How to Drive in the Dark

One more sea day to go until we reach Iceland. So this is the perfect opportunity for the bridge visits, especially in this kind of weather - visibility is around 50 meters only. So of course everybody wants to hear about FRAMs instruments. And here is what what we learn:

MV FRAM is well equipped with two independent GPS systems, that work "hand in hand" (byte in byte?) with the electronic sea chart. That results in our position always displayed as the center of a circle with precise current position. The navigation officer enters the projected itinerary into the main Nav computer, that means all the waypoints. Waypoints are the dots you have to connect to see our future course as a line on the map. If you do well, this line will not cross reefs, shallow waters, will not take "shortcuts" across land or other obstacles. So, these dots are important, mind. In our modern days, the ships computer is also connected to the steering computer which changes the course automatically. All the information needed is displayed on the central screen: Speed, course over ground, windspeed and - direction, Time To Go, Estimated Time of Arrival, to the next waypoint and to our final destination. And much, much more...Well, great, we can all go and have a coffee, then!

Far from it.

Our ship is traveling in tricky waters, almost all the time. And even if we have all the waypoints right there can be moving objects, like other vessels or, especially for us, ice. That means we need another instrument The bridge has to be manned 24/7, with at least two people at any time. Comes to bad visibility there are seaman in addition to that in order to look out. As Captain Hansen puts it: The two most important instruments for navigation are the eyes of the navigator. Still. All these gadgets are support, improvement - not replacement. As well as the electronic chart is not forcing the good ol' admirality chart into retirement. Every navigator is able to use map, ruler and compasses. Like in old times.

The Soul of the East

There are several things to be seen in this harbour picture from Tasiilaq. First: how very, very tiny the pier is captain Hansen managed to reverse-park FRAM. Considering that she is only modestly sized, she still looks among the tiny fishing boats like a fat alley cat sitting in a group of mice. But this morning it is sheer bliss not to have to use the tender boats - rain is pouring down on the 1900-people village, the largest on the east coast, for two weeks in a row now. And this is a weird thing, says Jan, our guide for the day and cousin of our team member Janus (who is actually born in this place), since normally it should be around freezing point and rather snowing.

It could have been a city walk like many others, new church here, museum there, and here's the souvenir shop. But Jan builds a stunning bridge between past and present with only a few side informations: His great-grandfather was a friend of the immensely famous Knud Rasmussen, who - among many other things - created the wonderful movie "Palo's Wedding", which we watched just two days ago and that left an impression of times so infinitely long gone that it could as well be medieval or stone age, no matter. But the great-grandfather was in fact one of the actors, too. Just three generations away, no more. Suddenly the past gets tangible, knocks on the door of today. Did you know that this movie was not - as we all thought - a silent movie? It's only that the soundtrack got damaged and lost during a storm when the actual movie material, good old celluloid, was transported to Denmark. The sound that is to be heard today is a later recording of Jan's granny and one of her friends who were invited to Denmark by Rasmussen in order to do so.

Musing this surprise we enter the church, where the choir of Tassalik is gathered to present us some songs. 

There are quite many choirs all over Greenland, in a lot of places. But the sound suddenly filling the nicely decorated, candle-lit church is not random, not debutant, not coarse. It is the most wonderful music we have ever heard in Greenland, a capturing blend of psalter, gospel and traditional song, delivered with unexpected accuracy and a spirit that is intensely touching. The applause doesn't want to cease.

It is a great pleasure for us to welcome the singers a little later on FRAM; on account of the rain we simply put the next attraction indoors, or rather in-ships: The drum dances. Again, what we see here is beyond all other performances, joyful, intense, charismatic and colorful. A day to remember! We regret to have to leave.

