Greenland is the largest (non-continental) island on earth but at the same time one of the smallest nations population-wise, with only just under 60,000 inhabitants (90% Inuit) in an area of nearly a million square miles (hence it has one of the lowest population densities anywhere), most of it barren and covered by a thick layer of glacial ice. It’s not (yet) an independent state, but politically an “autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark” and Greenlanders are automatically also citizens of Denmark. But it is largely self-governed and there are calls for full independence from Denmark, despite the fact that Greenland is very much dependent on Denmark financially and also militarily.
Yet Greenland has been in the news in recent months for different reasons, ones that at first struck me as so bizarre that I didn’t believe it was for real. Meanwhile, however, the new US administration has made it abundantly clear that it does indeed want to “get” Greenland (so they can exploit it through mining, obviously) “one way or another”, offering to buy it from Denmark (whose prime minister sternly responded “it’s not for sale”) or even threatening to take it by military force! That would mean a NATO member country attacking another NATO member’s territory!!! That’s so outlandish a thought I can’t get my head round it.
So here is my “bid” for Greenland: leave it in peace! The vast majority of Greenlanders do not want to be controlled by the USA, let alone become Americans. And it is their land so that should be respected. Enough of this.
Anyway, I took inspiration from Greenland’s recent media presence to look back through my travel photo archives … way back, in fact, all the way to almost 21 years ago, when I added a short side trip to East Greenland on to my first visit to Iceland back in 2004. So I can bring you a short Greenland photo essay from that trip. The images were taken with my very first (first-generation) digital camera back then, so they’re not the most amazing in image quality, but good enough for an impression.
Here’s a first photo, taken at my main port of call, Tasiilaq (formerly called Ammassalik) in the south-east of Greenland:
It’s a fantastically isolated place – the nearest other settlements are hundreds of miles away, and much smaller than Tassilaq’s population of ca. 2000 these days (it was somewhat fewer when I was there). The only relatively nearby other place is Kulusuk (ca. 15 miles away), which is also where the only airport of the region is located, offering connections both to Nuuk (Greenland’s capital on the other side of the island) and to Iceland. That’s why I got the chance to tag this visit on to my Iceland trip. Here’s a photo of the tiny airport at Kulusuk, with an Icelandair twin turboprop plane just about visible on the apron:
From Kulusuk there’s a transfer service to Tasiilaq by helicopter operated by Air Greenland. It’s a shame I didn’t take any photos from the helicopter ride, as the low-altitude flight took us over fabulously barren territory with not the slightest visible trace of any human presence. I did, however, take a photo of the helicopter on the helipad in Tasiilaq:
This is of course travel far removed from mass tourism. As you can see the helicopter would have had space for no more than six or seven passengers. Our small contingent of visitors were mostly accommodated in a somewhat basic but functional enough three-star hotel on a hillside overlooking the small town (you can see part of the hotel on the left edge in the first panoramic photo above).
In the hotel lobby there was this polar bear skin on display on a wall – a not so subtle reminder that Tasiilaq is in the Arctic:
I don’t know if polar bears are a common sight in Tasiilaq, but I assume not really, as there were no safety briefings or alerts to that effect (quite in contrast to when I was in Svalbard a few years later), or maybe health-and-safety affairs are handled rather laxly here. Anyway, as the hotel was at the end of the only road in the region (a whopping 3km long in total!) my partner (now wife) and I set off on a little walk over the barren Greenlandic scenery in the hills behind Tasiilaq. This is where this photo of me was taken:
I don’t normally include photos of myself here, but this one may actually be familiar to readers who are have navigated my main website in some depth. That’s because I chose this photo to represent me in the “about” section of my website when I first set it up. Back then I argued that I picked this photo precisely because it did not show me at any dark-tourism site (I was trying to avoid any favouritism). I am beginning to reconsider, though. Maybe the combination of climate change, American threats, polar bears and the utter remoteness of this part of the world do make it qualify in a darkish sense. I’ll mull it over a bit more.
I’ll also have a think about whether I should change the photo for my website’s “about” section. This one is just so dated – in the many years since then my hair has grown thinner and what’s left is largely grey, and I’m also not quite as slim as I look in this photo any more. It’s flattering, in a way, but maybe for honesty’s sake I should replace it with a newer one …
Anyway, not being (made) aware of any potential polar bear threats I just enjoyed the Arctic barrenness of the scenery that day. And as it was summer, there were even Arctic flowers amongst the moss on the rocks:
Personal detail: I picked one of these flowers and used it in spontaneously proposing to my partner there and then (and we did get married two years later). We even still have the flower dried and flattened in a photo album (of the old-school physical sort).
