The Big Ice: The People
Kangerlussuaq, Greenland
October 2023
I have been offered yet again, a unique chance to explore a place far up north, a place of wonders and unknown magic - Greenland. I previously visited Greenland in 2019, with another group of young people, learning about climate change and seeing the direct impacts it has on the Arctic. This time around, I was there with a different mindset and a new personal challenge.
In 2023, a similar Erasmus+ Youth Exchange took place. Although a similar topic to the previous one - ecology - our project focused on other aspects as well, such as exploration, adventure and mental health, all closely linked to our ever changing climate. DGT Association Romania has brought 32 people together, coming from the UK, Romania and Denmark, but with a variety of backgrounds: Slovaks, Hungarians, Welsh, Spanish, Latvians, Lithuanians, English and Romanians.
As with every project, the task is to create a community and make it work for the following 12 days. We cook and eat together, we live together, we share a space together, and we learn from each other. Our location was again the fjord town Kangerlussuaq, and our home was the local Youth Hostel. In essence, the aim was to put down cultural barriers, learn to deal with challenging situations and make the best out of the time we are given in a unique place on Earth.
Another aspect of this project was getting to know the local community of people in Kangerlussuaq, interacting with them and getting an insight into their daily lives and exploring the culture. One of the outcomes was to understand how they deal with environmental and social impacts. Little did we know how embedded in the local community of 500 people, we would later become.
Kangerlussuaq is a small settlement in western Greenland, located at the head of the fjord. It is the site of Greenland's largest commercial airport - so that's where you would fly in from Copenhagen - and it dates from American settlement during and after World War II. Its Danish name is Sondre Stromfjord. The town is situated about 50km north of the Arctic Circle, and is the starting point for the Arctic Circle Trail.
The Americans were the ones to found Kangerlussuaq as a military base. Following the fall of Denmark to Germany in WWII, US forces assumed security for Greenland. As you get into town, you can see many of the former military buildings are now converted into a museum, the local school and youth centre, the youth hostel and others are still being used today, like the sports hall, that includes a gym, a pool and a sauna.
One of the most prominent legacies, I would say, is the local trash dump, where you can find anything from jarred food, bicycles and spare parts, to buses and machineries. None of those are being recycled, nor upcycled. For us, it was a place of wonders every time we were there, turning it into a playground and a free store - I found myself a new Shimano part for my bicycle.
Eventually, the US sold the town to the Greenlandic government for just $1 - with the exception that they still get to keep their base there. The soldiers come back every summer, and they also run a yearly marathon, through which they fundraise for the local school. Although not as many go back anymore, they run an online campaign. You can sign up for the marathon from wherever you are, still receive a kit, take a picture with your number and send it on Facebook so you feel part of the whole shebang. This way, they can continue raising money for the local school. In the last few years, they managed to raise $10,000.
Back in the 1960s, in an effort to bring more fauna to the region, a Danish scientist took 27 muscoxens from north east Greenland and brought them to the region Kangerlussuaq is situated in, as it resembled the place they came from. Unfortunately, that same year, the temperature was going to drop to -70o C, which would have killed the animals. They took the muskox to Denmark, and brought them back again the following year. One of them, named Marius by the Danes, ended up loving the town so much, it would always come in. Later on, the Americans renamed the muskox to Willie.
Willie would love running after people on the street and hanging out on the airport landway, so the soldiers would regularly catch him and take him out of town. But Willie kept coming back. Sometimes, flights would have to do rounds in the air before they could land safely, and civilians would wait indoors for up to an hour until Willie got bored and left town. This continued until Willie started chasing a woman with her baby, and attacked them. Then the decision was made to put Willie down.
It wasn't easy, because he was the most favourite member of the local community, but was now becoming a danger. Nobody wanted to shoot Willie, but eventually a Danish ranger did it, and people didn't want to speak to him for a while. Willie became the only muscox to have his own graveyard, nearby Lake Ferguson, and people can go pay their respects to him even now. Al Perry even wrote a song about the muscox, called Willie the Muscox.
