Reykjavík Grapevine - 04.12.2015, Blaðsíða 29

Reykjavík Grapevine - 04.12.2015, Blaðsíða 29
BOOK YOUR FLIGHT OR DAY TOUR AT AIRICELAND.IS ÍSAFJÖRÐUR ICELAND’S WESTFJORDS ARE ONLY 40 MINUTES AWAY Let’s fly ÞÓRSHÖFN VOPNAFJÖRÐUR GRÍMSEY ÍSAFJÖRÐUR AKUREYRI EGILSSTAÐIR REYKJAVÍK is le ns ka /s ia .is F LU 7 32 63 0 3/ 15 29The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 18 — 2015 TRAVEL clothing, and look out across the frigid bay. This is where the road out of Nuuk ends. "You have to be strong to live in Greenland,” says Liini, back at the cabin. "There are no roads between the towns—people travel by boat or plane. Further up north, it’s harder—when the last boat leaves for the winter, you know you're gonna be there for a while." 67º north We take an early morning flight for two days in Kangerlussuaq, a small settle- ment 40 minutes from Nuuk, and just inside the Arctic Circle at 67º north. The town is built up around a small international airport that was once a US Air Force base called Sondrestrom. The airport workers’ apartments—and the scant shops and local amenities— are mostly located in stark, functional buildings whose clean-cut designs hint at their military origins. We’re picked up by Rasmus—a young Danish tour guide and former driver for the armoured division of the Danish army—in an Iceland-modified Toyota Land Cruiser 4x4. He arrives straight from the visiting dentist; every- one in town gets their teeth checked for free once annually, in the space of a single fortnight. "I knew someone who worked here, and applied for this job like a shot," re- calls Rasmus, as we chug along under a heavily laden sky. “I settled in quickly. There are two bars, but in winter people mostly stay home and watch movies, or visit with each other. In the summer, it's always light, so we barbecue and hunt.” He pauses thoughtfully, finishing: "You either love this life or hate it. And you know pretty quickly which one it is." The road ahead is the longest in Greenland, clocking in at 40km from harbour to ice cap. The landscape along the way is both beautifully bleak and surprisingly rich in features. We pass an improbably located golf course, near- invisible under deep snow. The road continues around the edge of a test track where car companies try out pro- totypes, and then passes through a re- stricted area. This swamp was marked out after a kid on a school trip found an old unexploded mortar shell from a failed routine detonation of expired munitions. Soon after, we pass large chunks of debris from a T-Bird training jet, and some old Saqqaq-era (ca. 2500 BC – 800 BC) burial mounds. “You find these all over Greenland,” says Rasmus. “Sometimes, you can see the bones." Combined with the various radars, masts and weather stations silhouetted on nearby mountaintops, the glacier road is like a particularly eventful epi- sode of ‘Lost'. A shivering forest The road also meanders through the remains of a 1976 attempt to plant a Greenlandic forest, with saplings tak- en from similarly intemperate regions such as Alaska, Siberia and northern Scandinavia. Most of the trees died, but a few lonely pines stand shivering amongst the willow bushes. It's here that we first encounter Greenland's wildlife, when a fat arctic hare bounds up a nearby ridge, its pure white coat vivid even against the snow. Soon after, the 4x4’s roaring engine startles a fam- ily of grazing reindeer, who run along the roadside before crossing in front of us. They're magnificent, strong, ant- lered animals who bound effortlessly over the difficult terrain, then stare as we plough onwards. It's a short hike from the road to the Russell Glacier, which was named by glaciologist William Hobbs after his professor, during his famous “Hobbs expeditions” of the 1920s. In summer, the glacier sits across a river, but as winter sets in it freezes solid. As we cross, the dramatic icefall comes into view. We stop to catch our breath, tak- ing in the spectacle—a 70m blue ice cliff, the same height as Hallgrímskirkja. This spot marks the most accessible edge of the vast Greenlandic ice cap, which contains 10% of all the world’s freshwater reserves. The surface is riven with seams, like the rings of a tree, punctuated occasionally by col- lapsed sections. We look across the windswept vista in silent awe, listening to the creaking of the vast ice wall. Ras- mus lights up a cigarette. “Just another day at the office,” he smiles. We laugh, and start back towards the still-running 4x4 for the drive back. "You have to be strong to live in Greenland. There are no roads between the towns— people travel by boat or plane. Further up north, it’s harder— when the last boat leaves for the winter, you know you're gonna be there for a while." -Liini, Inuk Hostel Distance to Nuuk 1,434 km Flights provided by AirIceland: www.airiceland.is Accommodation provided by Visit Greenland: www.greenland.com Kept warm by 66º North’s Jökla parka: www.66north.is
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