Greenland blog 18: Happy in Hamborgerland

Cruising through Hamborgerland, Greenland. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008.

I soon realised that the next leg of my trip could easily qualify as one of the world’s greatest cruises. The route passes through a sheltered area between offshore islands and the Greenland mainland, Hamborgerland. The retention of a European rather than Greenlandic placename is unusual: most Greenlandic towns have replaced the old Danish names, so that Godthåb is now Nuuk, Søndre Strømfjord is known as Kangerlussuaq, and Holsteinborg has been renamed Sisimiut.

Hamborgerland, however unmodern in name, is timeless in rugged yet peaceful beauty. It was my first encounter with glaciers, tumbling like frosting through the bundt peaks rising up on either side of us. Breakfast over, tourists tumbled onto the decks to enjoy the spectacle - which inevitably means the frantic urge to preserve the moment in photographs. (I of course was doing more of this than anyone, although it was my raison d’etre.) An Italian couple asked me to take their portrait against the backdrop of peaks. I was, as always, happy to oblige, and then the man offered to take a photo of me. (This is not the photo I’m using on my contest entry page http://www.blogyourwaytothenorthpole.com/entries/166, which is a self-portrait, but another image slipped in amongst my 35mm contact sheets.) I wondered what other tourists might make of the scenery. As the sun rose higher it became increasingly warm, and people took over every available sun lounger. I really couldn’t get over the idea of Italians travelling to the Arctic Circle, to sit and catch the rays as if at a beach on the Venetian Lagoon.

30 August 2008 10:04 recalled 18 January 2011

Want more? Then please VOTE FOR ME TO BE THE OFFICIAL BLOGGER & ARTIST ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE NORTH POLE! http://www.blogyourwaytothenorthpole.com/entries/166

send an image of ULTIMATE STILLNESS to my exhibition http://www.wooloo.org/open-call/entry/182907

then lope over to my Greenland blog http://margaretsharrowgreenland.blogspot.com/

and stay tuned for another episode tomorrow!

Greenland blog 05: On Greenlandic airports, or, what to do in an emergency

Dash-7 propeller, Kangerlussuaq airport, Greenland. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008

I should say here that my change of planes was necessitated not just by the convenience of the Air Greenland network, but by geography: the reason that international flights do not go directly to the capital, Nuuk, is because of an almost complete lack of flat land in Greenland. There are only two places on the entire west coast with enough flat land to create a runway long enough to accommodate modern jumbo passenger craft: the deep fjords at Narsarsuaq and Kangerlussuaq. Thus anyone wishing to travel to Nuuk from abroad must first land at Kangerlussuaq, then transfer to a smaller plane that can land at Nuuk’s smaller airstrip. Said airstrip, blasted out of four billion year old rock, is the largest that can be built at Nuuk, not because there isn’t more land (a new suburb is springing up beyond the airport), but because there isn’t any more flat land. Like all the towns in Greenland that I visited, the mountains rise up pretty sharpish behind the last rows of houses.

The prospect of the next leg of my journey was made a little odd by the abrupt termination of my view of the interior of the plane by a wall, two rows in front of my seat. Somehow on a plane seating only around sixty I had been expecting to see the flight deck, to have some sense of where we were going. My unease was compounded by the on board safety cards. These depicted fabulous scenes of what would happen in the event of a crash, how one was to be bundled up, Michelin man-like, and await rescue sitting on plane seat cushions in the middle of a glacier.

The engines started, the propellers buzzed into action, and I prepared my 35mm camera, one of my medium format cameras, and my digital. There was no time for panic or disappointment. Like an understudy thrust into the spotlight, I was on!

26 August 2008 10:11 recalled 9 January 2011

Want more? Then please VOTE FOR ME TO BE THE OFFICIAL BLOGGER & ARTIST ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE NORTH POLE http://www.blogyourwaytothenorthpole.com/entries/166

and stay tuned for another episode tomorrow!

