*Nuuk Snow Festival We lived in Darwin for some years, where the day-time temperature is thirty-two degrees year round. Only the humidity changes. The biggest variations come in the dry season, when the evening temperatures drop. Thus, on one June evening by the grassy foreshore, soft waves brushing the sandy beach nearby, I found myself …

*Musk ox, Wikimedia commons Musk ox are seriously weird animals. They’re like something straight out of Star Wars. A skull-like plate wraps its broad head and sweeps out into a pair of curved horns, like a bony handlebar moustache. A motley brown shaggy coat seems roughly thrown over an animal that looks a bit like …

Photo by Jose Fontano on Unsplash Living in Greenland, I miss the sound of rain. That’s not to say that it doesn’t rain in Greenland. It does. Sometimes a lot. But I miss the sound of it. Sitting in my living room, I can see the rain falling, but through triple-glazed windows, I can’t hear …

Last Saturday was Climate Day in Nuuk, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Greenland Climate Research Centre and draw attention to climate change. Everyone knows those striking images of Greenland’s melting ice, skinny polar bears, retreating glaciers. But for those who live outside the Arctic, which is almost everyone, it’s hard to relate to. …

Like a mirage in the desert, or the disillusioning sense of movement when in a stationary train next to a moving one, a world of whiteness does strange things to one’s perceptions. Combinations of fog, snow, and ice produce a world without contrast, warping perspective and depth of field, and confusing what is real and …

I love this picture. When I look at it, I am overcome by the strange combination of terror and hilarity. The contrast makes me laugh every time. See the guy in the middle of the picture? That’s my husband. For the last five minutes, he’s been slowly descending a snowy slope from a ledge where …

Trees are so rare in Greenland that it’s odd when you see them. The tree line doesn’t make it above sea level. Instead, Greenland has stark, stunning landscapes of bare rock. Just how I like it. There are, however, occassional trees here and there in gardens around Nuuk, stunted, spindly, clinging to life, but trees …