Greenland blog 17: a snapshot of industry

The edge of Maniitsoq, Greenland. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008.

These storage tanks on the edge of Maniitsoq held oil and or diesel, I assume, vital resources that like so much else in Greenland, must be imported. (I didn’t know at the time, but Maniitsoq is the operational base for Polaroil.) The cost of food, especially fresh fruit and vegetables, was astronomical, and being a shoestring budget traveller required careful shopping. However, one surprise was the price of petrol and diesel, which was far less than in Britain, more on a par with the United States. Either it was little taxed, or state subsidised. In any event there wasn’t very far to drive, even in Nuuk, though it is true that people tended to leave their motors running during short stops. During the winter this is essential, because it takes such an effort to start a motor when the temperature is well below zero. However, it is a habit that carries over into the summer months, as I saw in Nanortalik. 

Industry in Greenland is in the process of changing as new prospects open with global warming. This may be an unexpected statement in the light of global warming generally presented by the media as being nothing but a disaster for arctic regions. However, it was apparent from Suluk, Air Greenland’s trilingual inflight magazine, that new opportunities are presented by possibilities for Arctic Sea shipping routes from Siberia to Canada, which will inevitably dock at Greenland. Furthermore, new developments in mining in Greenland are on the cards, with new mines opened or projected to open to exploit resources such as lead and zinc. There are also possibilities for offshore oil drilling, though after BP’s experiences in the Gulf of Mexico, it will pose a huge technical challenge and must be approached with great caution. 

Aside from fishing, there are other smaller industries in Greenland such as production of high-end fashion, particularly using local materials such as seal fur, and  book publishing. And, of course, there is a substantial income from tourism, which I was contributing to in my small way. 

30 August 2008 08:27 recalled 21 January 2011

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Greenland blog 06: the inland icecap - time to adjust my sense of scale

Inland glacier/icecap, between Kangerlussuaq and Nuuk, Greenland. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008.

Flying again over the icecap, I was struck with the present moment, as I would be for so much of my time in Greenland. And the present moment said: Greenland is big. Greenland is enormous. Before I had even boarded the plane in Copenhagen, I knew that Scotland had a far bigger feeling, space-wise, than Wales, and that Shetland had a far more remote feel than highland Scotland, each place having a feeling of bigness or remoteness about ten times more than the previous place. So if every landscape in Scotland felt ten times bigger than a similar landscape in Wales, I figured that the emotional impact of Greenland would be about ten times that of Scotland.

Flying over a white expanse that seemed to press right up to the window, an undulating sea of snow broken by dark peaks of mountains breaking through like rocky froth, I revised my scale of bigness. It was Scotland, times a hundred.
26 August 2008 10:39 recalled 10 January 2011

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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

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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


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Greenland blog 03: aerial perspectives

River estuary, west coast of Greenland. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008

I am always fascinated with what landscapes look like from above, which reveals so much more than what we can see from our day-to-day perspective on the ground. The rivers that I saw were not places seen from a bobbing boat, or from the shore while scanning for abundant trout, or glimpsed indifferently from a bridge while sailing on to somewhere else by coach. (There is very little travel by coach in Greenland, as none of the settlements are connected to each other by road.) No, the rivers I saw on that first descent were unencumbered by boats or bridges or fishing-folk, but grand free silver bands, winding and braiding and unbraiding themselves as they slipped through a brown rainbow of silt towards the sea. It was the first of many occasions when I wished I had some knowledge, any knowledge, of geology, but somehow knowing whether or not this was an example of a terminal moraine would probably have detracted from the experience of pure joy at the colours, the shapes, the fluidity of it all. 

26 August 2008 09:39 recalled 7 January 2011

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archive of posts 

Greenland blog 02: How my art took me to Greenland, and a Danish tongue twister

Parting clouds, west coast of Greenland. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008

I mentioned yesterday about the grant that allowed me to travel to Greenland, generously provided by the University of Wales, on condition that I was engaged in some sort of creative project (drama, cinema, creative writing, or in this case, fine art) with a further outcome to enhance my educational experience. I was at the time pursuing a BA at the Aberystwyth University School of Art, having hurried straight into the second year and begun experimenting with alternative photographic processes. This means that although I started out making some digital work, my main focus was in the darkroom, first doing traditional prints, and gradually moving into different techniques and chemical processes until it became photography, Jim, but not as we know it. By the end of the year I was cheerfully pouring bleach over multiple-exposure prints then wailing when I discovered that Sigmar Polke had already done exactly the same thing in 1971. To cap it all I’d been awarded a massive travel scholarship, which made for an interesting summer. After I finished marking a million media studies A level papers I had flown straight into preparations: daily study of Danish, in hopes of being able to speak Greenland’s colonial language, if not Greenlandic itself, which is difficult to find recordings for the essential comic attempts at mimicry. Now Danish can be difficult for the English speaker because of its range of guttural sounds produced at the back of the palette. Though Danish is reasonably similar to English in terms of word order, linguistic roots, etc., and I’d spent hours making vocabulary flashcards in my favourite cafe, I found that when confronted with actual Greenlanders speaking their colonial tongue I had my usual reaction - I froze (metaphorically, as it was still summer) and forgot everything I’d ever learned. There was one exception - I was able to amuse people by reciting the never-to-be-forgotten tongue twister taught to me years ago in Toronto by a Danish-Canadian friend. It employed a string of the guttural sounds, and provided guaranteed hilarity, by dint of my pronunciation: rød grød med flød på - which is red pudding with cream, as I remember.

