The Iceworm of Cordova

Ask a sourdough about the ice worm and you may be told it grows as long as a garden hose, lives deep inside glaciers, and tastes best fried in batter with bacon. That is the tall-tale version, and it is one of the oldest jokes in the North. Newspapers were already teasing readers about the creature by the late nineteenth century, and for generations old-timers used it to fool newcomers – the classic prank being a “worm” that turned out to be a piece of frozen spaghetti with two ink spots for eyes.

The tale rides on a true fact. A real ice worm, Mesenchytraeus solifugus, does live on Alaskan glaciers. According to the U.S. Geological Survey it is a close relative of the earthworm that spends its entire life on glacial ice, and it turns up in Alaska, Washington, Oregon and British Columbia. It is thread-thin, no longer than about an inch, and comes up to the glacier surface in the evening and early morning to feed on snow algae. The giant ice worm of legend is a stretched version of a creature that really exists – which is partly why the joke has lasted.

The poet Robert Service helped carry the legend to the wider world. His comic poem “The Ballad of the Ice-Worm Cocktail,” published in 1940, tells of a newcomer who gulps down a cocktail containing an ice worm to prove his mettle, only to learn the worm was spaghetti. Service did not invent the story; he borrowed Yukon barroom lore, and a 1906 Dawson newspaper tale about a gullible Englishman may have been a source. The Alaskan version of the joke, meanwhile, was kept alive by columnists, cocktail menus, novelty postcards and dances through the twentieth century.

Nowhere does the ice worm get a warmer welcome than in Cordova, a fishing town on Prince William Sound that cannot be reached by road from the rest of Alaska. In the early 1960s a few residents decided the town needed a winter festival like those of other Alaska communities, and the Cordova Iceworm Festival was born in 1961. Today the week of events includes a variety show, the crowning of an Iceworm Queen, a survival-suit race, a cake bake and a grand parade.

In the tall tale: a pale or bluish worm from a few inches to many feet long, sometimes said to have dozens of legs, that is killed by warmth and said to be fried or stirred into drinks. In reality: a dark, thread-like worm about the size of an eyelash that lives on the surface of glaciers.

Glaciers and ice fields of coastal Alaska, the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia; in legend, deep inside Klondike and Alaskan glacier ice. Real specimens come to the surface at dusk and dawn.

The ice worm is a mascot of Alaskan humor. Cordova’s Iceworm Festival, held every winter since 1961, features an Iceworm Queen, a parade and a survival-suit race, and the town’s tourism identity leans on the creature. The legend also shows up in Robert Service’s verse, novelty cocktails, plush toys and dances such as the “Iceworm Wiggle,” which Marie Lysing Johnson of Juneau is said to have conceived in 1937.