them. We did a post on one, mentioned another in the post Henges We Admire, and here’s a third, equally nice, also from the planet’s nether regions! (No Bushmills visible in this one, though ;-))

Rob Jarvis of Highland Guides says: “The snow clonehenge was made at ‘Sky-Blu’ at the southernmost end of the Antarctic Peninsula. Sky-Blu is a blue ice runway maintained by the British Antartcic Survey (BAS) . . . I was working there and we must have had a few spare moments! The snow structure was done by ‘Baz’, a BAS mechanic posted down to Sky-Blu for a work stint!”

Commonly the builders of these things are very practical people, perhaps instinctively trying to balance their rational and intuitive sides by building (practical) a Stonehenge (symbolising the intuitive?). You have to be practical to live in Antarctica, but we suspect the land inspires awe!

Score: 7½ druids. Love that Antarctic action! Want some less exotic snowhenges? Here we go: One, two, three (don’t know what language that is, but we see the word druid in there!),  four, and (scroll down for these): five, six, and seven! Oh, and good olde Bristol. Who knows–maybe a snowhenge was first and Stonehenge is just a copy!

Snowhenge the First, Antarctica

snowhenge2

photo by David Mantripp, with permission

And here it is, folks, as we roll into winter solstice, our first henge from Antarctica. Not the only one mind you–it seems that all that time down there without TV, stuck in a building with a small group of people in the midst of a monotonous landscape, possibly with an excess of banjo music (that last is just a hunch!) takes people to that unique point on the psychological landscape where building a henge seems either like the logical thing or the most hilarious thing to do. And there they are with all that snow to work with . . .

In this case, the man behind the camera even took the name Snowhenge and  has a website, recently refurbished, at snowhenge.net , which includes this delightful and touching bit of henge explication:

“Snowhenge is, or was, an artefact built in January 1992 on the Filchner Ice Shelf, Antarctica. Its architects were myself, Jeff Ridley, and Peter Webb. It doesn’t have a deep and meaningful reason, but it goes to show that there isn’t much on TV in Antarctica. It was used in an experimental effort to invoke Druidic powers to refill a sadly depleted bottle of Bushmill’s best Irish Whiskey, but this ended in tragic failure.”

We wish it had worked. What a coup for henge building! Maybe it was a design flaw. If any of you perfect the technique, please write. As for score, well, it’s a new continent for Clonehenge, quite far away. The thought that a wild penguin could wander through one of those trilithons gives us chills! Plus we’re a sucker for a good henge story  and, heck, we can see the Bushmills in the picture to illustrate it . . . so 8½ druids for the henge from where December days are long. Happy solstice, everyone!