 

Somehow I have diverged onto Danish tongue twisters and puddings, which throws up the whole question of Greenland’s relationship to Denmark. But more political thinking would leave us both up in the air, ignoring the spectacular views unfolding out the window of the descending plane. I can assure you unreservedly that at the time I took the photograph shown here, I was as fully present as I have ever been in my life, allowing for the fact that a certain detachment is inevitable when taking photographs at a furious rate. By the time we landed I was convinced that if I never took another picture over the next three weeks, I would still have enough material for an exhibition. The land was chiseled out of the green-blue sea, its elaphantine wrinkles washed with rusty red. And here I must say something about the colours I experienced, and have passed on to you. As with all my digital photos from this trip, I have made no alterations to saturation, contrast, density, etc., avoiding the current fashion in advertising and on Flickr for playing with these mechanics in Photoshop, producing supersaturated landscapes that anyone who has been to the place will recognise as overhyped, and setting up anyone who has not been for disappointment. Suffice it to say that with my photographs, as far as colour goes, what you see is what you get. Unless of course I have rendered the whole scene blue, by printing it as a cyanotype...

 

26 August 2008 09:32 (Greenlandic time) recalled 6 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!

Vote for Margaret Sharrow to create ULTIMATE STILLNESS at the North Pole!

On the AUL ferry, Hamborgerland, Greenland. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008.

The north pole is one of only two places on earth where the world stops turning. Can you feel the stillness?

My name is Margaret Sharrow, I'm an artist, and I'm so excited about my plans to share standing atop the world in a moment of silence. I'd invite others on the expedition to stand round the pole, dressed in red and bearing portraits of people who have brought peace and silence to the world. One by one they will stand on the pole, feeling inner and outer stillness as the world turns around them. They will also pass round the circle a plate of Italian crystal containing gold filaments, a work of art currently circling the world from one artist to another via FRAGILE - global performance chain journey.

Vote for me and I'll take dramatic photos of that event and everything else on the voyage, using digital and antique cameras. You'll see videos and share my stories and interviews on the blog. And I'll give you other ways to participate: I'll need nominations of people who've nurtured silence, to have their portraits carried to the pole. I'll organise silent circles round the world to experience stillness at the very moment the expedition reaches the pole. There will be a photo-book, and an exhibition that will tour the globe.

I've been in cold places all my life: born in Buffalo, New York (butt of American snow jokes) I drifted to Canada then Britain, traveling extensively in the remote north Atlantic. Best moment? A cherry red Air Greenland helicopter taking off from Qaqortoq, roaring rotors pulsing in my sternum, three cameras juggled on my lap, my tear-filling eyes stretched wide, not missing anything. The chopper rose, perspectives shifted, the world turned inside out. The harbour and jewel-coloured rows of Danish houses lining the bowl of hills. Sea glowing blue-green spotted with brilliant white icebergs running out of the fjords like a stately crowd dispersing. Jagged edges of fairy-pointed mountains against the horizon, pressing close as children at a sweet shop window. Sailing free in the skies until the stewardess, having handed round mints, sat opposite me. Oblivious to her daily tour of paradise, she happily leafed through a magazine.

Vote for me here! http://www.blogyourwaytothenorthpole.com/entries/166

There's more on my other blog margaretsharrow.blogspot.com,

margaretsharrow.weebly.com/greenland.html

andwww.fragile-global-performance.net.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for voting!

First of a daily series of new blog postings about my Greenland travels:

01 Flying high to Greenland

02 How my art took me to Greenland, and a Danish tonguetwister

more about why I want to go to the North Pole

more about Greenland

more about my art & photography

Greenland blog 02: How my art took me to Greenland, and a Danish tongue twister

Parting clouds, west coast of Greenland. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008