Greenland blog 04: Scrum in the fjord

Kangerlussuaq airport, looking down the fjord, Greenland. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008

Having landed, my perspective changed back to that of a land-dweller, and I was dealt my first and only disappointment in Greenland: it suddenly looked all too much like the Scottish highlands. Why had I bothered to come so far, at such expense, I thought peevishly, when I could have stayed in the country I love and call home, and seen much the same scenery? Now this narrative is not meant to be about my own psychological blips and foibles, but forgetting that I’d spent a less-than-luxurious night on a bench in the food court at Copenhagen airport, my perspective was a little skewed at the sight of ruddy snow-capped mountains rising up on either side of the airstrip, a fjord stretching away very much like a sea-loch in Wester Ross. What wasn’t obvious from my perspective was just how long the fjord was (190 km, nearly three times as long as 65 km Loch Fyne, Scotland's longest sea loch), which accounts for the climate in Kangerlussuaq being somewhat warmer and more stable than almost anywhere else on the west coast, except for the similar fjord at Narsarsuaq, which is much further south.

There wasn’t much time for negative thinking, as action was called for: we emerged down a staircase directly onto the tarmac (ah, this was what flying was like in the 1960’s) and walked less than a hundred metres to the terminal, passing a sign with fingerposts giving the distances to Moscow, London, Washington, etc. Once inside the claustrophobically tiny terminal there was no attempt at customs but an immediate scrum inside the duty free. Toblerones, cigarettes and especially alcohol flew off the shelves while staff at two tills stoically coped with queues bursting in and out the turnstiles. I was worried about my luggage in the hold, or missing my next plane, but needn’t have been; by the time I emerged clutching a single bottle of white wine (encased in some ingenious Scandinavian fishing-net type plastic mesh to prevent breakage) my bag had been magically transferred and it was time for a gentle stroll back onto the tarmac, and to board a Dash-7 standing ready, bound for Nuuk.

26 August 2008 09:49 recalled 8 January 2011


Want more? Then please VOTE FOR ME TO BE THE OFFICIAL BLOGGER & ARTIST ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE NORTH POLE! http://www.blogyourwaytothenorthpole.com/entries/166

and stay tuned for another episode tomorrow!

Greenland blog 01: Flying high to Greenland

Air Greenland wing, flying over the west coast of Greenland. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008

I decided early on that the Air Greenland fleet was the handsomest fleet of airplanes I'd ever seen. They were all candy apple red, with a ski for a wheel (no, not that, I'm thinking of the Beach Boys) and just as lusciously shiny as a childhood treat, sprinkled with a logo of white dots forming a snowflake. In a rebranding that was the stamp of the dashing new CEO, the airline bent over backwards to give its passengers a first-class experience, which helped in a great measure to offset the first-class prices. In an ideal world I would have flown as far north as it was possible to go, Qaanaaq, but my entire grant wouldn't have covered the airfare. As it was, for the cost of the flight from Copenhagen to Kangerlussuaq, and from Narsarsuaq back to Copenhagen was more than a round the world ticket. But they were very generous with the food (quality, quantity, cutlery), the wine, the film (a Swedish drama that climaxed on the massive bridge spanning the Baltic from Malmö to Copenhagen), the courtesy. And overgenerous with the views on descent. Having come through rather unnerving turbulence over the icecap, the parting of the clouds alone would have resulted in joy. However, the ever-changing views of the rocky coast resulted in a sort of photographic ecstasy, of which more tomorrow.

26 August 2008 12:32 GMT -3 recalled 5 January 2011

Want more? Then please VOTE FOR ME TO BE THE OFFICIAL BLOGGER & ARTIST ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE NORTH POLE

and stay tuned for another posting tomorrow!

