| The
first thing you need to know about Greenland is that
there are no roads - at least not outside the towns.
So if you find yourself on the world's largest island,
hankering for a road trip, you'll have to enlarge your
idea of "vehicle" to include small planes,
fishing boats and dog sleds. Lea Lane takes you on a
whirlwind tour. |
As my friends wryly note, I'm now bipolar.
In February, when I was in Antarctica, I came near to 70
degrees latitude south. In April, eager to explore the polar-opposite
region, I traveled to Greenland and found myself at 70 degrees
latitude north, 250 kilometers above the Arctic Circle.
I got there by airplane, flying on Air Greenland
via Copenhagan (you can fly from Iceland in the summer months)
to the coastal air hub of Kangerlussuaq, on the west coast
of the island. Here you can drive right up to the southern
edge of an ice cap that is 14 times the size of England;
a remnant of the Ice Age, it contains 10 percent of the
world's total reserves of fresh water. But instead I boarded
a cherry-red Dash 7 turboprop airliner and headed for Nuuk,
Greenland's capital city, population 15,000.
Though Greenland, a territory of Denmark, is
the largest island on earth, it claims only about 56,000
citizens. Most are of native Inuit or Danish heritage, and
they are sprinkled about in tiny hamlets along the coasts.
Roads are rare outside the settled areas, so if you're looking
for pristine, this is it.
I taxied from the little Nuuk airport straight
to lunch at Café Esmerelda, where I got an informal
introduction to the exceptional Greenlandic staples of cold-water
cod and shrimp. From there I joined a group walking around
the capital. The highlight was the open-air market, where
whale meat and seal meat are staples, both legally hunted
and carefully regulated. I sampled raw whale blubber: chewy,
with a not unpleasant flavor of hazelnuts touched by the
sea. Veggies are few here, and raw seal liver has traditionally
made up for the vitamin deficiencies, but I decided to forgo
that taste sensation.
Sights are spread around central Nuuk, and
offer a pleasant afternoon self-tour: the 1846 cathedral;
the capital building, with its muraled chambers; the National
Museum and the colonial
harbor, which includes Santa's Mailbox, a fun place
to snail-mail a postcard to your kids. The
Cultural Center (Katuaq) is especially impressive; with
a thriving art scene, theater, workshops and café,
it's a light-filled, Danish-designed space for all.
I spent that first night at the comfortable
Hotel Hans
Egede, where I dined on musk ox medallions at their
stylish restaurant A Hereford Beefstouw. Another good choice
is Restaurant
Nipisa, which features a modernized local cuisine by
award-winning chef Jeppe Ejvind Nielsen.
Ilulissat, Greenland's third largest town,
is a two-hour flight up the coast. During the flight I couldn't
stop musing about global warming as I gazed down at the
thousands of icebergs below: white polka dots on blue velvet,
shed from glaciers and formed from compacted snow that fell
perhaps 15,000 years ago.
Ilulissat's 5,000 residents live in Lego-like,
multicolor houses perched against the ice-flecked waters.
Almost as many working dogs sleep in special outdoor areas,
ready to get going. Dog sledding - called "sledging"
in Greenland - is the best (and most fun!) way to explore
Greenland's towns and terrain during most of the year.
I sledged for hours behind a fan of 15 racing
Greenlandic dogs, with an Inuit driver steering and - frequently
- braking as we coursed over the glistening snowfields in
and around nearby Aallaniarfik. Reclining on a blanket,
I clasped a rope and often closed my eyes as we sped along
rolling hills. The tour company World of Greenland picked
me up at my hotel, suited me in sealskin, gave me a brief
orientation (basically, "Hold on!"), and dropped
me back at the hotel at day's end. It was the thrill ride
of my life.
The
Ilulissat icefjord is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
At the head of the fjord, the fastest moving glacier in
the world also produces the most ice - 20 million tons a
day. Alarmingly, since 1840 the glacier has retreated 40
kilometers -15 kilometers in the last five years alone,
the equivalent of about 10 meters a day.
You can hike to the edge of the fjord, or hop
onto a fishing boat for hire in the picturesque harbor,
to sail into Disko Bay. There you will wend your way among
endless frozen chunks of sculptured ice shed from the glacier.
We floated past breathtaking icebergs as big as islands.
Openings in some of them seemed to tempt our little red
fishing boat to sail through (we didn't), and we crunched
over ice the size of cars. Aqua water outlined the bulky
mass below the surface (seven-eighths is submerged), and
small, clear bits - frozen rain trapped maybe thousands
of years ago and now freed - floated around us like crystals.
Some of this ice will slowly drift more than 2,500 miles
south before finally melting back into the sea.
Our boat stopped at Oqaatusut, a tiny, isolated,
still-inhabited whaling outpost. I walked gingerly from
the boat onto frozen Rodebay Harbor. We checked out a dozen
or so old settlement buildings and patted a few Greenlandic
dogs before lunching on smoked whale meat and brown bread
at the charming restaurant H8.
Food and lodging in Ilulissat is just fine.
My hotel was the Hotel
Arctic; meals there included Greenlandic barbecue and
Greenlandic coffee drinks (one popular, fiery concoction
is called "Northern Lights"). Lunch was at the
Hotel
Icefiord, which has a microbrewery and a great view
of Disko Bay. Dinner at Hotel Hvide Falk was an excellent
buffet sampler, with some of the best fish and seafood I've
ever tasted.
I'm no climate expert, but I did talk to fishermen
who claim that water temperatures around Greenland have
recently warmed two or three degrees, changing the fishing
patterns drastically, and Ilulissat Harbor now rarely freezes
over. The town is now the world's center for global-warming
study, and three warehouses here will soon become Kangia
Ice Fjord station, where scientists and researchers will
undertake a systematic study of climate change to tell us
more definitively about melt, gases and emissions, and prospects
for the future.
Meanwhile, Greenland offers exhilarating experiences
and comfort, rare quietude and beauty, along with the sobering
realities of a warming world. As a witness to the fragile
ice shelves, ice caps, glaciers and icebergs near our poles,
you can't help becoming humbled - and more vigilant. For
more information go to Greenland.com.
Michelle Nelson from Greenland
Tourism contributed to this article.
Lea
Lane
10/17/08