The area of Kangerlussuaq does not host many forests, similarly to many other parts of the country. In the 1970s, another Danish scientist decided to propagate trees from various nordic countries, and brought in seeds from trees hailing from very cold environments. Two thousand of them have been planted right outside of Kangerlussuaq, on the way to the ice sheet. Unfortunately, most of them couldn't face the arctic temperatures and only 200 survived.
I came across these stories and facts from our Danish guides, Henrik and Kim. In particular, Kim was a memorable figure. A Danish man in his late 40s, that looks much younger than he is, with soft tanned skin, he walks the ice like a true explorer. I met him for the first time at the Ice Cap Point 660, when the whole youth group went on a short day trip. It happened that he was leading another guest of our hostel on a hike on the ice. At this point, myself and my friend Milo, booked a camping experience on the ice, and Kim was going to be our guide, as revealed by Henrik - the lead we had for the big group that day, and a brilliant driver. We went to say hi.
Kim was dressed in light clothing, carrying a big black backpack with reindeer skin rolled up on top of it. He was wearing a light brown wool hat that sat on top of his head without covering his ears, fairly thin black trousers and a rather light jacket with a brown wool sweater that would stick out from underneath. He was carrying hiking sticks in both his hands and wearing crampons. That was his look, which was rather emblematic. He assured us we will have a good time and that temperatures were not going to fall under -10oC at night, during our camping night in a few days.
We later found out that he has been a guide on the ice for a year, and has been to Greenland 20 years prior, to walk the Arctic Circle Trail to Sisimiut. He loves the ice, and we learned that he is a cold plunge addict. Him and his colleague would run a contest of how many cold plunges they do over the season, when they take other adventurers or tourists out to the ice. They normally are not allowed to do a plunge without the customers taking one, so they learned the art of persuasion. When we did our hike, the ice covered the hole they kept open during the season, so he told us it is unlikely we will have time to open it on that day. It took us about 2 seconds to convince him to give it a try. It worked, and then we cold plunged.
Many Danish people live in Greenland, it is normal for them to come and work there, since Greenland sits under the Danish Kingdom, and is being funded by Denmark. Anita, for example, manages the local wool shop near the airport. The products are either hand made or machine sewed, and the wool comes from muskox, which can be rather expensive since very little fur comes off an entire animal. However, they are soft and keep you very warm, particularly in an Arctic climate. Most locals will be knitting their own items, rather than buy them. The school director, for example, showed me her own hat and poncho when she realised I got a headband, and she was very proud of them.
Most businesses in Greenland are actually run by Danes, especially tourism and adventure related activities. Likewise, Denmark has a deal that if healthcare workers want to go and work in Greenland, they are being given leave, rather than be taken off the job, so when they go back to Denmark, they can go back into their role. The situation is quite poor there right now, and whereas before there was a 6 month policy for nurses and doctors to practice in Greenlandic hospitals, one of the most recent shortest periods they accepted nurses for was 2 weeks. During the camping trip, we met Lisa, who was moving to Nuuk to be a nurse for 2 months.
But what about the people of Greenland? The community that keeps the Inuit traditions alive? And what is it that they do?
Inuits are skilled hunters and fishermen, especially in Kangerlussuaq. Of course, every region is dependent on specific types of food. Inside the fjord, the only animals that exist and can be hunted are the muskox, reindeer, arctic fox and the arctic hare. Fishing is a job for the coast line.
Hunting is a regulated practice there. Locals are only allowed to hunt if they have a residency there and must request to do so - the allowance is a maximum of 3 per hunt, and as far as I remember, there is no limit to how much you can request to hunt. Some of the teenagers in the local school are in fact learning the ways of hunting - and one of our exchange participants was invited to join them for one session, but didn't manage to catch anything.
Speaking to the local ranger, Christopher, there are cases of people hunting illegally as well. His job is to look after those areas and make sure people abide by the law. Aasivissuit - Nipisat is UNESCO Heritage Site (June 2018) area of 235 km long and about 20 km broad and represents a hunting ground for Inuits. Christopher looks after this area. He works at the local town office, together with Helga Nielsen, who is currently the leader of the administration.
