Trees, or lack thereof

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 nonetheless. And once in a while, walking in the hills, you might find an occassional cluster of low, bushy trees. I found myself in one such copse while walking by a lake shore. It was a horrible surprise. What is this? I thought, struggling through intertwined branches impeding my progress, irritated by their presence. I suppose this is what happens when your environment lacks trees. You either miss them (one pines for pines?) or when you, occassionally, stumble across them, you resent their very existence. In this case, they were barely trees, given that I could see the way ahead by simply standing up and looking over them, but they were doing their best in difficult circumstances.

The one time of year that trees make a reappearance is in the weeks before Christmas, when unfortunate firs find themselves shipped from Europe to Greenland for the festive season. Their presence on the streets and in the homes of Nuuk is in strange contrast to their typical absence. Trees, draped in their glowing, coloured splendour, shine out from window after window across the dark city. They don’t last long of course. In the aftermath of the festive season, the corpses of Christmas trees lie discarded on the streets, having relinquished their brief glittery glory to the stark spindly snow-gripped trees struggling on in Nuuk’s wintry gardens. But there are those of us who relish their absence, the stark landscapes, bare rock, cliffs, icy streams – landscapes swept clean of such trifles as trees.