Iceland holds funeral for its first glacier lost to climate change

Iceland has said goodbye to its first glacier lost to climate change.

Children placed a memorial plaque on the ground where the Okjokull Glacier used to be following a two-hour hike up a volcano.

Around 100 people, including politicians, scientists and journalists, observed moments of silence and heard poetry and political speeches about the urgent need to fight climate change.

Iceland's Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir and former Irish president Mary Robinson, the United Nations High Commissioner, were among those at the funeral for the Okjokull Glacier.

The glacier, ironically nicknamed OK, covered 6.2 square miles (16 square km) in 1890, but was stripped of its glacier status in 2014.

Icelandic geologist Oddur Sigurdsson, who pronounced the glacier extinct about a decade ago, took a death certificate to the memorial.