Helga has been by far one of the most interesting people we met during our stay. She is originally from Uummannaq and she comes from a family of fishermen from the coast. We first met Helga at the town administration office, during local exploration activity. Although the office was closed, Helga welcomed us and answered our questions for the next hour. We found out she is advocating for the environment, as well as the local Inuit culture. She presented us with the Arctic Games - an equivalent of the Olympics for people up north, coming from countries such as Canada, Greenland and Russia.
During our stay, Helga invited us to various community events and made us feel like we are part of the town. We even got a proposal from her, that Cosmin, one of the Romanian participants, could get married with someone in town. This is after Cosmin participated in various Arctic Games demos, and showed his physical strength. Cosmin would be a great hunter and fisherman, and this is a very valuable skill to have in the Arctic.
We were particularly impressed when a big part of the group ended up in a local birthday party. The stories I heard were that a local mentioned a party and everybody got invited to that. The house was very small, and every time new people were coming in, others had to leave. The birthday was for a 5 year old, and she must have had a blast, having all these young foreigners in the house. That was the place from where everybody came talking about Adam.
Well, now... Adam is really a local legend. A short bald man in his 70s, suffering from Parkinson, speaking a clear English and fist bumping with us, Adam is the only person in the world that has been to the Big Ice for more than 4000 times in this lifetime, and I personally called him the glacier whisperer. In a conversation with Kim, during our ice camp night, he told me that Adam can predict when something is happening with the Russell Glacier. He'll be home getting a feeling in the evening, and the next day it would turn out to happen. He has been watching the glacier for many years. Meeting Adam was like opening doors to many other people.
One evening at the hostel, there was rumble and tumble. We weren’t sure whether that night we were going to receive guests or not. I was in front of the hostel catching some fresh air, when we suddenly saw a small terrain car pulling in front. From inside, Adam (who was driving), a woman and an elderly man came down, walking towards us. The man, in his 70s, short with long white hair and the face of an Inuit, was the shaman that Adam talked to us about. For slightly more than an hour, we sat gathered around him, listening to Angaangaq’s teachings and stories. In Greenlandic, his name means “The man who looks like his uncle”.
At first, everybody was sitting on 20-odd squeaky chairs, in a circle. You could see people holding their breath and trying not to move as Uncle was talking, to avoid making any noise, but also because his voice was low and powerful and his speech was slow. After a while, one by one, we all ended up lying on the floor, in silence, whilst only Angaangaq, Adam and the woman were sitting on chairs. It was Uncle that brought us the news that a new war has started, by this I mean the Gaza - Israel war.
“Did you ever go to the Big Ice?” he would ask. We would answer “yes”. “When you went over the mountains, you saw a big big lake. At the north east end, there’s an ancient village.That’s where I grew up. And my family has lived there for about 6000 years. Can you imagine? Six thousand years. And they never knew war. Can you imagine living in that world, where there is no war? Don’t kill anybody for who they are. Don’t laugh at somebody, laugh with them. One is not better than the other, never been. None of us are better than the other, we will never be better than the other.”
Angaangaq would chant a prayer, and then send it out with a soft blow. His voice came out like a powerful wave, that would give us major goosebumps. Everybody would freeze. His discourse was deep and meaningful, and it spoke a lot more about love and about one being the best they can be, but with the bottom line that we should all strive for peace. He would repeat his discourse, again and again. After the first few times, some of us thought that he probably forgot that 10 minutes earlier he asked us the same question, we thought “oh, he is old and probably tired”. After a while, we understood that was not the case, it was part of the teaching. Repetition.
