travels with janne

By now you
might have noticed that a trip to west Greenland involves seeing lots of ice. I
cannot get enough of these beautiful and fascinating icebergs. Many years ago,
on the northernmost tip of Newfoundland, I stood and watched a tiny iceberg
floating by in July. This was the first iceberg sighting in my life and I was
pretty excited to think that this was a chunk of ice that had spent about two
years making its way from the Arctic waters between Greenland and Baffin Island
before coming so far south that it had almost melted completely away. And now,
many years later, I am visiting the birthplace of all these icebergs! Pretty
cool, eh?

Anyway, on
my last day in Greenland I take a full day boat trip out to Eqi Glacier,
approximately 90 km north of Ilulissat. It is a very pleasant 6-7 hour
excursion to a glacier that is famous for its frequents calvings. In fact, it calves
twice as we lie in wait for a couple of hours with the boat’s motor turned off,
enjoying the silence and cold air.

Although we
are bobbing in the water 1.5 km away from the face of the enormous glacier, it
looks much closer. Huge lumps and slices of ice crumble and slide off the
glacier. Then comes the deep “boom” sound. And then come the waves. Really neat
stuff.

Eqi Glacier
is about 200 m high, of which only 30-180 m stick up above the water. It is
about 2.8 km wide.

Enough of
facts and figures. In this final Greenland travel blog entry I am including a
link to a YouTube video I made with help of my smartphone: Images of Greenland July
2017.

Otherwise,
I hope you enjoy the following photos of Greenland’s dogs, flowers, lichen-covered
rocks and midnight sun.

If you are
looking for some down time, totally unplugged, away from television and
cyberspace, I suggest you go to the laid back, pretty little village of Oqatsut
not far north of Ilulissat.

Depending
on the type of boat you go in, it takes about 45 minutes through a labyrinth of
impressive icebergs to get there. The boat trip has me going camera crazy
again. I cannot get enough of these icebergs.

Oqatsut is
probably not the place to go for action-seeking people with ants in their
pants.

To fully
enjoy your stay in Oqatsut you need to be able to derive pleasure from at least
one of the following activities:

·
sitting
for hours watching icebergs floating by on the water

·
watching
socks drying in the rain

·
taking
repeated walks in the village that has only 35 inhabitants plus a corresponding
number of sled dogs

·
enjoying
the view from a bench on high overlooking the fjord

·
eating
seal fat and whale skin at the amazingly good restaurant

·
reading
a book with lots of pages

·
having
long conversations over lazy breakfasts with your fellow 4-5 travellers

·
striking
up a conversation with whoever crosses your path during the day

·
taking
photos of icebergs, lichen-covered rocks, colourful houses, and sled dogs

·
discovering
a Danish-Greenlandic dictionary so you can look up all the words for “snow”,
“ice” and “seal”

I enjoy all
of these things, so spending time here is very pleasant.

I sit for hours on the rocks at the edge of the village and watch the icebergs. Twice I
hear a deep “boom” which means that an iceberg has just calved.

I watch a
particular iceberg for a very long time, waiting for the skinny part of it to
melt and fall off. Suddenly the whole iceberg loses its balance and rolls over.
Then it presents another shape for me to look at.

I also
spend lots of time strolling through the village. One day, I spend time looking at and taking
pictures of the dogs. A local man feeds his dogs their daily ration of fish and
he waves at me to come on up and join him. I do so, and get up close and
comfortable with his group of dogs, that includes roly-poly puppies that are so
fat they are almost square.

Another day
I wander behind the village’s restaurant and discover the graveyard, where the
dead are buried so they have a view of the sea.

On my final
evening in Oqatsut I treat myself to Greenlandic specialties consisting of
Greenlandic sushi, seal blubber (I can really get addicted to that, even though
it sounds weird), dried seal meat, dried cod (kind of a feathery texture),
dried ammassat (small fish), and whale skin (rather chewy – a bit like squid). The
evening before I ate whale meat, which was very delicious.

So much excitement in just two days and two nights!

To all my
photographer, artist and other colourist friends: take note! Greenland is the
place to be to enjoy cool natural shapes and shades. Everywhere there are sculptures
in the sea sculpted by the sea and
they take on the most amazing colours.

My most
exciting nightlife experience in Greenland takes place one evening from 10 pm
to midnight, when I once again board a boat and sail south of Ilulissat. The
route is much the same as the one I took earlier in the day to the village of
Iliminaq, but the experience is different.

The boat is
a bit bigger with room to sit indoors when it gets too cold. They serve coffee.
The boat sails slowly so we can enjoy the beauty of the floating natural sculptures.
And it is no longer snowing.

