Christoffer Petersen

Authentic Arctic Thrillers

greenland

Greenland’s National Day (2007)

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A selection of photos from a stormy Greenland’s National Day (2007) in Uummannaq. You can see the clouds curling over the glaciers!

Jane was working at the hospital that day. One of the porters took her home on a break as the clothesline had “helicoptered” out of its holder (a length of pipe ingeniously – if I say so myself- screwed into the deck). Yes, the clothes missed the fish, but neighbours – and the porter who was driving past at the time – said it flew higher than the roof. 😉

And a shot of Jane’s workplace (yellow hospital) when the sun broke through the clouds. Yep, I just might have posted this one before. 🙂

The storm shoved a tonne of ice – tonnes of tonnes, actually – into the harbour requiring a bit of boat juggling to stop them getting crushed. Add a few iceberg calvings into the mix, and you’ve got some seriously intense seas!

Chris

Borgen: I should probably watch this!

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Thomas wrote and said I should watch it (thanks, Thomas). My mum thinks I should blog about it (thanks, mum). But the truth is, apart from an absurd situation where mum and dad encouraged Jane and me to watch an early episode about pig farming – absurd because we’re living in Denmark and had never seen it, and it was in Danish with English text – I’ve never watched an episode of Borgen. I know, head-shakingly curious, right?

Well, curious or not, apparently I really should watch this latest season – season 4 – as it is set in Greenland!

While some Greenland politicians are concerned/angry about the way the Greenland self rule is portrayed as something gifted to them by Denmark, rather than something they fought hard for, looking beyond that, it seems that the viewers are excited about the series.

The basic premise for this season is finding oil in Greenland. Which is fun for me as I was in Greenland during the first serious exploratory drilling. Oil fever was high and it went hand in hand with renewed dreams of independence.

Sound familiar? 😉

So, I think it’s time to fire up Netflix, and, for once, I don’t have to spend forty minutes searching for something.

If, like me, you’re new to Borgen, then it might help to know it is a Danish political drama with four seasons, starting in 2010. More from The Guardian.

Chris

Greenland from the Air #1

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I visited the settlement of Kullorsuaq for the English exams in 2010. Kulloq means thumb in West Greenlandic. The island has the Danish name Djævlens Tommelfinger which translates to “Devils Thumb”, which makes all kinds of sense. 🙂 Apparently an English whaling ship got stuck in the ice and the Devil’s Thumb was the last thing they saw. (Hmm, might need some references for that story.) The settlement of Kullorsuaq can be seen on the rocks, bottom right.

It’s June, and the ice is thinning every day. It’s not just the temperature, or the wind that affects the ice, tides and currents play a big role too.

I often talk about the ice foot in my stories. The ice foot is like a jagged wall of ice formed with the rising and falling of the tides. In practical terms, sometimes you climb onto the ice, down to it, and even just walk straight onto it depending upon the tide. Traffic over the ice foot makes a channel over and through the foot.

The current is often strong around a rocky point, and usually these are the first places to be ice-free. You can see the dark patch in the photo above. It’s easy to imagine that the sea just “stops” when the ice forms. But the opposite is true, of course.

More aerial photos later, but we’ll finish with a shot of the chopper. I love ’em almost as much as the Dash 7! If you’re wondering about the digger, it’s what they use in the settlement to bring the post and passengers’ baggage to the helicopter. Basically, you check in at the general store, and they drive your bag up to the landing pad.

Chris

Random “Dirty” Sledge Dog of the Month

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May is simply the worst month of the year in Greenland. Everything melts. And I mean everything!

So… put your coffee down, finish whatever it is you’re eating, and brace yourself for the next image – no photo, I wouldn’t do that to you!

Imagine the dogs have been doing their business all winter long. And everything they did froze instantly. With each layer of snow it disappeared – instantly. And everyone forgot about it.

Until the month of May when everything came back with a vengeance!

Added to which, even in an area with roughly ten days of rain each year, there was plenty of meltwater, and that water carried everything everywhere.

Yep, you’ve got it now, haven’t you?

So, spare a thought for this little chap. It’s really not his fault.

Chris