Through Angaangaq, another unbelievable event has happened. The Kogi tribe has contacted Uncle in regards to coming to travel to Greenland.. This was a historic event, where for the first time three Kogi tribe priests travelled more than 40 hours on planes and cars from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Columbia to the little town of Kangerlussuaq. They came to pray in the North, at the Big Ice. We were invited to greet them at the airport. So… I wake up one morning, completely tired, and with a bunch of people we walk 20 minutes to the airport to wait to greet them. Not really sure what exactly that meant, we just waited around smiling and doing chit chat with their reps, while holding Greenlandic flags and handing some over to them. They looked damn tired. We walked them and their bags to the lodge and awkwardly departed from this situation. It was so bizarre. I went on a cinnamon bun hunt after that.
Later that day, we were invited to an indoor community event with food, soft drinks, board games, local arts and culture shows, even an Inuit performance. The three priests were there too, but did not speak nor look around too much. On the day we left Greenland, they were to travel to the Big Ice and do their prayers. That same day, it started snowing for the first time since we arrived. It felt very metaphorical and I like to imagine this in a very poetic way.
It would not be doing justice to the most important people, if I did not mention the kids in the local school. Although I might not be the most kid-oriented person, it is almost always the main reason we choose to travel to Greenland. Building on knowledge from the previous project, this year, two of our participants - Monta and Gerda - that have become very close with the school, organised a big surprise and “activity day” for the 72 children that go to school in Kangerlussuaq. You can read more about this particular project here and here.
Talking about these children can sometimes be difficult. There is a lot of early childhood trauma regarding sexual and physical abuse, and based on our learning from 2019, children love spending time at the school and youth centre, as they are away from home. In town, there is an orphanage as well, where about 20 kids live. There are many cases of suicide when it comes to young people, and they learn to look after each other from early ages. But there have been differences in what we’ve seen in 2019 and now. I could not remember any of the kids that were there 4 years ago, it seemed like a lot of them moved away. The few I interacted with this time, seemed to know many curse words and act rude towards each other. An interaction between a 13 year old boy and a 12 year old girl has struck me, when he called her out in return to her saying something nasty to him.
Like almost everywhere in the world, there is a weird merge between local traditions and culture, and an international reach. Arctic traditional games are highly present in school, where children are being taught physical exercises that are the base of hunting and fishing techniques for real life situations. In general, sport is a big favourite in Greenland, especially football. Likewise, music and dances are often presented on certain celebration days. For example, they prepared a small show for us, to celebrate our visit, and we heard a live band, a violinist and young children interpreting a local traditional drum dance. At the end of the event, we were given an opportunity to compete with some of the best arctic athletes of the school, in various arctic games.
Meanwhile, going into the youth centre, you will find a games room, which is essentially the gamer’s most favourite terrain. Dark small room with 3 fairly high tech computers and a play station. It’s a funky room where there’s always a few boys and maybe a girl hanging out, but most of them use the space. As an RPG lover, and an Elders Scrolls fan who thought she was in Skyrim while on a hike around the lakes and hills of Kangerlussuaq, I would be entering this room excited to see what this bunch is playing, thinking this would be a really cool place to play some adventure-like fantasy games. Instead, I would get there and see some small dude playing a shooting game with blood, big guns and violence, thinking “what the fuck?”. An experience that I felt freshly for the first time was explaining to a 12 year old girl why racism is not appropriate and why telling some of our participants that they were ugly because they weren’t white, and couldn’t understand why girls would want to be with them. That was new and shocking.
From our work there with the local school and administration, we decided to create opportunities to travel outside Greenland for those at school and kick start more projects with communities of youth. Our vision is to open an organisation of informal education that will allow the students to travel on various projects to other parts of the world, and help them meet more people and widen their perspectives. Hopefully, we would like to maintain a strong connection with them, and support mental health and wellbeing initiatives and education.
Greenlandic people are just as unique as most cultures in the world, though there is something a little more to them, in my vision. Life in the Arctic is simple, delayed, slow and cold. The island has a distinct energy to it, the land feels welcoming and the ice brings life. It feels like the place to be. There always is something more to discover about this land, and everytime we go there we get a glimpse into another reality on Earth, and everybody feels differently after setting foot there. Many people that have been in these projects have left with an important change in their life, either an impact of perspective and attitude, or the motivation to create a legacy.
