Geli, Torge, and all you other ice people – do you know what this is?

Browsing pictures on my phone, I came across the pictures below that I took a while back in Bergen. What you see in the picture below is a photo taken down at the flat surface of a picnic bench. Each individual ice needle is about 1 cm high measured from the wooden surface of the bench. I only saw the crystals on that one bench that one day, but not on any other surface.

Ice crystals growing on a picnic bench

I’ve googled a little to figure out how these crystals formed, since they don’t look like either ice flowers or ice needles or any other ice crystal that I am used to seeing. However, I haven’t found anything yet.

The picture below is a close-up of some of the crystals and even though it looks like the picture has a very bad resolution and like you can see individual pixels, that is not the case. That impression is caused by the weird shapes of the ice crystals.

Close-up of some of the ice crystals

Geli, Torge, anyone – do you know what these crystals are and how they form? Or do you have any idea where I could find out more?

P.S.: People who don’t understand why it’s awesome to have a camera on your phone either never had one or don’t have a blog.