Nowadays, it’s relatively easy to track some general stats on your website visitors. While looking at the stats for ice carving secrets, I’ve noticed over time, that the site gets visits from all over the world. Out of curiosity, I wanted to see who was definitely NOT visiting the site. The map above was the result, showing in various shades of green, countries where somebody has visited the site over the last year. In the countries that are a very pale green, almost white, NOBODY visited the site over the last year. There weren’t any major surprises here, but it’s interesting because except for certain regions, there appears to be at least some interest in the art of ice sculpting all over the world.

Here’s who had no interest (in many cases marked by the red circles):

    Cuba and Haiti (One’s still ruled by a Castro and the other has had a very rough time lately.)

    Greenland (Greenland is the least densely populated country in the world, but it’s got my kind of weather, so this was a bit of a disappointment. Maybe next year!)

    The Suriname, Guyana, French Guiana cluster in South America (This was a little puzzling, but all three are small and right near the equator.)

    The Stans: Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan (Also having a tough time lately, Afghanistan in particular!)

    A large swath of Central Africa, along with Yemen, Djibouti, and Eritrea

    North Korea (Is an explanation really necessary here?)

    Now sure, some of the visits could be accidents. You know the feeling; you accidentally click on something and then you have to explain to the person next you that you didn’t really mean to visit that website on cow tipping! But presumably, most of the visitors were looking for info on sculpting ice and the art certainly isn’t confined to just a few countries any more. More striking than the number of African countries without any visits was the number of countries with visits. I looked for one African country in particular, Gabon, which is on Africa’s west coast. I was curious about Gabon, because I’d noticed one Gabonese artist, Guy Roger Mouanda, had shown up in both Fairbanks, Alaska and Harbin, China this year for international ice sculpting events. He was on the TLC show “Chainsaw Ice Sculptors: Challenge Alaska” carving with the team working on the Eiffel Tower. (He had a tough time getting to Fairbanks and showed up late for the multi-day event.) And the YouTube video below offers a look at his visit to Harbin, although much of it is in Chinese.

    As the world becomes a smaller and smaller place, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit to see ice sculpting become very popular in places that it’s rarely been seen before, even in countries without much of a winter. These future ice enthusiasts can offer the art new ideas and their unique cultural traditions. Just take a look at Guy’s design and their finished piece in Harbin and you can see what I mean.