A winter’s journey

The winter mornings are lethargic and slow to shake off the night. I wake in darkness to the deep throbbing hum of the ship’s engines. Blackness seeps through the porthole, the glass rimmed by fragile ferny feathers of ice. It will be hours yet before the sun wakes.

Outside, cold cliffs hang like dark curtains against the lightening sky. Twilight reveals rivers of blue-grey ice, plunging in frozen waterfalls over the grey walls. As the sun slowly rises, a monumental fin-like ridge of rock, rimmed in golden pink light, emerges inch-by-inch from the cold shadow of its sister across the fjord. Then suddenly, the sun bursts over the horizon, firing a blast of orange light across the water, its warmth in defiance of the frozen air. As the ship turns away from the light, I am surprised by the sudden vision of my own shadow, a dark spectre framed by the golden light.

Ashore, the ground is a garden of sparkling spidery ice crystals. They have grown here in a thousand flowery forms: glistening plates, wedge-shaped petals, tinkling powder coating every surface of the spindly, gnarled limbs of the brush underfoot. My boots send them flying, falling in shimmering shards in the deep yellow light of the low midday sun.

Back in Nuuk people are warm in their homes, boats are in harbour, snow falls in silence. It’s a rare pleasure to be out in the fjord in the winter. From a warm living room, it’s difficult to imagine the frigid blue skies, the sharp still air, the silent icy peaks. Out here, it’s as if the whole world is sleeping for the winter.