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 …
I was at a cafemik this week – coffee and cake at a friend’s house, to celebrate a birthday. There were a lot of people and my husband and I sat down with a group, some of whom we knew, some we didn’t. I got chatting to a woman I hadn’t met before. She asked …
When I was a kid, we spent the long summer holidays in a caravan park by a lake that opened to the Pacific Ocean. As Christmas approached, the days grew hotter. We spent our days swimming in the cool water of the lake, fishing from an aluminimun dinghy in the whispering shadows of leaning casuarina …
Walking along the street toward work in the morning darkness, I watched the seconds on my phone stopwatch slowly tick toward 8:15am. Only 45 seconds to go. I was ready to make the call. Careful to keep my footing on the icy pavement, I watched the seconds creep by…tick…tick…tick. But what was it I had …
One of the things I particularly like about Greenlanders is their propensity to just drop by. Now and then, on a Saturday afternoon, or a Sunday morning, the doorbell rings and one of our lovely Greenlandic friends can be found at the door, having just decided to pop in while they were out for a …
A few years ago, a friend wrote a blog post posing the question of whether Danes are friendlier in Greenland than they are back home in Denmark. From my perspective – having lived in both places – I’m pleased to say that they are. Despite being part of the Kingdom of Denmark, Greenland is a …
Warm winter jackets come out at this time of year. On a busy morning commute, the bus to town could be filled with sixty people, all wearing an expensive down jacket. There can easily be more than twenty thousand dollars worth of fur-lined winter jackets on one bus. On the hands, or in the pockets …
I was flicking through Air Greenland’s in-flight magazine – Suluk – when I saw an interview with Greenlandic singer Julie Berthelsen, who lives in Denmark. She was asked, “What is the biggest difference between Greenland and Denmark?” Her answer was,“Everything.” The word stuck in my brain as I disembarked and negotiated my way through Copenhagen …
Imagine you lost your phone seven hundred kilometres from home on an isolated beach reachable only by sea? What do you reckon your chances of getting it back would be? In Greenland, they seem to be better than you would think. The other week, my husband was working in a field camp in Disko Bay, …