It was a still day, cold and quiet, as I walked alone over rocks and snow. My heavy boots crunched through the crisp crust into the softer snow beneath. I stopped for breath by a small lake, ringed by rocky outcrops and, after my breath slowed, I realized that my breathing was all I could …
The heavy afternoon sky reflected the lead-coloured sea. But nothing could dampen the glow of winter whiteness that blanketed everything – hills, houses, streets. The storm of the previous day had shed vast quantities of snow. In the early hours of the morning, the snow machine, all lights and metal, roared up and down the …
Trudging across the sea ice – three geologists, returning from a day’s work amongst iced-in islands in east Antarctica – we spotted a dark slug-like shape in the otherwise completely white expanse before us. It was a Weddell seal, languishing by its breathing hole. One of my companions decided he wanted to know what a …
Two nights a week, I took the bus an hour across Copenhagen to the school where Danish classes were held. I arrived late at the first lesson, walked into the classroom, and sat down. A middle-aged man with dark curly hair was speaking in Danish to the dozen or so attentive students of various nationalities. …
The north side of the Nuuk peninsula, out past the airport, used to be a wild place of rocky hills and valleys sloping down to the fjord, a place where people went to hike, camp, picnic, and to test their weapons at the start of the hunting season. Yes, the latter two activity shared the …
I had all but forgotten that I was expecting a new credit card from Australia. So when I finally received it, I looked inquisitively at the postage date on the front of the envelope. It had been posted three and a half months earlier. Where have you been? I wondered. Perhaps it had languished somewhere …
Our second son was born in Nuuk three weeks ago. At the hospital, I was given a document stating his social security number and date and place of birth. So I went to the council office to register his name – to convert him from a purely numbered to a named human. “Has he been …
A shard of black rock hangs impossibly in the air, detached from its steep mountain slopes below by heavy grey cloud. I feel some of the same heaviness inside, wrapped in a cloud of expectation, uncertainty. The child waits silently for his time, like a stone in my belly. Years ago, I sat in a …
In Greenland, the winds of political change usually come with a whiff of dried fish or mattak. So it was last week when change swept through the government of Greenland once again and a new coalition was formed. Two years on from the last election, the major party – Siumut – abandoned its minority coalition …