Greenland blog 11: a fascination with cemeteries

Moravian cemetery, Nuuk, Greenland. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008.

During my time in Greenland, I became fascinated, rather unexpectedly, with cemeteries. For an island with almost no trees, there was a surprising preference for wooden crosses rather than stone (which Greenland is full of) to mark the graves. Many of the crosses were very old, and in any case the wood was certainly imported. And there is always the fascination of the stories contained in cemeteries: even without being able to read, it was interesting to see the mix of Danish and Greenlandic inscriptions, or no inscriptions at all (not as much of a priority in a place where everyone knows everyone). Also the preponderance of Danish rather than Greenlandic names: it is very common for ethnic Greenlanders to have Danish rather than Greenlandic first names, and often surnames. I do not know whether this custom began with the missionaries in earlier centuries, or whether it is more to do with trying to fit in to a society where many of the top jobs were being held by expat Danes - I am just speculating here.

Whatever the names of the people buried within the wooden fences that enclosed the cemeteries, I enjoyed the quiet atmosphere there, both in the one squeezed between industrial warehouses and across from the internet cafe in the centre of Nuuk, or the one by the Moravian church overlooking yet another of Nuuk’s jagged sunset-facing bays.

27 August 2008 20:27 recalled 15 January 2011

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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!

Languages in Greenland

Street scene, Nuuk. Copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2009

'So what language do they speak in Greenland?' people ask me. The answer is: depends who, and where. Most people speak Greenlandic (Kalaallisut), an Inuit language similar to some of the languages of the northern native people in Canada, which is after all only thirty-odd miles away (if you're up beyond Qaanaaq). As a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, Danish is the other official language, especially of the large number of Danes working in the Danish Home Rule government.

Walking down the street, you will mainly hear Greenlandic spoken. As a visitor you will be addressed in English in the tourist offices, ferry offices and by Air Greenland employees - but not necessarily in the post office or in shops.

A propos of nothing, according to Wikipedia, 'Qaanaaq is the world's most northerly palindrome.'

Nanortalik e-mail 2

A little bear named Nanok has been keeping me company. He is attached to the keychain of the spare key to the hostel and was hanging in the entranceway when I came in. (Nanok is Greenlandic for 'polar bear'.)

I am finding the Greenlandic cemeteries to be very photogenic. The standard burial is a white wooden cross, extraordinary in a country where wood is so precious. Although near Nanortalik there is Greenland's only proper forest. I have seen trees growing, however, draped like a shawl over the rocks, the largest about three feet across, also some growing against the houses like bushes, about four feet tall. Anyway the cemeteries are colourful with loads of plastic flowers.

I met a nice couple from Bath at the cruise ship show and they were puzzled as to what the building was there for, not realising until I explained it was the community sports centre, and used by the school, just like the leisure centres in Britain. Other amazing / amsuing / interesting comments from tourists:

I stepped off the boat and thought, this is just like the Nortwestern Territories and Yukon with the Innuit. (a Canadian)

Did you make these yourself? (traditional clothes) Now is this embroidery? (touching her leg) And is this seal? (touching her waist) These are just lovely!

Can I have a picture of you? Can I take a picture?

(in the sod hut) This is so warm! This is so cute! This is so cozy! Watch your head!

One man looked at me and said, 'Hard livin'!'

Now do you wear these all the time?

This is just such a beautiful country!

Can I just have one picture of you?

We started in Norway, and sailed up the coast, then the Faroes, then Iceland, and now here.

Can I take your picture?

Nanortalik e-mail extract

Hi, just taking the chance to e-mail you from Nanortalik, where I am installed in a lovely little hostel surrounded by the open air museum. On Monday the town's population doubled due to the arrival of a cruise ship full of mostly Americans who went to see a show in the sports hall performed by a bunch of schoolkids doing traditional dancing, and the town choir. The whole day was kind of a surreal experience. One of the visitors thought the man in traditional costume actually lived in the reconstructed sod house until I explained that he had a very nice house in town somewhere. Niels at the tourist office has been more than helpful. He is a retired teacher and head teacher who came to the area in 1969 from Denmark and has stayed ever since. I told him today I wasn't surprised to find out he had been a teacher (he had announced it to the throng of tourists before introducing the performers). He wondered why and I said it was something about how he walked tall and held himself. Also the way he dispatched two young boys fooling around outside the tourist office might have been a giveaway ("excuse me," he said this morning and made a beeline out the door as they starting clanging on the old post box. "Los dos banditos!" he said upon returning just as swiftly. No more banging was heard.)

