Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.05.2013, Page 32

32The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 5 — 2013
THE NUMBER 1 MUSIC STORE
IN EUROPE ACCORDING TO
LONELY PLANET
SKÓLAVÖRÐUSTÍG 15, 101 REYKJAVÍK AND HARPA CONCERT HALL
Denmark to colour them in,” Ole explained.
Ole has been living in Greenland for 25
years now with his wife who runs a reflexol-
ogy clinic from their house. The last three to
four years, he told us they’ve had cargo ships
coming in on a weekly basis, but given this
sudden frost in March, they hadn’t seen a
cargo ship for two weeks. “We were surprised
to see one come in last night,” he said. “It was
marked Ístak—an Icelandic company.” He
said his wife noticed that stores had by then
run out of bananas, but grocery stores were
otherwise pretty well stocked.
When I wondered what he has been doing
here in this town for so many years, he was
quick to talk about its natural beauty. “This
is a place for people who like to be outside
in the nature, people who like to hunt. You’d
think you were in Texas,” he said, noting that
every household in town has a gun or two. “If
you’re interested in sipping on café au lait, you
should be in Reykjavík or Copenhagen,” he
said. “This isn’t that kind of place.”
PUREBRED GREENLANDIC
DOGS
When Ole’s shift ended, we walked over to
his house to go meet his dogs, which barked
ferociously and lunged at us from their chains.
Owners are legally required to keep their dogs
chained down, with the exception of puppies,
which are free to roam and playfully followed
us around town during our stay.
They are working dogs, kept for the pur-
poses of pulling sleds, and they can do that for
about ten years before they stop pulling and
must be shot, said Ole’s friend David Droob,
who happened to sled past us with a Danish
couple—a local policeman and a nurse—clad
in sealskin from head to toe. Much like there
are strict regulations to keep the Icelandic
horse purebred, there are regulations to keep
the Greenlandic dog pure. “No normal, city
dogs, north of the polar circle,” he explained.
For Ole and David, dogsledding is more a
hobby than anything else, and neither of them
raced in the national qualifying race, which
took place just before we got into town. In this
region especially, they told us dogsled races
are taken quite seriously—it’s like handball to
Icelanders, Ole explained.
There were no shortage of dogs in the
running, however, as we would see on our last
day in Ilulissat. Fortunately it was as sunny
and clear as the previous days as we set off to
go see the icefjord, a little ways out of town
past a suburb of dogs, howling, crying like
babies.
THIS IS WHAT WE
ARE DOING HERE
Past the dogs, we followed a single wooden
sidewalk in the snow, hoping we were going
the right way until the view of a massive
iceberg in the distance provided confirmation.
We made our way up to a lookout spot where
we found two lone benches. We sat and stared
and took photos. Every now and then a few
boats cut across the ice, dwarfed by the titanic
icebergs. Pairs of ravens flew by. It was silent.
It was almost too silent to believe that the
Sermeq Kujalleq glacier empties into this fjord
at a rate of 30-40 metres/day, making it one of
the fastest moving glaciers on Earth, where
many glaciers flow the same amount over an
entire year.
From there David recommended that we
hike back to town along the fjord-edge. Fortu-
nately we could follow the marks of a single
hiker’s footsteps, deep holes in the snow, up a
mountain until yellow painted cairns eventu-
ally appeared. The entire time we spent out
there, five hours or so, we met one old Green-
landic man and another Greenlandic couple
hiking past us on the same trail.
We took a cab to Arctic Hotel for our last
dinner, a fancy Greenlandic buffet—with local
musk ox, halibut, reindeer, whale, lamb, and
more. There we found 50 tall Danes who Ole
had told us were in town for a dental confer-
ence. We spoke to a couple that said most of
them had gone dogsledding and sailing, which
explained how the few available tours could
be fully booked and also left us feeling pretty
content with our alternative adventure.
Travel
“You’d
think you
were in
Texas”
Photo: Alísa Kalyanova