Making (and Keeping) Friends in East Greenland

Visit Intrepid Times to view this piece here.

Making Friends

Well, there was no going back now, they had shot it. I couldn’t quite believe what was happening. I’d been there 4 hours and already I was in a small tin boat with the hunter’s family, gliding up to a tennis-court sized iceberg - long, flat, white, and red - as the community was preparing to butcher the walrus and share it out. 

Until then, watching the helicopter go had been the most daunting part of the day. Olaf, our pilot, had waved a brief goodbye as he lurched his way off the heli-pad and back towards his residence on the no frills airport at Constable Point. On one side, we had been faced with a blanket of cracked ice suspended in rifts; broken porcelain on a blue tile floor. On the other, a jutting, rolling and incomprehensibly bare expanse of black and grey rock, populated in the smallest corner, the one on which we were stood, by a scattered handful of red and yellow monopoly houses facing out into glacial fjords. I’d arrived, after a very very long few days travelling, in Ittoqqortoormiit on Scoresby Sund in East Greenland, one of the most remote settlements in the world.

I walked into town. I passed the sled dogs and the polar bear skins, taut and drying on their wooden frames. It was August, late in the evening, but you’d be hard pressed to work that out without a watch on. At that time of year, the sky stays bright and glaring like a child reluctant to bedtime and getting its way. 

Our small party of explorers, mostly there on research, soon disbanded. We’d met on the tarmac of Akureyri back in the North of Iceland. Since then, we’d been jostled about in an 8-seater toy aeroplane over the Denmark Strait; quickly processed on a red and dusty patch of Jameson Land; and whistled over by Olaf before beginning the final leg. 

And suddenly there I was. On an iceberg and about 3 hours of sleep. Balancing a microphone for a programme I was trying to make in one hand, along with a blue-cloth-strapped shotgun I’d been given “in case of bears” in the other. The others had retired to the old Guest Lodge on the top of the hill. I was staying with my guide, who, at that time, was underarming a series of cutting tools to the other men whilst the women watched on and the children threw snow. This evening spelt first impressions. I’d be in Greenland for a while and so the pressure to make friends was on.

As my guide and his friends expertly transformed the walrus from the size of a small car into neatly wrapped and bound parcels of blubber and meat for families to take home with them, the mood on the berg was jovial. Women nudged one another and laughed, older boys watched their fathers with scrupulous eyes, whilst the youngest among our party of 40 or so darted about shrieking in a game of tag. 

The hours ambled on. The sky stayed light. People embraced. It wasn’t everyday that a feast of this magnitude was shared out. Once the last of the walrus had been turned to good use, the criss-cross of bow ropes were untied and a small fleet made its way back to the shore. In and out, in and out. The boats zig-zagged between the blue underbellies of ice slabs.

Silk-like, the water parted in a way that suggested we had hardly disturbed it at all. I retreated into my thermals and zipped myself all the way up. I sat port-side, concertinaed between a bundle of rope, harpoons and sacking. As I sat, I listened as the hunter, simultaneously guiding our slow approach with one hand, explained the steps he, as an Inuk, takes to prepare and preserve walrus - Igunaq. In short, fermentation preservation. A temporary salt burial during Summer, shoreside, until the steaks are ready for the pot the following year. 

We chatted about his sons, their twice-a-year groceries delivery by shipping freight, and the nature of binary light-dark life up here in the two season Arctic. Everybody was in a good mood. We pushed our way snug in between the docked up fishing boats tied up at the pier and formed a small assembly line: those in the boat throwing up sacks; we, on the pier, catching and passing; and those by the quad bikes parcelling the bounty away in handlebar crates ready for home-delivery. 

By the time we finally got back to my guide’s hut it was in the early hours of the morning. By then, however, my tiredness had gone. It’d been superseded by hunger as I remembered that I hadn’t eaten since Iceland. In the warm light of the hut, table-laid, a steel pot was carefully placed by mittened hands between us all. Polar bear - Nanuq - from the previous season and walrus meat in a stew of mystery seasoning and off-white broth. The meal smelt and tasted how the warm room in that empty land felt. Homely, salty and comforting. Slow and rich steam trails curled out and into the room and an anticipatory silence was soon replaced by warm conversation and the jingle of cutlery against empty plates. 

