June 21st is Greenland’s National Day and the longest day of the year. It’s celebrated in every town and settlement in Greenland with cultural festivities. In Nuuk the celebration centres on the colonial harbour with events through the day – speeches, bands, singing, drum dancing, traditional kayaking. Women don their stunning national dress of fine coloured beads, embroidery and sealskin. But for me, the highlight is the seal hunt.
The seal hunt is the first event. It’s a competition. Hunters set off together and the first to return with a catch wins. Last year the prize was an outboard engine – culturally relevant and most definitely worth the effort. Then hunters haul their catch up on a rocky platform on the beach to butcher the seals.
The butchering of seals is a vivid and morbidly captivating sight. Seal meat is a deep, almost black kind of red, and the blood a thick crimson.
With long knives the hunters cut off the flippers. They make a long incision along the length of the body, using this to open up the skin from the middle. Cutting from the throat and working down, they remove the internal organs, keeping the edible bits like the liver and the heart. The raw liver is offered around and gratefully accepted and eaten by the watching crowd – kids included. The intestines are removed and thrown away. And finally the rib cage is broken and taken out in two halves.
The kids are as captivated with the process as I am. They follow the trails of blood along the rocks, pooling in hollows, or forming a slick of red in the shallow water.
Once the work is done, the meat is delivered to be BBQed and served to the crowds as seal burgers. As the hunters pack up and the crowds disperse, we notice an elderly Greenlandic woman dressed to the nines in a pressed suit, matched with a pearl necklace and bracelet. She has been helping her husband – one of the hunters – with the butchering and washes her bloodied hands in a cold stream. In dispatching the seal, she has not a single drop of blood on her perfect white suit.
