Greenland has a difficult relationship with alcohol. Thirty years ago, Greenlanders drank more than twice as much alcohol as Danes, resulting in the typical social problems with alcohol abuse. To combat this, higher excises were brought in from the early 90s. Periodically, restrictions have included rationing and reduction in limits of duty free alcohol (at …
A few years ago in Australia, I was buying supplies for geological field work from Bunnings, a hardware store. As the young man at the checkout tallied up my items, which included a sledge hammer and some rolls of duct tape, he commented casually that it looked like I was preparing for the zombie apocalypse. …
Greenland has eleven diagnosed cases of coronavirus, all in the capital, Nuuk. The first reported case was on March 16. Ten have now recovered, leaving one person still ill in home quarantine. One person in Greenland’s population of 56,000. One person in Nuuk’s population of almost 18,000. The Premier’s updated response yesterday was to extend …
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 …
If there were tumbleweeds in Greenland, they would have been blowing down the street today. Instead, the snow blew low along the frozen ground and twisted around snow heaps at the roadside. On my way to the supermarket, I passed one person, arm over her forehead, body pressed into the wind. The supermarket was almost …
Living in a remote place is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, we are by our remote nature, somewhat shielded from a contagious virus. On the other hand, once it arrives, remote communities with limited health care facilities at the best of times are likely to be unable to cope. Only on …
It wasn’t your ordinary helictoper journey. As the enormous red and white Sikorsky 61 hovered in to land on the rocky, uneven ground, the force of the blasting air left me barely able to breath, crouched against my rucksack, leaning into the cold wind. Through my fingers, held protectively over my eyes, I could see …
“It’s cold today, isn’t it?” I comment to my son, as we trudge up the hill toward home. “Yeah, a bit,” he replies. It’s minus eighteen celsius and the wind is blowing. It’s cold. Is it my imagination, or does the return of this brilliant spring light sharpen the air? The piercing light leaves us …
It’s easy to get excited about new things, however mundane, when one lives in a small place, even if that small place happens to be the capital city and is locally regarded as a metropolis with its bustling population of 17,000. So it was one morning this week when, as the bus approached our stop, …