I mentioned yesterday about the grant that allowed me to travel to Greenland, generously provided by the University of Wales, on condition that I was engaged in some sort of creative project (drama, cinema, creative writing, or in this case, fine art) with a further outcome to enhance my educational experience. I was at the time pursuing a BA at the Aberystwyth University School of Art, having hurried straight into the second year and begun experimenting with alternative photographic processes. This means that although I started out making some digital work, my main focus was in the darkroom, first doing traditional prints, and gradually moving into different techniques and chemical processes until it became photography, Jim, but not as we know it. By the end of the year I was cheerfully pouring bleach over multiple-exposure prints then wailing when I discovered that Sigmar Polke had already done exactly the same thing in 1971. To cap it all I’d been awarded a massive travel scholarship, which made for an interesting summer. After I finished marking a million media studies A level papers I had flown straight into preparations: daily study of Danish, in hopes of being able to speak Greenland’s colonial language, if not Greenlandic itself, which is difficult to find recordings for the essential comic attempts at mimicry. Now Danish can be difficult for the English speaker because of its range of guttural sounds produced at the back of the palette. Though Danish is reasonably similar to English in terms of word order, linguistic roots, etc., and I’d spent hours making vocabulary flashcards in my favourite cafe, I found that when confronted with actual Greenlanders speaking their colonial tongue I had my usual reaction - I froze (metaphorically, as it was still summer) and forgot everything I’d ever learned. There was one exception - I was able to amuse people by reciting the never-to-be-forgotten tongue twister taught to me years ago in Toronto by a Danish-Canadian friend. It employed a string of the guttural sounds, and provided guaranteed hilarity, by dint of my pronunciation: rød grød med flød på - which is red pudding with cream, as I remember.

 

Somehow I have diverged onto Danish tongue twisters and puddings, which throws up the whole question of Greenland’s relationship to Denmark. But more political thinking would leave us both up in the air, ignoring the spectacular views unfolding out the window of the descending plane. I can assure you unreservedly that at the time I took the photograph shown here, I was as fully present as I have ever been in my life, allowing for the fact that a certain detachment is inevitable when taking photographs at a furious rate. By the time we landed I was convinced that if I never took another picture over the next three weeks, I would still have enough material for an exhibition. The land was chiseled out of the green-blue sea, its elaphantine wrinkles washed with rusty red. And here I must say something about the colours I experienced, and have passed on to you. As with all my digital photos from this trip, I have made no alterations to saturation, contrast, density, etc., avoiding the current fashion in advertising and on Flickr for playing with these mechanics in Photoshop, producing supersaturated landscapes that anyone who has been to the place will recognise as overhyped, and setting up anyone who has not been for disappointment. Suffice it to say that with my photographs, as far as colour goes, what you see is what you get. Unless of course I have rendered the whole scene blue, by printing it as a cyanotype...

 

26 August 2008 09:32 (Greenlandic time) recalled 6 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!

Vote for Margaret Sharrow to create ULTIMATE STILLNESS at the North Pole!

On the AUL ferry, Hamborgerland, Greenland. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008.

The north pole is one of only two places on earth where the world stops turning. Can you feel the stillness?

My name is Margaret Sharrow, I'm an artist, and I'm so excited about my plans to share standing atop the world in a moment of silence. I'd invite others on the expedition to stand round the pole, dressed in red and bearing portraits of people who have brought peace and silence to the world. One by one they will stand on the pole, feeling inner and outer stillness as the world turns around them. They will also pass round the circle a plate of Italian crystal containing gold filaments, a work of art currently circling the world from one artist to another via FRAGILE - global performance chain journey.

Vote for me and I'll take dramatic photos of that event and everything else on the voyage, using digital and antique cameras. You'll see videos and share my stories and interviews on the blog. And I'll give you other ways to participate: I'll need nominations of people who've nurtured silence, to have their portraits carried to the pole. I'll organise silent circles round the world to experience stillness at the very moment the expedition reaches the pole. There will be a photo-book, and an exhibition that will tour the globe. 

I've been in cold places all my life: born in Buffalo, New York (butt of American snow jokes) I drifted to Canada then Britain, traveling extensively in the remote north Atlantic. Best moment? A cherry red Air Greenland helicopter taking off from Qaqortoq, roaring rotors pulsing in my sternum, three cameras juggled on my lap, my tear-filling eyes stretched wide, not missing anything. The chopper rose, perspectives shifted, the world turned inside out. The harbour and jewel-coloured rows of Danish houses lining the bowl of hills. Sea glowing blue-green spotted with brilliant white icebergs running out of the fjords like a stately crowd dispersing. Jagged edges of fairy-pointed mountains against the horizon, pressing close as children at a sweet shop window. Sailing free in the skies until the stewardess, having handed round mints, sat opposite me. Oblivious to her daily tour of paradise, she happily leafed through a magazine. 

Vote for me here! http://www.blogyourwaytothenorthpole.com/entries/166

There's more on my other blog margaretsharrow.blogspot.com, margaretsharrow.weebly.com/greenland.html and www.fragile-global-performance.net. Thanks for reading, and thanks for voting!

more about why I want to go to the North Pole     more about Greenland     more about my art & photography

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!