One of the crew fishes up a block of ice with an ancient history for us to touch:
The best thing of all is the light. Ominous dark snow clouds still hover in the sky while the midnight sun lends a warm glow to the icebergs and they take on many shades of white, grey, blue, turquoise and aquamarine. Once again it goes to prove that Mother Nature is the best artist. We humans can merely hope to copy, capture and let ourselves be inspired.

Anyway, enough
babbling from me. I hope you enjoy the pictures!

As most of
Greenland is covered by ice, the villages and towns face the sea. This is where
life and sustenance come from. This is where the Greenlandic people have hunted
and fished a bounty of seals, whales, walrus and fish for generations. The sea
is what the graveyards and their dead look out on. And the sea is where the
Arctic creator and spirit lives.

Her name is
Sedna and she purportedly lives in the depths of the ocean and is goddess of
the sea and all the sea creatures. As gods go, I think it is a rather nice choice
to have a female creator. I think I will add her to my list of preferred
creators. The only one on the list so far is Mother Nature.

Anyway, the
point is that the sea means everything to the Greenlandic people. It means
something to me too, because I go on several boat trips while in Greenland. It
is not an option to drive from village to village. No roads.

Today my boat trip brings me to the tiny village of Iliminaq located south of Ilulissat. I sit outside on the small motorboat and enjoy views of the icebergs as we zip by. I snap unreasonable amounts of pictures.

The weather is rather nippy. Then it starts to snow. Water sprays over my legs. A chill wind blasts my face. By the time we reach the village it is snowing rather heavily, I feel like a popsicle, and all I can think about is finding a warm building. Snow in July, for heaven’s sake!

Fortunately,
there is a cosy, first class restaurant here, and I have pre-booked a lunch
platter so I can sample some of the local delicacies, including muskox and
various renditions of freshly caught halibut. The following picture is not the restaurant but the former whale blubber boiling shed:

Many of the rocks are covered with bright orange lichen: The main
source of income in Iliminaq is fishing, but nowadays the inhabitants also
welcome tourists and give them a short guided tour of their village. We are
shown the church, the meeting hall, the original whale blubber boiling house,
the graveyard, and the former shop from about 1740. Despite the snowflurries
disturbing the view, it is all very picturesque.

At the
Iceberg Bank, the fjord is so densely packed with icebergs and ice floes it
looks like you could walk on it. You cannot. It is constantly in movement and
constantly undergoing change.

The icebergs
move at up to 40 m per day – somewhat speedier than in 2001 when the maximum
velocity was 19 m per day. The increased speed is probably due to global
warming. Another symptom of global warming here is that the front of the
glacier is steadily retreating.

As you
probably (hopefully) all know, global warming has a strong effect on the
Arctic. A recent scientific review showed that 97 percent of scientists and
scientific articles agree that global warming is caused by humans. (Check out
the article here.) What are we waiting for? Let’s get our act together!Fortunately,
here and there you can find politicians with brains. Climate-aware politicians
and others seeking to get a handle on global warming while gleaning a bit of
publicity regularly come to the Icefjord with film crews. It is an easy walk
out to the Icefjord along a boardwalk, so even Trump could get out here in his
golf cart, if he had a mind to.

The
boardwalk protects the delicate ecosystem and the traces of old Thule
settlements. Ilullisat Icefjord is extremely rich in fish and sea mammals. The
seal, in particular was crucial for people’s survival. It supplied them with
meat, blubber and skin, i.e. food, clothing, light, heating and other materials
– and still does, although to a lesser extent. The sea here is so rich in
animals because the melting icebergs stir up the nutrients in the water.

The Thule
people certainly picked a place with a good view.

After my
visit to the fjord I hike further along the coast before turning left back into
town, passing numerous sled dog places on the way.

A hilly,
chilly, blindingly white vista spreads out before me: Ilulissat Icefjord
(Kangia). The fjord, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is jam-packed with
innumerable icebergs and ice floes that create a beautiful, unique and
otherworldly landscape. The enormity of it is astounding and I feel very, very
small. Here I am wearing my beloved Merino wool hat bought in New Zealand, my winter jacket bought in British Columbia and long underwear bought in Toronto.

Much of
Greenland’s enormous ice cap is drained through Ilulissat Icefjord from the
huge glacier Sermeq Kujalleq. The fjord is 70 km long and more than one km deep
and continues under the ice cap itself. Icebergs are produced at the front of
the glacier, where they crack off (“calve”) and float off in the water of the
fjord.

At one area
in the fjord, there is a deposit of gravel and stone left behind by earlier ice
ages. This is the Iceberg Bank, where the fjord is only 200-250 m deep. The
icebergs get stuck here until they melt sufficiently or get pushed and broken
into smaller pieces by icebergs coming up from behind before they continue
their journey out to sea. This journey usually takes about 3-12 months.

The
icebergs from this area then float northwards along the west Greenland coast for a bit before
turning abruptly south to follow the coast of Baffin Island. They then mosey
along the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland before taking an eastward turn
into the great expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.

