Qeqertarsuaq

Now that Greenland is warming up a bit as the summer is about to start, we are venturing farther north along the coast of west Greenland. This morning, Fram anchored off the town of Qeqertarsuaq on Disko Island and from there we took our Polarcirkel boats ashore to explore the area. Through the day some of us we lucky to go on an ice cruise in one of our larger Polarcirkel boats. Conditions were a little cool but calm, which made all the difference.

The name Qeqertarsuaq in Greenlandic means "big island" and refers to the locality and Disko Island itself. If you see "suaq" at the end of any Greenlandic word it means "big". "Qeqertar" means "island". There is a long history of habitation here dating back to the paleo-Eskimo time, 4500 years ago. The modern town was established as a centre for whaling in the 1700s. In colonial times, Godhavn (the Danish name for the place = Good Harbour; we get "haven" from the Scandinavian "havn") was the administrative capital of north Greenland, while Nuuk was the capital of the south. This administrative importance came to an end in 1940, and Nuuk took over as capital of the whole island.

There were several options for our guests to enjoy the day and learn more about this great country of Greenland. Hikes, boat cruises and a tour of the city really gave us a clear overview of Greenlandic life in a small town. We present these images as an illustration of this beautiful day.

Passing the "Greenland dog circle"

After a very long day of travelling yesterday everybody enjoyed a long sleep before we started our different information briefings around 09:00h. It was quite a long way from Nuuk to Sisimiut, our destination for today, but the weather was nice and as we had nearly no wind we could feel only a bit of movement in the ship - just enough to let us sleep like a baby in a cradle. 

Sisimiut lays just north of the polar circle and we celebrated our "crossing the line" with a special baptism. We could even be happy that her Royal Highness King Neptune took the time to show up again himself for this very important ceremony.

The polar circle is not only a mathematical, cartographic line. It is also the boundary between the area in the south, where you can see all kinds of dogs and the region in the north, where only the Greenland dogs are allowed. The Greenland dog belongs to northern sledge dog breeds but it is the only dog breed in the whole world that was never ever crossbred with another dog breed. The Greenlanders are very proud of their very strong dogs. They are not bred for racing, they are working dogs, and have been for thousands of years. They need to be strong dogs to pull the sledges after a successful hunting day in wintertime. During the snow free time of the year they live with their pack together in special dog fields just outside the town. In former times the dogs belonged to the typical town picture. Today you find only here and there a dog in the middle of the Greenlandic cities.

Sisimiut is the second largest city after the capital Nuuk. It is an important modern business centre with different kind of schools, colleges and special administrations. Sisimiut tries always to be a bit in concurrence to Nuuk. Even though it is still much more smaller than Nuuk, the city has a very special charm. Only the old apartment blocks, built in the 1960s, when Denmark tried to get enough healthy living room for all Greenlanders in a very short time, look a bit strange in this modern city. But where in the world can you not find these architectural mistakes?! Anyway, we will focus on the colourful colonial and newer buildings which look very attractive all over the city.

Our day here in Sisimiut has been sunny but very, cold for this time of year. With temperatures of only 0.7 degree Celsius in the shade and a bit of wind it was downright chilly. It even snowed in the morning!

As a result we had to be dressed warmly to be ready for our different excursions. We had 7 hours time to learn the city and its surroundings by climbing on a high mountain, the so-called Palaasip Qaqqa, sailing with little local boats to a small abandoned settlement, Assaqutaq, or to go on a very informative bus tour with several stops, including a dog yard.

In Assaqutaq it has been especially nice to see so many birds- Snow Buntings and Lapland Buntings flying around. It looked like that they were absolutely happy that the spring came finally. They were singing and fluttering around all over in the settlement. Love was in the air!

As mentioned in a previous post on Assaqutaq, the abandoned settlement is now used as a camp for young Greenlanders. We were lucky that several delightful children were still in the camp and keen to chat with us and be photographed. These are the faces of the new Greenland- bright, clever, modern and optimistic!

Before we left Sisimiut we got like always when FRAM is in town an amazing kayak show. Nobody from us understood how it can be possible to do so many kayak rolls in a row, especially in this very cold and still winter temperatures in the sea.

