Fiskefjord is a long, narrow gash-like fjord north of Nuuk that cuts its way toward the inland ice. Islands break its watery path. Its walls are merely hills, not cliff-walled mountains like those of many other fjords on the west coast. Nonetheless, Fiskefjord can make itself felt.
“Go through on the slack tide,” we were told.
But it was a still day with clear blue skies and we were complacent in the fine weather. We found ourselves navigating the full length of Fiskefjord in the racing tide, when the current was tearing up the fjord, but under deceivingly still water. As the fjord narrowed, we saw swirls of spinning water burst to the surface. Along a low, cliffed shore where the rock plunged deep into the cold water, a sudden frenzy of flashing silver fins broke the mirrored surface, flapping and slapping against each other, but melting away as we approached into concentric ripples that dissolved into the reflected sky. With the accelerating tide, the swirls of twisting water grew in number and in size. Invisible pinnacles beneath the surface sent the water into churning corkscrews, sucking the water downward into mini-maelstroms. We powered through the deadly flat water and then, as we hit each whirlpool, lurched sideways one way and were thrown back the other again, the engine reving and dropping away with the swirling current.
Weaving between islands and skerries, cruising past rocky walls diving into the crisp reflections, the waterway slowly widened until we at last emerged into the broad open mouth of the fjord, stretching out toward the Davis Strait.
