about snowhenge

Snowhenge is, or was, an artefact built in January 1992 at S80° 06´, W41° 53´, on the Filchner Ice Shelf, Antarctica. It’s architects were myself, Dr 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.

As far as I can tell, ours was the first and original Snowhenge. But more than a few other Great Minds have thought alike. Nancy Wisser has dedicated the Clonehenge blog to Stonehenge replicas, and you can find plenty of the icier variety there.

UPDATE 2022

I am indebted to the artist currently known as Alpine Light & Structure for alerting me to this snippet from Sir Vivian Fuchs’ autobiography, which demonstrates that in fact we were at very best second: “The dog drivers marked the route up to the plateau by building a snow cairn every five miles. As time went on they became ambitious and produced increasingly complicated structures. The final work of art which met our astonished eyes as we followed them was a miniature ‘Snowhenge’!”

There really is nothing new under the Sun.