How Icemen Saved the World

Icemen by R. Auniņš

The river laid there in its shameless wintertime nakedness, barely covering up with some streaks of snow glistening under the cold winter sun. A couple of weeks ago, the temperature had dropped into double digits and had been sliding down ever since. There was no stopping now – it would be like trying to keep a block of ice from slipping from your bare hands. It was February after all, the coldest month known to Latvians. This meant only one thing – the time had come! Like water drops from a melting icicle, men trickled down from the banks of the river. Once on ice, they scattered in small groups looking for something, like dogs sniffing for prey. They were not ice-hockey players, and yet they brought shovels to clear large patches of ice from snow. They were not ice fishermen and yet they came with axes and hooks. They were... the icemen.

Ice – the “Hottest” Product

You see, back in the old days, ice was a much more essential product than it is now. Freezers did not exist yet, and the only way to keep things fresh was to store them in ice cellars stacked from floor to ceiling with blocks of ice. The owners of such special premises, of course, were all kinds of stores, bars, restaurants, hospitals and whoever had a sufficient amount of stocks to be afraid to loose them. So all of these businesses and public institutions were in a dire need of ice. City of Liepāja alone required around 5000 cubic meters of ice every year, 300 of them going to the city hospital. And since nobody knew the magic formula for making this hard, cold stuff at home, they relied on the mother nature herself. Every year without fail, she would throw a pinch of cold in lakes and rivers to make endless supply of ice to keep your Rosé chilled, to help your local butcher stay in business, and to make sure the patients at the city hospital get fresh vegetables every day.

 

Location, Location, Location!

But it was not that easy. You could not simply go down to any puddle and start scooping out whatever freezing sludge you found there. There was a gold standard of quality that had to be respected. Luckily, it could be achieved if you followed a set of rules. First of all, it was recommended to harvest ice from lakes and larger rivers – the water was cleaner there with less aquatic plants that could mess up the quality of the product. This was a big deal because these two had a suicide pact. When the ice in storage started to melt, it triggered the decomposing and even rotting of the plant residues in it. And that’s no premium product anymore! Also ice had to be as uniform in structure and transparent as possible. In order to obtain such a top quality product, ice had to be harvested where the water was deeper with sandy bottom clear of any mud.

 

Timing is Everything

Although essential, pinpointing the correct location was not the only requirement. Another big factor was timing. If you wanted the best, you had to wait for the right moment. And that moment usually came around mid‑January or February when the ice was the thickest and densest. In the heart of winter, the ice is harder and more fragile – it breaks better. On the other hand, if you waited too long hoping for even lower temperatures, the casual thaw could suddenly set in, and your premium ice would go down the drain. It would lose volume and density. Collecting ice during a thaw also made it less durable, and afterwards it melted quickly, even if stored in the right conditions. Thaw periods were bad for the icemen too because then everything was wet that made harvest more difficult. It’s not exactly ideal when you have to work all day with your clothes and boots soaking wet.

Ice Fishing

Let’s say you have been lucky in picking the right time and place. Next, you proceed with sawing that ice queen in neat squares, letting them roam free in the black water mindlessly brushing against each other. A majestic sight, but we are not here to let this beauty soak. You have to fish it all out. And fishing it truly was. Icemen had long poles with hooks at the end for pulling in their big catch. The men usually worked in groups of three. Each one of them pierced the ice block in a different place and then together dragged it out like it was a huge white salmon dripping water and launching at men all its slipperiness to reunite with its family back in the river. Now the icemen mercilessly tore it apart in smaller, rectangular pieces and slid them onto horse carts or trucks. These vehicles, every one of them carrying close to a ton of this precious commodity, clogged up roads to the city forming long convoys. Once back in town, they run around making deliveries to ice cellars and striking fear in the hearts of pedestrians. Taking quick turns in the streets often made the blocks of ice slip from vehicles shocking everybody around by a crushing explosion when ice met the pavement.

Silent but Deadly

With their overloaded trucks and carts, the icemen were a force of nature to look out for. It was a good thing this kind of danger stood out in the traffic and could be seen from far away. A completely different type of danger made by icemen lay silent and hidden back in the river. Cutting ice required taking certain precautions. It was not about the process itself though but rather a by-product that icemen left after their work was done. The holes. The men were supposed to mark their workplace or, in other words, the pools of open water. The usual practice was to stick four spruce branches in every corner of the “dig”. Sometimes icemen simply used some of the carved up blocks of ice for that. Unfortunately, they frequently overlooked this unwritten rule and carelessly moved to the next ice field. This meant that ice‑skaters, ice fishermen and anybody else who happened to step on the ice had to look out for these hidden traps. Hidden because the cold during night grew a thin layer of ice over the holes – too thin to support a weight of a human, but thick enough to make it seem safe. Also, it often snowed thereby erasing any remaining traces and making the dangerous areas invisible. Every year somebody stepped or rushed into one of these holes. Luckily, it rarely ended fatally thanks to people around.

 

The Icemen

So who were these legendary icemen that singlehandedly kept the world going in the dark ages before freezers? They were not a special group of people trained to do just that who idly spent the rest of the year collecting welfare checks because they were out of work. There were no benefits and no trade unions for them. There were no schools for what they did either. Their only school was the river or the lake they spent their days on throughout the rest of the year and throughout the rest of their lives. These men were rafters, boatmen, barge haulers, fishermen and ferrymen. They kept living off their source of income. They did not part from their waters even in the dead of the winter – tens of thousands of them turned into icemen every year. They needed their river, and we needed them.

A winter without ice: citizens of Riga take the matter in their own hands and gather whatever ice they can scrap on the bank of the River Daugava