This internet cafe where I am writing not only has a number of kids hanging about, it is staffed by a kid struggling to keep up with the demand for hot chocolate. This building is also the radio station.

Yesterday I went for a long walk to see the Norse ruins out along one part of the coast on the other side of the bay directly opposite from where I am staying. Nanortalik is on a small island about three by four miles and the original settlement was on that part of the coast - the original 19th century settlement, that is. The weather and light were absolutely stunning on Monday and Tuesday, though it was rather windy at times. Today it is perfectly still but the fog has come on little cat feet, so a better day to shoot in black and white.



I have my own television at the hostel and the three channels are interesting. One is the Greenlandic channel, which is on air only from about 1pm to 11:30 pm and shows a mix of indigenous programmes, in Greenlandic with Danish subtitles, Danish programmes, and US or UK imports, including, bizarrely, a sort of Eurovision Let's Come Dancing hosted by the very camp Graham Norton, that must have aired on ITV sometime last year. Then there is the Hallmark channel with 'heartwarming' dramas and films, and Law and Order, in the evenings but sadly is a horrible cartoon channel the rest of the time. The third channel is Nanortalik-TV, which is a sort of continual slide show of advertisements for local services, accompanied by a Danish radio-speech channel sort of like Radio 2. Oh, and the Greenlandic TV channel turns into the test pattern plus Denmark's answer to Radio 4, I think it is called P5, all speech, news and documentaries. It also shows a clock, which is good, though I can just look out the kitchen window to see the church clock, at least during they day.

Qaqortoq e-mail extract

Ran up hill to hostel and back, have a couple more minutes to write. The library is very nice, people can drink coffee etc. here and most of the books have been rebound in a rainbow of nice colours. School is out but then kids seem to be wandering about the place most of the time. In Nuuk the school buses run all day, not just in the morning and afternoon but all day in between, and there are always kids going somewhere, or walking alone or in groups, in the most unlikely places, like way out by the airport, past the golf course (yes, there is one here, or rather, there!)

Tomorrow I have my first Air Greenland helicopter ride. Have already found the airport, by mistake, and confirmed my flight. Helicopters only, here, as in most of the small Greenlandic settlements. I may have to break off suddenly if the lady is ready to close the library.

In Greenlandic sentences are formed by adding more and more suffixes to just a few words, so the words are extremely long in print. People tend to read by running a finger along the line under the words. The purser on the ship handed out a questionnaire (not to me, it was only in Danish + Greenlandic) and all these elderly ladies were intently studying the first page, running a finger under the words. It seemed to take them a long time to read. The Danish lady at the hostel says this is typical. I have just had the librarian photocopy and article on the Greenlandic language issue for me from a new magazine called Greenland Today, new this year in Danish and English. Very interesting.

Much of the music on the radio sounds oddly like Radio Ceredigion, the Welsh middle-of-the-road stuff. I keep wondering why they aren't singing in Welsh! I have been eating kind of a lot of salami, at breakfast every day. I think I may get some pork chops tonight, for a change. Last week I got a slab of reindeer lasagne from the freezer deli section at the Brugsen supermarket in Nuuk. It was very good, made 3 portions. Sort of a more steak like hamburger.

Extract of e-mail from Nuuk

Today I had a lovely tour by taking the bus heading away from the city centre on the loop through the suburb where I am staying and then out past the airport to the new development and back again. Nuuk is one huge building site. I haven't seen so much construction since I lived in Toronto; in fact per capita there is probably a thousand times more construction here. Of course they can't do much in the winter... Everywhere there are new brightly coloured apartment blocks going up, and office skyscrapers of 8-10 stories, built into the solid 4 billion year old rock. Where I am staying is only two or three years old. The population of Nuuk must be bulging, also the apartment blocks from the 1960's are getting quite run down.

Today it was the same bus driver as the first day, still wearing gold reflective shades but with a different t-shirt today. I said something to him in Danish and he gave me that "Are you insane?" look I often get from people when I attempt to speak Danish. Then I pushed my own sunglasses up onto the top of my head and said something in English. He recognised me, and gave me a big smile. Today the rap music that had been playing on the last journey was replaced by country and western. At every stop he paused, so as not to get ahead of schedule, and carried on texting on his phone.

Speaking of music, the stuff they play on the radio here sounds oddly like the Welsh pop music featuring on Radio Ceredigion and for sale in good electronic goods shops everywhere: middle of the road, slightly-to-very country. Except here it's in Greenlandic.