Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.05.2013, Blaðsíða 32

Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.05.2013, Blaðsíða 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

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