A Glimpse of Antarctica

Greenland is the second largest ice reservoir in the world, accomodating ten percent of the planet's total volume. One has a hard time believing this when traveling down the west coast, through places like Ivituut, Nuuk or Qassiarsuk. But everything changes as soon as you make it to the other side and a little to the north. Today's exploits showed us the harsh, cold, dangerous - and ominously beautiful face of Greenland. In the morning we entered a fjord that became famous in 1888, when a young man by the name of Fridtjof Nansen set off to cross the inland ice for the very first time, accompanied by another legendary explorer, Otto Sverdrup. Here in Umiivik they started their bold journey, and we can hardly believe they did as we are driven so comfortably there by Polar Cirkel Boat, wrapped up nicely in our fleece, softshell and gore-tex outfits, after a nice morning tea and with the prospect to a hearty breakfast afterwards. We are entering the world of ice, it is everywhere, in the water, ashore, at the horizon, all around FRAM. People are not meant to be here, and yet they were. Our respect for the ancient explorers couldn't mount any higher. In the splendid morning light we discover arctic terns, kittywakes, fulmars and a couple of seals, even a bearded seal on an ice flow.

After this, FRAM steams full ahead towards the north to reach Køgebukta during daylight. We make it, but our radar does not show the expected large tabular icebergs in the bay. Instead we get quite a few echoes from further out and decide to have a look. And indeed, soon we distinguish enormous silhouettes in the evening haze, some bigger than our imagination allows - between 80 and 100 meters high is the biggest tower of ice we pass, 3-4 times higher than our ship; you can only get an idea of it by trying to spot the seagulls at the foot of this giant. Slowly we make our way among these mountains of white and blue, awed, reduced, timid, and moved. Now night is around us and we can't see them any more. But we know that they are out there, cold and majestic, and now we believe that there is more than one iceworld on this planet. We caught a glimpse of Antarctica.

Unusual circumnavigation

Something's different on FRAM, we feel it clearly in the evening and especially at night: the ship is heaving and pitching in the shaking seas. In the morning not everybody looks like having had a long, good nights sleep. So it is a fine idea to enter the Skoldungenfjord whose towering walls protect us from the roughness outside. It's like entering a different world, emerald green waters with white pieces of ice. From all sides glaciers despereately try to reach the waters edge, but in vain: The glacier retreat is frightenly visible here, nearly all of them are hanging in the scree of the mountain valleys, shedding little trickles of water that come down as pittoresque waterfalls.

It is here on Skoldungen Island, in the Skoldungenfjord where we perform our landing of the day. Guess where - right! In Skoldungen, also name of the small settlement that existed here until 1961 when people were forced by Denmark to give it up and move to larger cities where supplies were accessible more easily. Like many ghost towns there is a morbid charme in the air, here it is emphasized by these tiny details like the puppets head on a rock or the group of fuel drums that has sunken in the permafrost soil like a gathering on the moor. It is a really interesting spot to visit, so we return with another deep impression of times that were.

As we continue to go round Skoldungen we hope that ice and landslides have not made the passage impossible. We are lucky, except for a few stretches of going really, really slow we manage to do the circumnavigation of Skoldungen Island, a very particular enterprise that not many ships venture. And we even find the time to do a little Polar Cirkel Boat cruise in front of a pretty, steep glacier, surrounded by waterfalls, gulls and eider ducks.

Night falls earlier and earlier now, eight o'clock means darkness, so it's movie time: Paolo's Wedding, an impressing, black-and-white classic silent movie about Greenlandic life.

It's tougher in the East

A seaday. Normally this means lectures from dawn till dusk. Not so today, and for a good reason: At 7am we reach the entrance to one of the most magical natural mazes on this planet - the Prins Christian Sound. The network of steep and deep fjords is labyrinthine and huge, looming around us with high spires and glaciers that are reaching towards the water. Waterfalls slosh down from 700m altitude, clouds and sunlight are playing with each other. Nearly everybody is outside, frantically taking pictures or simply taking a deep breath and taking in this unbelievable scenery. A little later a prominent visitor, the ruler of the seas, finds slightly mischievous pleasure in bathing the brave guests with ice-cold water. Some say he is rather the king of the galley, but what do they know…!? In the afternoon we reach the end of this wonderland and now we are on the eastern side of Greenland! As if the weather wants to emphasize the difference the winds pick up, and FRAM starts rocking on the waves, while valiant lecturers share their knowledge on Greenlandic life and whales. Not a moment to soon, because just a little later we are surrounded by a variety of whales, Minke, Humpback and Fin. The inland ice of Greenland is the backdrop to this marine mammal performance, everybody is amazed.

