I like to wander over the rocky pavements, linger on an outcrop, examine each crystal on the rough surface, run my fingers over them, feel their texture, note their individual shapes. When I press my palms against their cool surface, I imagine that I am feeling some sense of their history, their unimaginable past, in …
There’s a lot of weirdness in Greenland. Some of it is funny. Some of it is sad. Some of it is just weird. Here are some air transport-related snippets. The Camp Raven airstrip on the Greenland icecap, close to the site of the Dye-2 base, is a training airstrip for C-130 aircraft landings and acts …
I last visited Narsarsuaq years ago. It’s an abandoned American military airbase and a settlement entirely devoted to supporting the only airport (at present) in South Greenland. Out of season, like this, the Hotel Narsarsuaq has a edge of The Shining to it, with it’s enormous capacity, long brightly lit corridors and it’s distinct lack …
If you want to be anonymous, Greenland might seem like a good idea. Greenland’s towns and settlements are so small, so remote, so distant from each other. You could easily be fooled that this is a place you might find solitude, isolation, privacy. But you’d probably be wrong. Greenland has a population of fifty six …
This morning, as I walked to work, on another day of Arctic sun blazing down from a perfect blue sky, brilliant white snow clinging to the dark rocky mountains, I was struck by a combination of smells, a combination of smells that perfectly reflected my image of Greenland, and which invoked a burning passion for …
Normal people collect flowers, rocks. But we’re not all normal, are we. I once knew a cat that collected leaves instead of dead mice, mewing at the front door until someone would acknowledge the beautiful green catch between his paws and add it to the bowl filled with similar leafy trophies. People collect strange things …
“How high are we above sea level?” asked a middle-aged woman, as the zodiac carrying her and a half dozen other high-end tourists skirted along the icy shoreline toward their landing point by the outlet of another monolithic glacier. My husband, the tour guide, frowned and his mouth opened and closed, but no words fell …
For me, winters in northern Europe were a dark dirge. Weeks of rain, sleet slapping the windows, grim morning darkness and a cold dank wind. The evenings too quickly wrapped their shadowy arms around the city, already hunkered down for the night by mid afternoon. It’s so dark in Copenhagen, Greenlanders say, and so cold. …
Sleet slaps against the window pane and drags itself in patchy wetness down the glass. The streets stream with water, cars bursting through deep puddles, sending up explosive watery sprays. The ski season is over. I used to go on skiing holidays as a kid in eastern Australia. Skiing in Australia was different from skiing …