Photo by freestocks on Unsplash The boat pulls away, leaving the three of us standing silently in the sand by our rucksacks, watching its retreat, the cold, mirrored water swashing back and forth on the shore. Soon there are only ripples and the cool, wet air closes around us. Looking up the hill, where we …
Month: April 2020
Greenland has a difficult relationship with alcohol. Thirty years ago, Greenlanders drank more than twice as much alcohol as Danes, resulting in the typical social problems with alcohol abuse. To combat this, higher excises were brought in from the early 90s. Periodically, restrictions have included rationing and reduction in limits of duty free alcohol (at …
A few years ago in Australia, I was buying supplies for geological field work from Bunnings, a hardware store. As the young man at the checkout tallied up my items, which included a sledge hammer and some rolls of duct tape, he commented casually that it looked like I was preparing for the zombie apocalypse. …
Greenland has eleven diagnosed cases of coronavirus, all in the capital, Nuuk. The first reported case was on March 16. Ten have now recovered, leaving one person still ill in home quarantine. One person in Greenland’s population of 56,000. One person in Nuuk’s population of almost 18,000. The Premier’s updated response yesterday was to extend …
In the darkness, the walls reverberated, and I stirred in my bed. In the dark, I could hear my son’s soft breaths. His mouth hung open, his head heavy on the pillow beside me. My husband, quarantined after returning from abroad a few days ago, also lay awake in our son’s room next door. The …