From up there on the hills above Tasiilaq we also got a view out over the Ammassalik Sound and the North Atlantic beyond – with some pretty sizeable icebergs floating around:
Thus far the weather had been favourable, as you can see with all that sunshine. But the clouds on the horizon seen in the photo above rolled in the next day and changed the weather significantly – and with it our plans. Originally we were supposed to go on another helicopter flight to reach the top of the Greenlandic ice shield, in this case the nearest glacier. But that plan had to be cancelled due to poor visibility.
What we did just about still manage before the weather turned, however, was an iceberg cruise in the waters off Tasiilaq. You can see one larger iceberg floating just off the coast in the first panoramic photo above – here’s a closer-up view of the same thing:
It is indeed just a single iceberg, even though it looks like three – but they are all connected below the waterline to one huge block of ice. As you will know, 80-90% of all icebergs are under water, hence the expression “only the tip of the iceberg”.
Here’s a photo of another iceberg we saw on the boat trip a bit further into the bay – with the last sunlight glistening on the clean ice:
And here is another iceberg, showing clear signs of interaction with water, meaning that this side of the iceberg must have been under water not long before:
I had been on an iceberg cruise before in Iceland, namely on its famous Jökulsárlón, where we were told we could not get too close to the icebergs as they might suddenly turn and in the process endanger the boat. Here in Greenland there were clearly no such safety concerns, despite the icebergs showing such clear signs of having turned before.
It got even better when the Inuit skipper of our boat then brought the vessel right alongside this iceberg and proceeded to hack off a chunk of ice by means of a hammer (same photo as the featured one at the top of this post):
This had been at the request of a fellow tourist on the boat who later back at the hotel put pieces of that hacked-off block of ice into a glass of duty-free whisky – and he offered me one as well. I’d normally never put ice in whisky (it kills the aroma, so no real whisky connoisseur ever does this), but on this occasion I made an exception … just to listen to this probably millennia-old piece of ice crackle in the glass as the little pockets of air trapped within it were released was just magical. It added a certain element of mystique that outweighed the damage done to the whisky (and it wasn’t like it had been an especially precious single malt).
And so that first day in East Greenland ended with a glacier-ice-enhanced nightcap as the dusk of a late-August evening set in (Tasiilaq is a bit below the Arctic Circle):
The next day was grey and grim with fog and constant drizzle, so we couldn’t do any more activities in the surrounding area and were just left with exploring the small town on foot on our own. We went to the small local museum and tried to drag out the visit for as along as we could (never before had I read all the panels in a museum like that in full). We also went to the local supermarket and were astounded by the selection of goods on offer, ranging from frozen seal blubber to outboard motors and DVDs of hardcore porn (on full open display!). Along the way on our wanders we also encountered some young sled dogs, well, puppies that would one day become sled dogs:
Such youngsters were quite friendly and playful and hence allowed to roam around quite freely. Their adult working dog counterparts, on the other hand, were all tethered inside their pens. Watching feeding time was quite a spectacle. Also their howling. Every so often a group of these dogs would start giving off prolonged communal howls (like wolves howling at the Moon), which other groups of dogs in other parts of the town would answer with their own howling. It would often go on back and forth for ten minutes or more. It was a soundscape that I’ll never forget.
On our exhaustive wander through drizzly Tasiilaq we also came across the local cemetery … so here we go, a proper dark-tourism element at long last:
The flowers were of course all plastic – and the crosses were mostly unmarked, as is the Inuit tradition (in their belief system people lose their names when they die – or some such thing; I’m not an expert on religious beliefs). But we found an exception, i.e. a grave with a name given, as seen in this photo (with the actual surname pixelated out for privacy reasons):
What was also unusual about this grave was the line of text in German on the plaque (why not in Danish, I wondered), which translates literally as “we love you incessantly”.
Finally, after our helicopter transfer back to Kulusuk we had a couple of hours spare before the arrival of our plane to take us back to Iceland, so we explored that little place too for a while … and came across another Arctic cemetery:
What a view, eh? Shame the interred inhabitants can’t see it any more (I find this view better than Waverley’s to be honest) – but for a visitor it is a delight. I actually think this is one of my favourite photos I’ve ever taken in Arctic lands …
And so it is a fitting finale. With this I’ll bring my little Greenland photo essay to a close. I hope you enjoyed it.
I fondly remember Greenland as such a wild yet serene place that I truly hope it can remain so, undisturbed by any foreign imperialist exploitative ambitions.
