“Well, that’s the bears sorted out then,” said my colleague, as he finished setting up the bear alarm around our field camp in remote northeast Greenland. The way he said it was as if this invisible fishing line encircling our tents somehow had the power to repel the half tonne predators. I imagined one of …
Last week the Greenlandic coalition government collapsed – again. This time, the problem was airports. For many years, Greenland has been keen on building infrastructure to boost their vulnerable, fishing-based economy. One strand of their infrastructure strategy is to build and expand airports to bring in new airlines and larger aircraft. Finally, a major investor has …
“There’s something a bit odd about taking a loaded gun to the toilet,” my colleague rightly noted. That’s what I’ve been doing this last couple of weeks, that and sleeping with a loaded magnum .44. Both of these are firsts for me. Normally I wouldn’t be so keen, but when sleeping inside a cage with …
Our arrival in Danish military base, Daneborg, was not fun. Daneborg is seventy-four degrees north, in northeast Greenland. To get there we flew from Iceland on a forty-seater Dash-8 aircraft to the gravel airstrip at Constable Point, the official point of entry into the Northeast Greenland National Park – the largest national park in the …
About ninety percent of the tiny population of fifty-six thousand Greenlanders lives in west Greenland. East Greenland, by comparison, has fewer than three thousand residents scattered over only five settlements and two towns. Noone lives in the northeast or the far north, a coastline of almost 2,500 km of pure wilderness. If you could fly …
Qaanaaq, a town of almost 700 people, is the second most northerly settlement in Greenland at just over 77 degrees north. People who leave rarely return. It’s not because Qaanaaq isn’t beautiful and a wonderful place to be. It simply costs too much. A return flight from Qaanaaq to Nuuk will set you back about …
This was my husband’s carry-on luggage for a recent internal flight in Greenland. A musk-ox skull, adorned with piece of remaining face, and a walrus penis bone. Yes, it’s a walrus penis bone. What’s weirder is that this is not particularly unusual carry-on. You encounter all sorts of interesting carry-on in Greenland. Much of it …
Reindeer hunting season is upon us again. Hunting is an integral part of life in Greenland. Gun ownership is high, but gun violence is not. In Greenland, a gun is a tool, and one of its main uses is to kill reindeer. This is a great book for those of us who didn’t grow up …
Last week, when my husband was camping in northwest Greenland, a failed helicopter resupply left him without a few days’ worth of meat. That might seem annoying, but what about being left without a resupply for two months? That’s what happened to the almost 700 residents of Qaanaaq – one of the world’s most northerly …