Soon after that, the one piece of equipment requested in my rucksack on the flight over was cracked open: vodka. Greenland’s 15% Alc limit on domestic purchases made this a considerable bounty to my assembled hosts. The warm evening got warmer, the hospitality more hospitable; faces redder; and stories louder. Country music, inexplicably, filled the room from some unknown source. The living space quickly became venue to an audience of half the town. Floor space disappeared in a shuffling of wet boots to the rhythm of a banjo and a Tennessee twang. The night had entered the realm of the surreal. 

Keeping Friends

The morning after was predictably subdued. I dressed, crept out passed the sled dogs on the steps out back and left my hosts to sleep it off. This was a perfect morning to collect some recordings of a melting glacier about half an hour’s paddle North along the shore. On a generous offer from the night before, I wrestled the hunter’s kayak to the water’s edge from a shed adjoining the house and kicked off. 

It is quite fair to say, I think, that the hardest thing about sea-kayaking in the Arctic is figuring out the best place to rest your shotgun. I opted for between my legs with the barrel pointing downwards. That way, if I did accidentally blow a hole in the boat, at least I’d have a blasted foot for a distraction.

Hugging the rocky ledges up from Walrus Bay was important for two reasons. On the one hand, it made sense for orientation purposes, avoiding the very real possibility of getting lost out amongst the bergs. On the other hand, one walrus likely meant more and proximity to land afforded something of an escape plan should they feel threatened by a slow moving kayak, poorly operated by a man trying to balance a shotgun alongside a set of oars and a microphone.

I pushed this second factor from my mind as I approached the glacier, resting my oars in the space between the gun stock and my belly button in order to undo the rubber lid of the compartment housing my mic. It was blissfully still on the water and for the first time since arriving, as the timer seconds ticked on, I allowed myself to soak in the moment. The dripping water and occasional cracks coming from somewhere deep within the ice gave the impression of a storm locked away, buried somewhere, a great distance inside the earth. A few minutes later, I re-bagged the mic and popped it in its compartment. Job done. But wait… Where was the lid? The lid…

Oh God. I looked down. Some 10 feet below me a small black spot stared up from the pebbles. This was not good. Suddenly the kayak was more than just a means of transport; it was testament to my new relationship with my host and key to determining how the remainder of the trip would play out. The lid must be recovered. The kayak must be returned home in one piece. 

For some 10 minutes I fished around with the oar, careful not to disturb my view too much. Pointless. There was no purchase. Nothing to grab on with. Plan B. I was, of course, close to the shoreside and with a few strokes I was able to beach myself on the rocks. Fortuitously, I had thought to bring a towel, for reasons I’m still unsure of. In the naked sun, in a land without cover, I removed my clothes and bundled them into the main vestibule. With a deficit of thought and a surplus of abandon, I waded quickly and shakily in until a shelf ledge delivered me to deeper water. Sploosh. 

Head under. Needle-prick temperatures. I fumbled with blind hands on the pebble floor. Sand and stone and… and… yes! Rubber! With a clasped hand and held-breath I resurfaced. Remembering only then the second factor that had kept me close to the shore. I grasped with one hand frantically for the plastic hull and heaved myself land side. I’ve never seen a Greenlandic encyclopaedia before, but it’s not a huge leap to imagine the image adjoining its definition of “prey” resembling something akin to a Birthday-suited British man flailing off the side of a kayak with his bum in the air, clinging one-handedly to a rubber disc whilst trying not to upset any passing Walruses or Bears.

45 minutes later, mostly dry, I dragged the boat back to its home and flopped down next to it. The sled dogs bounded over and covered me in salty kisses. The door behind clicked and opened. 

“Jacob! Coffee?”

He had just woken up. The hunter proffered a steel mug, still rubbing bleary eyes. He smiled, acknowledging the safe return of his kayak as I sat there nodding like an idiot. 

“Thank you for taking care of it, we go to my hideout today”.

It looked like the relationship was intact. That was a close one.