The annual
iceberg production from the Icefjord alone is about 46 cubic km – enough to cover
USA’s annual water consumption (2012 figures). This is an increase from 35
cubic km in 2001, probably due to global warming.

The next
stop on my journey is the town of Ilulissat (previously called Jakobshavn).
With a population of about 5000 people it is approximately ten times as big as
Kangerlussuaq – and at least ten times as pretty, with its many colourful
houses nestled among the rocks overlooking the iceberg-filled fjord.

One of
Ilulissat’s claims to fame is the Ilulissat Icefjord, a UNESCO World Heritage
Site, which I will get back to in a later blog. Icebergs from the glacier
feeding into the fjord dot the water and create a fascinating, ever-changing
view.

This is what the fjord and the icebergs look like at midnight:

There are
also approximately 1500 furry sled dogs throughout Ilulissat. The dogs are kept
for winter transportation and hunting. The breed is Greenland Dog, which has
its origins in Siberia thousands of years ago. Via North America it came to
Greenland with the Thule people about 1000 years ago. There were dogs in
Greenland even 4000 years ago, but these dogs were not necessarily the forefathers
of the present breed. I believe research is being carried out to study their origins.

During the
summer, the dogs in Ilulissat are out of work and seem bored. They spend their
days sleeping, eating and getting fat and lazy. I bet they have just as hard a
time on their first winter sled trips as I have getting in shape at my first
autumn fitness class after a long, lazy summer.

Dogs over
five months must be kept chained for the safety of small children. These dogs
are not family pets but working dogs and while many of them are friendly, some
of them can be rather feral. They have bred for hardiness, not cuteness. The young
dogs are allowed to roam freely, but they do not go far. They have a very
strong group mentality and keep close to their flock (and their dinner). There
is a small group of sled dogs just outside my hostel. I say hello to them daily
but keep my distance as instructed.

Ilulissat
was the home of the Danish/Greenlandic polar explorer Knud Rasmussen who lived
from 1879 to 1933. His perhaps greatest achievement was to travel by sled dog
and visit Inuit settlements all across the Arctic from Greenland to Siberia. He
was the first European to cross the Northwest passage by sled dog. He proved
that the various Arctic people were related by a common language, lifestyle and
way of thinking. If you have not heard of this great and fascinating man, I
suggest you read more about him.

The house in which he was born has been made into a wonderful museum that overlooks the ice-filled water. Here is a view from the museum showing traditonal sleds – a type which is still in use today (when not replaced by snowscooters):

The museum also has a traditional peat hut, which is quite cosy inside:

Every day the midnight sun makes a cursory dip towards the horizon like a plane tilting its wings in greeting to people on the ground before rising once more. It can therefore be challenging to sleep. It is like going to bed in the middle of the day. Nevertheless, I get used to it and try to maintain a regular sleep schedule. Today, I go on a hike in the hills a few kilometres away from Kangerlussuaq with a local guide and two other tourists from Denmark. We walk for hours in the mountains and at the end of the afternoon I feel like I have hiked 20 kilometres, although it was only 10. The air is
brisk and fresh. A light breeze blows the mosquitoes away. We take our time as
we step through the semi-arid landscape that abounds with Arctic flowers,
shrubs, dwarf trees, edible mushrooms, fragrant herbs and lichen. Tufts of muskoxen
hair as soft as angora hang on the branches.

Along our
way we see antlers that caribou have shed. We also see ATV tracks. Our guide
tells us that it is illegal to hunt using ATV’s but the law is not properly
enforced. It takes years and years for the delicate slow-growing Arctic
ecosystem to re-establish itself so the tire tracks will remain for a long
time. It is also illegal to hunt more muskoxen than the annual quota permits but
that is not enforced either. The result? It has become harder to spot muskoxen.
At least live muskoxen, because we see several remains of dead ones where the
meat has been removed and the skeleton and head are all that are left behind. We stop for lunch on a hill overlooking lovely Lake Ferguson and eat homemade buns with homemade muskoxen liver pâté. Yum!Not long after we resume our hike we spot a
caribou. When it notices us, it decides to try and follow us. I guess it is
lonely and looking for a herd to attach itself to. After a while it realises
our little party of four humans is not the right type of herd to follow and it
runs off in the other direction. Later on, we see a couple more caribou.Later on, we spot a solitary muskox grazing in
a valley, its soft dreadlocks wafting slightly in the breeze. It does not see
us. We lie down flat on our stomachs and watch it for a long while.

Here is a Lapland Longspur watching one of its friends coming in for a landing:

At the end of the afternoon, rosy-cheeked and exhausted from the abundance of fresh air and exercise, I part ways with the others in the group. They assure me that when I get to my next destination, Ilulissat, there are pretty amazing things in store for me – among others a UNESCO World Heritage Site.