Welcome to my travel blog. I have over 600 subscribers. If you are a new subscriber, my goal is to share my travel experiences to readers who might never personally visit the locations I describe. In this blog and for the next three months, my wife Susan and I are passengers on a Viking Expedition Ship traveling from Greenland to Antarctica. I am writing this blog on the fifth day of our cruise, a sea day, as the VIKING POLARIS ship travels from Greenland to Nunavut, Canada.
Thirty years ago, Susan and I worked as entertainers for 2-3 months/year for five years. Getting paid to play music on the cruise ships is what made us comfortable with the cruise lifestyle. One can get used to gourmet meals, clean towels, and not having to make one’s bed every day. After that, we thought we would never pay for a cruise. We were used to getting paid! But twenty years went by and we broke down and started paying for cruises.
Our first paid cruises were Viking river cruises in Europe. (That’s the recommended way to experience your first cruise, if you’ve never cruised before.) We took four river cruises and a several ocean cruises, most notably a four-month world cruise in 2022 near the end of covid. All passengers had to submit to a covid saliva test every day. The ship was only half full.
Susan and I have also cruised the Norwegian coast with the Hurtigruten cruise line. We liked it so much that we traveled it a second time. As a world traveler, my only reservation about cruising is that the port stops are generally so short that there is no time to explore any port in detail. It’s like a wine tasting...quick superficial introductions to many different wines or travelers’ destinations.
GREENLAND
Iceland and Greenland’s names are reversed. Iceland is green, and Greenland is icy. I didn’t see a single tree in Greenland. Greenland is second only to Antarctica in the size of its polar ice sheet, which two miles thick at its thickest. If all of Greenland’s ice were to melt, ocean levels would rise over thirty feet worldwide. Warning: Greenland’s ice sheet is indeed slowly melting. We might not be seriously impacted in our lifetimes, but future generations will be. A local musher (dogsled driver) related that the ocean surrounding his village above the Arctic Circle used to be ice covered from October to May in his childhood. Now it is only frozen over from December to March.
So far on this cruise, we have visited one town and two small villages. Our arrival in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, was delayed one day, so we didn’t see anything in Nuuk yet. (We will return to Nuuk in a few days to discharge the passengers who only contracted for the 13-day Arctic segment.)
Greenland is a protectorate of Denmark. Its inhabitants are Inuits. Inuits hate being referred to as “Eskimos”. (It is comparable to calling Native Americans “Redskins”) The word Inuit means "first people." They are proud of their Inuit history and lifestyle which has survived in polar regions around the world for thousands of years. Their native language, Inuit, has the longest words I’ve ever seen. Their second language is Danish, and their third is English. Many Inuits are tri-lingual. In the last few years, elementary school curriculums initiated English language instruction starting in the first grade.
Greenland’s Inuit culture originated from the migration of Canadian Inuits. They identify culturally with polar natives around the world based on their shared hunting and fishing lifestyles. Denmark’s influence is the result of 19th century colonial colonization. Government proceedings and documents are in Danish. Denmark provides financial and technical support to Greenland. Needless to say, there are no Inuits (or Danes) who favor acquisition of Greenland by the US. Trump’s threats caused the Danish military to send a team of Danish soldiers to Nuuk with explosives. They were prepared to blow up the Nuuk airport runway to prevent its use by any invading American military planes. If Trump had persisted in his original threats, NATO would have been destroyed, particularly if neighboring European countries had come to Denmark’s defense against the US, as is the policy of NATO where an attack on one NATO member would require all NATO members to join in the defense against Trump’s threatened “takeover” of Greenland.
The Itilleq villagers opened their houses to passengers to visit and enjoy coffee, tea, and cookies. Unfortunately, the villagers that we visited spoke very little English. So our visit was really just a chance to observe the lifestyle of the villagers in this isolated location. Every family has a boat of some kind as well as a gun for hunting. It was nice that we were able to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.