Our first expedition day went out as a day full of new impressions. We will need a while to work on them, to get them all in our brain.   

Back to Nuuk

We were not expecting to be back in Greenland's capital, Nuuk, quite so soon! Our plan "A" was to sail down the fiord towards Kangerlussuaq where there is Greenland's major international airport. Our guests were then to fly out to destinations in Europe and Iceland. However, Nature played a trick on us. The Danish Meteorological Service recently pronounced that May was the coldest on record in Greenland. This has caused more ice than normal to hang around into the spring, which has resulted in some tricky navigations for us. The Kangerlussuaq fiord is blocked with ice from the bottom to half way to the sea, which made it impossible for us to sail there and drop our guests off for flights home. Instead we have come back to Nuuk where there is another airport and flights have been arranged from here to Kangerlussuaq, then onwards as planned. We arrived to some fog in Nuuk but the flights went out and came in, and the fog burned off eventually to a beautiful sunny day.

Of course our incoming guests had to fly from Kangerlussuaq to Nuuk too. Plane by plane passenger groups arrived through the late morning, afternoon and evening. Those guests that arrived early enough used their time to learn Nuuk, Greenland's very modern capital.

On our first evening on board we just got a quite busy program already. Safety drill, followed by our captains welcome cocktail, followed by a first information briefing done by our expedition leader. But there was time too when we could enjoy our first nice dinner buffet on board.

As everybody had a long travelling day to reach the largest island of the world most passengers went to bed early, looking forward and dreaming of a spectacular trip along the still icy coast of Greenland.

Here is a montage of images from Chelsea our ship photographer.

The old Lutheren Church in Nuuk

Reindeer antlers

Cutting wild meat at the local market

Seal meat available at the local market

... also whale meat

An nicely decorated apartment block

Hans Egede overlooking Nuuk

Jasmine serving a welcome champagne

Luggage!

The harbour in Nuuk

Overlooking the mountains around Nuuk

Ilulissat- our furthest point north on this tour

Early in the morning, our expedition leader, Karin, woke us up with the message to get up and get out on decks to see the amazing view outside. We were in Disko Bay and completely surrounded by icebergs, everyone looking unique in form and colour.  Yes, icebergs have colour! The nooks and crannies often have a blue or green glow. This is caused by light penetrating the ice and the water molecules in the ice absorbing the reds, oranges and yellows and leaving behind the greens and blues.

Though we are in the town of Ilulissat, the theme for the day has to be ice. Millions of tonnes of ice pour down from the glacier behind the town every day and over about a year they make their way from the glacier front over 70 km inland, to the bay off Ilulissat. The front is at the end of the glacier where the ice calves off to form glaciers. At the front, the ice is still mostly floating on seawater and the tides apply forces to the ice due to its buoyancy. This promotes calving. Once calved, the bergs slowly move out but eventually ground on an undersea ridge and sit there, slowly melting, until they are released to pass into the Davis Strait. The grounded icebergs prevent the ones behind from moving out with the effect that they pile up in a traffic jam of ice back to the front. Once they are fully released into the sea, currents move them first north then south to the western North Atlantic.

In the bay off Ilulissat, many smaller icebergs and bergy bits of various sites gentle waft by, behind are the behemoths. The glacier making all these icebergs is the most productive in the northern hemisphere. Indeed, the iceberg that hit the Titanic off eastern Canada was almost certainly born in Ilulissat.

Climate change and warming in west Greenland is no better illustrated than in Ilulissat. The glacier front used to be much closer to the town but has receded over 60 km back. Once the front recedes so that it is totally on bedrock rather than partially floating on the sea, the large icebergs will no longer be produced and the end of an era will come to an end.

We had several options for activities today including hikes to vantage points where the large, grounded icebergs can be seen, a helicopter ride over the icebergs and inland to the glacier itself, a guided walk around town, and a boat trip in amongst the icebergs in the bay.  The sun was almost painfully bright today and sunglasses and sunscreen were a must! Little wind made for very pleasant, almost warm conditions. Here is a selection of images from the various activities of the day.