Taaqtumi!

I visited my folks in England recently. It has been almost two years since I saw them (mum and stepdad – now just ‘dad’). The last time so much time passed between seeing them was when we first moved to Greenland.

Ah, corona!

But regardless of it being a great trip, that’s not what this post is about.

Since Brexit I have stopped buying books.

I used to buy a lot of books, especially second-hand books that were out of print. But when the UK left the EU everything suddenly got really expensive, especially if I had it sent from the UK to Denmark. Anything bigger than a postcard (more or less) gets slapped with a 150,- kroner charge for the letter the Danish postal service sends when informing you of a parcel from a so-called “third country”.

Yep.

England, and the rest of the countries comprising the UK, is considered a third country.

Where am I going with this?

Taaqtumi is where I’m going!

I wanted to buy this book a few times, and I wanted it in my hands – not digital this time! So I bought it to coincide with my trip to England.

It’s a gorgeous book (full of raven illustrations) collecting several short horror stories, set in the Arctic, written by Inuit writers.

I read the first story last night.

Good story. Very atmospheric. Fun to read.

In fact, it was really fun to read.

All the Inuktitut words – very similar to Greenlandic in spelling and pronunciation – were written in italics (most of them, anyway). I had this weird sensation of reading my kind of book, i.e. the kind of book I like to read, and the kind of book I like to write. So, even though I haven’t got very far yet, I’m loving this book for a whole bunch of reasons!

Chris