ILULISSAT
Ilulissat is a real city, not a village. It lies next to one of the fastest-moving glaciers in the world, which delivers a river of ice forty-feet wide every day into the fjord. The result is the hundreds of glaciers large and small which fill the fjord with icebergs. The largest ones persist all the way into the ocean separating Greenland and Canada. One of my photos below is of a large iceberg that stood higher than our seven-story ship. This is the size iceberg that sank the Titanic which collided with an unseen gigantic iceberg in the pre-radar days.
Historically, besides the Inuit natives, Greenland was of interest to European traders. Seal skins and walrus ivory were harvested. Whale oil was harvested for illumination in lamps, prior to the use of petroleum from the Middle East. Norsemen from Iceland, Norway, and Denmark created settlements over several centuries. Religion was a motivating factor as the Inuit were regarded as pagans in need of Christian conversion. Though Norway, Sweden, and Holland merchants traded with Greenland over several centuries, Denmark remained the dominant influence from the 17th century on.
When the Nazis occupied Denmark during World War II, Greenland became an important bulwark for the Allies to attack the Germans. Fourteen American military bases were established in Greenland. The US offered to buy Greenland in 1951, but Denmark did not agree. Greenland’s status as a Danish colony was upgraded to an autonomous territory in 1953. Denmark continues to supply financial aid to Greenland, resisting Trump’s threats to invade. The new treaty to be signed between the US, Denmark, and Greenland perpetuates the US military presence, which had been a constant presence since World War II. [source-Wikipedia]
There was a great museum in Ilulissat which presented the history of Greenland as well as current scientific research results. The museum included a feature about scientific research in Greenland’s ice sheet. Ice core samples have been retrieved as deep as one mile into the two-mile-deep Greenland ice sheet. These samples include air bubbles which provide data as to the atmospheric composition from thousands of years ago. The deep ice samples are preserved in a facility in Greenland kept at a constant 20 degrees Fahrenheit in order to provide the ability to carefully analyze the atmosphere’s compositional changes over time.
UUMMANNAQ
The village of Uumannaq is comprised of a number of houses on a hill. We visited its small museum. We also stepped into a supermarket. I was happy to see that there were all kinds of imported fruits and vegetables available, though available at premium prices.
It was here that I heard a talk by one of the mushers who explained the process of raising and training the distinct Greenland sled dogs, who are direct hybrid descendants of wolves and dogs. It is illegal to introduce any other breed of dogs north of the Arctic Circle in Greenland in order maintain the purity of the Greenland sled dogs’ pure breed.
The fjord surrounding Uumannaq freezes solid enough to accommodate cars as well as the dog sleds. Greenland dog sleds can be pulled by from eight to twelve dogs. They are capable of pulling the dogsleds for up to sixty kilometers a day. The dogs are imprinted and trained as puppies by their owners. They are considered “working dogs” rather than pets. We were warned not to try to touch or pet any of them. They might react viciously. Any dog who acts aggressively toward a person is euthanized.
IN CONCLUSION
I have visited Iceland twice in the past. Though there are some similarities betwen Greenland and Iceland in coping with the cold climate, the cultures are very different. Icelanders are descendants of Scandinavians, primarily Norwegian immigrants from the 1100’s. Iceland has abundant volcanic energy which heats cities, homes, and vegetable greenhouses. Greenland is not blessed with Iceland’s thermal energy, but thus does not suffer from the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that plague Iceland. Greenland’s soil and climate are less suitable for agriculture, compared with Iceland.
Iceland feels more “European”. The Icelandic language is derived from early Scandinavian tongues. It had an early written language and has maintained an extensive genealogical record of its families and clans. The Inuit culture of Greenland was more fragmented and subsistence-limited. There are almost no ancient written records of Inuit culture and history. Currently, Greenland culture bridges the gulf between Inuit subsistence survival traditions and modernity as modeled by Denmark and supported by the growing tourist industry.
The Titanic, which did not have radar, collided during the night with a huge iceberg perhaps similar to the one above. Some icebergs are even larger than this one.