The very title suggests the book is set in the winter, and it is(ish) in the sense that the story progresses towards winter, when the first snows start creeping down the side of the mountain. But much of the action in Seven Graves, One Winter is set on the water in Uummannaq Fjord. Now, I’ve spent a lot of time both physically and literary on that fjord, but most of the time in my stories it is frozen. In the summer of 2010 I spent a month on the fjord while attempting to paddle solo to all of the seven settlements. I visited five of them, including Niaqornat.
The landscape directly south of Niaqornat is where a lot of the story unfolds, so it feels right to add a few photos of that area. The Nuussuaq Peninsular was on my right as I paddled south along the coast towards Qaarsut – where the gravel landing strip is. The peninsular is mountainous and the highest peak is that of Qilertiinguit Kangilequtaa at 2,070 m. Which, of course, I didn’t get a photo of on this day! (Note to self, find one of the 100 photos I do have of the witches’ hat peak!) Maratse doesn’t hike much, but then when we meet him in Seven Graves, One Winter, he is recovering from unexplained torture which happened in In the Shadow of the Mountain. He does spend a lot of time on the beach, and the beaches in Greenland are fabulous and littered with interesting finds.
I realise I’m digressing from the story, but in many of my stories I talk about characters collecting fresh water from the sea. The “fresh water” is basically lumps of ice calved from a glacier and deposited on the beach. This is a spoiler alert for the photo above, as it took me a moment to wonder what beasts were leaving footprints in the sand. (I’ll just add this is the same setting for The Mammoth Hunt with Petra! So the idea of footprints makes sense.) The bird prints are tiny compared to that of the mammoth!
You’ve guessed it already, of course. The mammoth prints come from the heavy lumps of ice left on the beach. These lumps – of all shapes and sizes – melt over time to reveal the footprints. And when you get a series of them in a line, well, it doesn’t take an overactive imagination to translate the lumps into the passage of mammoths!
Okay, maybe not mammoths, but I do have something of a passion for big beasts, and when paddling alone for a month, you tend to absorb everything, which is, I guess, why Uummannaq Fjord is so important to me. These are the waters Maratse fishes in, and the same area he travels by dog sledge when the water is a little firmer. As for me, on my trip, I parked a little higher up from the beach to avoid tsunami waves stealing my kayak when an iceberg calved.
But what was I reading? Ah, another spoiler. I don’t read crime fiction. I know… It’s a little silly. But then I don’t think I write crime books either. I think I write adventure stories with crimes in them, so you might forgive me for reading Jack London on this trip. But then I also inhaled A Game of Thrones, and even took an extra day in camp during perfect paddling weather just to finish the book because I was close to the end.
I was on page 25. 😉
Chapter 3 is now LIVE for all patrons, from the “Behind the Scenes” tier for 25 DKK and up, on my patreon page.
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