Fortunately, the weaver ended up surviving. A few pig tails turned out to be growing in the caverns, and while the first few gathered got turned into ale before I noticed what was going on, a few more were successfully harvested and spun into cloth. With three pieces of cloth and a rose quartz gem, the weaver created... a fancy rope. I didn't even get a legendary clothesmaker out of it, as it was a possession.
While this was going on, an elven caravan arrived! Those tree-huggers typically don't have anything useful, but I figured they might have fancy animals and sent some bone crafts to the depot.
This turned out to be a mistake.
Literally the moment my broker walked into the depot, a pack of ice wolves attacked. The elves, being the useless buggers they are, chose to run away, while my broker decided to stand and fight. A short but bloody battle later, one ice wolf, one elf, and a yak cow laid dead, but so did my broker. The remaining three ice wolves then left, completely ignoring the cowering elf and horse who'd collapsed shortly after fleeing the battle.
Being the kind and merciful overseer I am (and also because the final elf still owned the depot goods), I sent my expedition leader to punch his face in. One brief battle later, I was the proud owner of a pile of clothing, wooden toys, and exotic fruits.
In slightly less macabre news, the fortress's indoor farm has finally been completed! This large field will provide us with plentiful plump helmets, at least until some building destroyer discovers the drain and smashes through the floodgate covering it.
I've also begun production of gold bars, though work on the metalsmith's forge is understandably delayed.
A second possession occurred, causing a miner to create... a gold bed consisting solely of three gold nuggets. It's priced at a whopping 144000☼.
One final thing of note is that both in spring and summer no migrants came to the fortress. Presumably, the relative poverty reported by the first caravan caused them to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Fortunately, the two artifacts should be more than enough to change this.
EDIT: Here's the artifacts, for anyone interested.
For the record, I have no idea who 'Nita Wadeglimmer' is. I suspect that their settling on the glacier is one of the only notable things that's ever happened there, because my dwarves love to create art about them.