It was first discovered in nature by the Danish mineralogist Pauly[5] in the Ikka Fjord in southwest Greenland, close to Ivittuut, the locality of the famous cryolite deposit.

[6][7] Here ikaite occurs in truly spectacular towers or columns (up to 18 m or 59 ft tall) growing out of the fjord floor towards the surface water, where they are naturally truncated by waves, or unnaturally by the occasional boat.

[9] Ikaite has also been reported as occurring in high-latitude marine sediments at Bransfield Strait, Antarctica;[10] Sea of Okhotsk, Eastern Siberia, off Sakhalin;[11] and Saanich Inlet, British Columbia, Canada.

It is thought that perhaps the structure of calcium carbonate in a concentrated aqueous solution also consists of an ion pair, and that this is why ikaite readily nucleates at low temperatures, outside of its thermodynamic stability range.

[28] The common ingredient appears to be cold temperatures, although the presence of traces of other chemicals such as nucleation inhibitors for anhydrous calcium carbonate may also be required.

[32] Some studies have shown that oxidizing methane is the source of both modern day ikaite and glendonites in high-latitude marine sediments.

Similarly the ratio of 18O to 16O, which varies in nature with temperature and latitude, can be used to show that glendonites were formed in waters very close to the freezing point, in agreement with the observed formation of ikaite.