How Did Icebergs Get To Be Such Powerful Metaphors?

For much of modern history, icebergs have helped us speak about deeper reservoirs of meaning. The phrase “just the tip of the iceberg” has, at least since the environmental movements of the Sixties, expressed the idea that there is much more to something than meets the eye. As the historian William Cronon observes, internalizing nature through language like this is our best way of understanding it—and ourselves.