And the day ends as spectacular as it began. Say what you like about taking pictures of sunsets - this one was worth it!

Leif is Leif...

It's Wiking day! We are going to the places where they went, seeing what they saw. One thing is Hvalsey in the morning. Well, the spot where it should be - the fog enshrouds us so densely that there is nothing at all. Yeah, that's life.

As soon as we go into Skovfjorden towards Qassiarsiuk, different story: Again, the skies open up and offer a clear display of deep blue and feathery white clouds. 

In this 40-soul village that mainly thrives on sheep farming we are expected by a representative of the past: Edda is here to tell the tale of Wiking ransacking, love, violence, exploration, neighbourhood, christianisation and the eventual superiority of female persuasion over religious conviction. No, she's not telling it - she's living it, sermonizing it, declaiming, delivering it with such a verve that we all sit and stare, mouths open until she's finished. She must have been there, no doubt! The following "city" tour catches up with modern times, informing about sheep and dogs and the school system. But unwillingly our thoughts keep drifting to the times of the red-bearded, rude but intriguing people whose most prominent protagonists are to be seen in town. And just to prevent you from the quite common confusion: The furious man in the dragon boat is the founder, the father, the ruler - Eirik the Red. It's not the upright man standing guard over the town. It is the son, the christianizer, the Lucky, who is to be seen from afar so clearly and noble that everybody who comes here for the first time takes him for the father. But that's not Eirik. That's Leif...

The shadows are long already when we get back to FRAM from that beautiful land - Green Land.

The Big Hole

Nope, it's not for diamonds they dug here like in Kimberley. But since 1854 they spent men, time and a lot of money to go for a worthless white rock you'd just walk by. But throw it in the fire with corundum and you get - aluminum. Well, not just like that, it's a little more complicated. But Cryolithe, the "ice stone", was not only of economic value but - think war here - also of strategic importance. And so the military moved in to protect the place, until the mine was abandoned in 1987 when artificial cryolithe was produced.

All that remains today is a ghost town on the fringe of a unfathomably deep pool, framed by woodworks that once were the mine's bulkhead. But one of these buildings is a mineralogy museum with a superb collection of rock and ore samples, mostly taken care of  by John, a true rock man, always recognisable by his hammer and the magnifying glasses round his neck. So sit in the sun or in the shade (they have real trees here! You don't see that often in Greenland…) , walk across the plains and marvel at the beautiful rocks or see the museum. 

But whatever you do - watch out for musk ox!! About 300 of these bulky relatives of goats (!) are currently living in the area, and you sure do not want to bump into those in the thickets, they are known to charge quickly. But today we're lucky, no encounters. Instead we see a group of the brown furry animals in the slopes of the fjord just after our departure. So they are there, after all. We have time enough, so Captain Arnvid stops the vessel and we spent a little while, watching the oxen ramble across the mountain flank. A wonderful sight! 

A buzzing day in Nuuk

So, this is the capital of the country that has so much to deal with transition, independence, social and economic changes. This is where up to 500 people move to per year, mostly in the new-built living compounds in the southern part. This is where the very old past meets yesterday, today and tomorrow. This is the place where young political hopes coexist with hunting tradition and - believe it or not - leisure activities like paragliding.
This is where we spend the day. In the fully restaurated museum with the famous mummies, in the cultural center, in the many nice shops, or in the pittoresque nature just a few minutes away. So, dear reader , please follow the rest of our day just by the pictures shown here. Get your own idea. In the meantime we are moving on, away from the cities. From here to Iceland it will be small settlements and pretty nature. Feels good after a busy buzzing day in such a large town…