A few thoughts on Greenland

Four weeks of total wilderness, with the perpetual uncertainties, at sea of the ever-present bergs, and floes, and on land of the possibility of running into a polar bear. 

Some snapshots & thoughts from East Greenland.

Muskox. We saw quite a few of this primeval beast from the age of the mammoth. Their bones lie everywhere. In summer they shed their undercoat fur, an extremely fine wool, ultra light and of top quality. They rub against boulders to remove some of this fur. Here, and everywhere we walked, Karl and I picked a few bags of this wool. The hide can be brought at Ittoqqotoormiit. It is a solid 3 inches of wool; dense and heavy. The muskox is impervious to the cold and wind of the Arctic winter.

At a lake we caught a lot of trout. 14 to 25 inches long (35 to 67 cm). Massive. Roasted over a fire of driftwood, breaded and fried, and fish soup.

Walking up the side of a glacier. On its lateral moraine. Seeing the various features of the reduced glacier. Undulating steep waves of compressed ice marching down to the sea. Surfaces covered with rockfall as the glacier passed the tors, cliffs and mountains. Fissures and huge crevasses. Old water tunnels bored through the glacier now empty. Firm hard ice, and ice thoroughly rotted.

Mika, a Finn sailor, set a net overnight for Arctic char and gave us one. He caught, by way of bycatch, a loon (diver). Karl cut out its meat and roasted it on a driftwood fire. Charred on the surface, red and half raw inside, and absolutely superb.

Walked solo over an isthmus to an adjacent fjord, gun loaded and safety catch off, eyes peeled for bear. Found a superb harbour with magnificent views. Its shore abundantly lined with driftwood. The bones of a narwhal. The skull missing the tusk, has the chew marks of a bear on it. Beautiful. I took the skull & it is wrapped in a blanket on Teddy. 

Another walk (we walked a lot). Up a landscape  of boulders, alongside a stream, to a semi glacial lake, beyond it over tumbling waves of fresh moraine up and down, came to half a dozen alpine lakes, some still partly covered in ice, all dammed up by moraines. The water tasted superb. At one point several flights of Brent geese whistled past us. 

The only village in this region is Ittoqqotoormiit. There are no others further north up the east coast of Greenland. The nearest community is 400 miles to the south. Summer is transient, and in August we found it chilly, with snow banks everywhere. Karl became good friends with an Inuit family, and he visited them every day. He will stay in touch with them. By way of farewell gift they gave him a whole frozen muskox ham. We got about 8 meals out of the muskox stew which was superb. Itto is a community of largely hunters. I negotiated with two hunters for various trophies, with partial success. One of them, Gaba, is a superb hunter who takes bear, muskox, seal, walrus, narwhal. He has inner clarity and poise, and he is kind. The other hunter seems to specialize in bear and muskox, and he apparently lacks that inner poise. The community is kind, open and friendly. Hours after we dropped anchor in front of Itto, a red dot appeared out of the ice to the south. Turned out to be an icebreaker from Denmark, registered in Bremerhaven, on the first of its two annual visits to supply the village. The first visit of the year! Much excitement, crowds lining the shore, Inuit boats racing out to touch the ship's hull and accompany her in, fireworks going off, the responding long, looong thunderous blasts of the ship's horn.

I remain a wild chaos of whirling imagery when it comes to those weeks in East Greenland. Will put down more impressions in another post.