Iceland review - 2002, Qupperneq 43

ICELAND REVIEW 41
There’s no arguing with its isolation. It has taken us four hours in
The Big Catch, hunter Vittus Ignatiussen’s motorboat, to get to this
settlement from the region’s capital, Tasiilaq. The harbours of these
communities – total population 3,500 – are frozen nine months of
the year, open only from July through mid-October. And with vir-
tually no network of roads in the entire country, for nine months a
year, nobody’s going anywhere. Though winter tourists do helicop-
ter in, a minimum of supplies make it. If somebody runs out of cof-
fee in February, they wait until July to get more.
East Greenland wasn’t in contact with Europeans until 1884, and
the wooden houses that line its 11 harbours replaced traditional
stone and earth dwellings only 25 years ago. Outsiders in the know
have been romanced by the stunning land and culture of this coast
of Kalaallit Nunaat (what the Greenlanders call their land) for
years. Today, East Greenland sees day trippers, people on short hol-
idays, return tourists who stay for months at a time, and plenty
who come and never leave.
On with the show
Pelle Lambertson straddles the skinned, five-foot carcass of the seal
he’s been storing in the Kulusuk harbour since last week. The
blonde 27-year-old from Copenhagen is living in Kulusuk for a year
to teach at the school. Before he arrived two weeks ago, all he
knew about the town was that it was on an island.
Picturesque on its rock peninsula and ice-strewn bay, it seems to
be the unofficial law of Greenland tourism-lite that the East can be
summed up in a few hours of the sights and sounds of Kulusuk’s
300 residents. This, of course, is directly related to the fact that the
town itself is a 30-minute stroll from Kulusuk Airport. The dirt road
connecting the airport and town carries a steady flow of hikers and
three-wheelers packing rucksacks for tour groups passing through.
“Before I got here, I told myself, ‘You can always go home’,”
Lambertson says, working away at creating a slice in a part of the
back flipper with a hand-held blade. “Now I’m thinking a year is
not enough.” As he works, the young teacher consults a diagram
of a cross-sectioned seal, showing what cuts to make where. “I’d
really like to stay here. The people are amazingly nice. But,” he
pauses, “they have a lot of problems.”
When Tiniteqilaaq’s harbour isn’t frozen, a supply boat comes to the settlement on Tuesdays. During the winter, no boats come in, and no boats go out.
Pelle, Air Iceland’s ‘Kayak Man’, strikes a pose in Kulusuk.
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