Still on my mind

It's funny how I cannot recall what I had for lunch yesterday, but I can, with the tiniest prompting, expound at length, with staggering levels of detail, on my trip to Greenland last summer. About how people get by, with the high prices, by visiting amongst the often large extended family without ever paying for a hotel, but filling every spare inch of floor space with sleeping bags at Christmas. About people taking advantage of the lottery in Kangerlussuaq to hunt the quota of musk oxen, and sharing the carcass, storing it in their immense freezers (yes, freezers are ubiquitous in Greenland). How everyone lives by the coast, and knows someone with a boat, who goes fishing. How the magazines feature awards given to loyal workers at TelePost, for ten, fifteen or twenty years' service by quite young people, and how people tend to hang onto jobs, often for life (not surprising considering many of them come with accommodation). How a small supermarket bag of cheap pasta, tinned fish, yogurt, three 'Viking steaks', milk, a bit of fruit and something green will easily top £20 (US $35). How the banks don't take UK debit cards because of Danish banking regulations, but the people working there are very friendly and helpful, and outside the capital, all dressed very casually. How the fog comes down in Qaqortoq and erases the top half of the hill with its staircased streets of primary coloured houses. How the rain comes down and it is never really very cold in August and early September (except on the top deck of the ferry at 5am) and I am a fool to be carrying around thermal trousers (most of the time!). How the spines of the books in the public library where I shelter from the rain are all rebound in jewel colours, pink and yellow and lime green, paperbacks to be treasured forever. How the fish market is selling whale but I am too late to see it and instead photograph the remains of giant ribs, chest high, sticking out of the rubbish bin. How the tables are cold steel and spread with fish and seal sliced red, gold mother of pearl eyes unseeing as the camera lens. A man, grey haired with a flowerpot shaped hat and glasses, wanting to shake my hand, talk, tell me he is sixty today. A museum, in an old hotel that looks like a red school house from pioneer America, where I steam around, drying out and looking at amazing tupilak carvings in creamy bone by father and daughter Aaron and Cecile Kleist. Where upstairs I photograph the room where Charles Lindburgh and his wife stayed, photographs of them and the seaplane floating on its pods in the harbour. Where the national costume is displayed, yoked neckwear that looks like Shetland knitwear in photographs but up close is composed of intricate beadwork in reds, yellows, white, indigo, purple and blue. Where a series of medium format square photos are displayed of life in the early 1960's, faces that tell of childhood, festive dancing and proud truck ownership but also of locals sat round the table with colonial bureaucrats who built the new concrete housing blocks that today are so run down. A woman, smoking a pipe, toothy and wrinkled grin challenging me to understand.

Flying in to Kangerlussuaq

All photographs copyright Margaret Sharrow 2008

Just touching down at Kangerlussuaq

I wasn't going to stay. I was just passing through. I was on my way to Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, but it is not possible to fly directly to the capital, because the airstrip there is not large enough to accommodate jumbo jets on international flights. But the airstrip at Kangerlussuaq is, because the place was built as a US military base with an eye to catering for the supersized might of Uncle Sam.

And yet, it was to be my first moments on Greenlandic soil (or tarmac, to be more precise). After shooting enough aerial footage on the descent to mount an exhibition (there, I'd justified my trip already, I could relax [!]), the excitement levels were soaring way out of control, the closer we got to terra firma. And then we landed.



Hmm. The equipment on the ground looked much like any other airport round the globe, if the operators were definitely Greenlandic.



And those hills rising up along the valley - they could be anywhere in the north Atlantic, say... Scotland, where I'd been so many times? I had come to earth with a bump. Still, the airport was as tiny as any remote airport could be expected to be; and I had the duty free to negotiate.



The latter turned out to be far more arduous than customs and immigration (an empty desk). Having ascertained that my luggage was transferring from jumbo to Dash-7 of its own accord, I drew myself up and plunged into the scrum that was the duty free. Even with two tills working at full speed, it seemed to take forever until I could emerge, clutching my bottle of (relatively) cheap white in its peculiar string vest: a Scandi-invention that I realised provided grip when pouring while simultaneously preventing clinking in the shopping sack (should I have been so pecunious as to purchase more than one bottle).

Boarding the Dash-7 I thought again how handsome the Air Greenland fleet was, with its glossy candy-apple-red planes with the white abstract snowflake logo. Inside the single aisle terminated abruptly in a beige wall fronted by a row of seats facing away from the direction of travel. I figured that nobody would want to sit there, so I found a window seat opposite these but facing the correct way for my purposes. And I had plenty of room to open my day rucksack and pull out the first two cameras. The man next to me was lost in reading the paper (bilingual Danish and Greenlandic) and paid little attention to me, or, once we took off, the spectacular scenery. Which was just as well, because after a cursory look at the safety card (complete with nonverbal instructions on how to survive turning into an iceberg) I was glued to the window. My first journey with turbo props!