Tag: SaltersTravels

In the morning we were out messing around in boats. Small groups in each RHIB. Up close with the icebergs, getting a feel for the place from water level. This is a lot more fun that it might sound. The weather was warm and sunny. The sky was clear, the water was incredibly clear. Most of the ice we were looking at are lumps that have calved off the many glaciers flowing into Scoresbysund. The shapes of icebergs can be fascinating although you must treat them with a little caution. They are melting and can occasionally roll over or break into pieces. The wave caused by this could easily swamp a small boat and this is not a good place to go swimming.

Next day we moved further up the fjord for another landing. At our first landing, mosquitoes had savaged us. A few poor souls quite serious swellings. This put many people off, so they skipped the next trip ashore. Fortunately, the airborne molestation was not repeated and by the third landing we were back up to full numbers. In general, there are few insects in Greenland. It is all a matter choosing areas that do not have any swamps. If there is no stagnant water for the larvae to hatch, then then will not be any mosquitoes. In many ways, there is not much to do on these shore trips. Walk up a hill, admire the view, spot a few plants, take a few photographs, and enjoy the fresh air. At the same time, it was great to walk somewhere that hardly anyone else had ever been. To actually step foot on Greenland and try to connect with the place a little.

Following morning we woke to see the town of Ittoqqortoormiit outside our window. Ittoqqortoormiit means “the place with the big houses” in the East Greenlandic dialect. Despite several attempts I have not been able to pronounce it. The houses are quite large and certainly very colourful. There are very few settlements at all in east Greenland and this one, population 345, has been described as one of the most remote settlements on earth. We arrived the day after a cargo ship had turned up. Only a few vessels visit because sea ice closes off maritime access for much of the year. This meant the town was unusually busy with loading and mostly, unloading cargo. Everything came off in standard shipping containers. These were craned off the cargo ship one at a time to a small ferry that delivered them to the quayside. Here, they were collected by one of the towns two trucks and, I assume, delivered to their final recipient. The whole process seemed perfectly organised, so we stayed well out of the way. We did go ashore however and wandered around for a while. I know what it is like to live in an extremely remote place, so I had a small sense of what life might be like here. There are, however, some very striking differences between Ittoqqortoormiit and my old base in Antarctica. For a start, we only went there for two years. Importantly, we had everything provided for us. We were not trying to earn a living and raise a family. I think that fundamentally breaks the comparison even though there are similarities in terms of weather and isolation. We never needed to worry about polar bears in Antarctica and we never needed to go on hunting trips. There is good hunting in the area around Ittoqqortoormiit. Seals, walruses, narwhals, polar bears and Arctic foxes. This still forms the backbone of the economy although there is a slowly increasing income from tourism. Fishing is important during the summer months but becomes increasingly difficult when the sea ice forms.

In the evening, the Fram pulled out of the harbour area, and we set a course for the Greenland National Park. Only the Danish Sirius patrol and a small number of hunters from Ittoqqortoormiit are allowed to enter the North-east national park without special permission. We had no idea what the Sirius patrol was, but we had just received permission for a visit. I amused myself for a while trying to photograph the Black Guillemots hanging around on lumps of sea ice. These are ridiculously cute birds. Eventually I gave up and went to check out the cocktail of the day in the bar.

Just after lunch, we joined the Hurtigruten ship, the Fram, in Reykjavik and easily settled into our cabin. The ship slipped her moorings early evening. By the time we had finished dinner, Iceland was receding far into the distance. Next day we spent the morning catching up on some sleep before wandering out on deck to discover that whales had been seen while we still in bed. Never mind, we had plenty of time on the Fram and hopefully there would be much more to see. We spent the rest of the day finding our way around the ship and enjoying the sense of anticipation. The next two weeks would be about exploring East Greenland. New places ahead.

Next morning we awoke in time for breakfast and there was sea ice. This was quite exciting and, for me, brought back many memories of the last time I had been in sea ice some thirty years earlier. The ship had come to a dead halt. It was explained to us that we had to get past this ice before we could get into Scoresbysund Fjord, the first of two large fjord systems we hoped to visit. We bobbed around there for the rest of the day and by the next morning we were still bobbing around in pretty much the same place. Back in the day, on my old BAS ship, the Bransfield, we would have easily smashed through this small ice floe. The Fram however, is a much more delicate vessel. She has a bulbous bow. Great for stability when cruising but hopeless in ice. She also uses azimuth pods, again, great for manoeuvring but a bit fragile for ice work. The Fram is ice strengthened and rated for polar operations – but anything other than very thin ice needs to be avoided. In the evening a shore lead finally opened and next morning we were in Scoresbysund ready to go ashore.

To a good approximation, we are in the middle of nowhere here. There are no facilities, no landing stages, no roads or tracks. Just wilderness and the odd polar bear. Everyone had been issued with heavy duty neoprene wellington boots called muckboots. We also had waterproof jackets and inflatable life jackets. Thus prepared we were ready to be ferried ashore in RHIBs. First an armed party needed to secure the area. Polar Bears are not common but they are very, very dangerous. So the first people ashore carry rifles and flare guns. Their job is to scout the area and then to stand guard. When the passengers land we are instructed to stay within a marked trail. On the hillsides around us stand people with rifles. Gives the place a slight sense of a day out from prison. We had a pleasant walk, took in some views, looked at some flowers and got eaten alive by mosquitoes. I have encountered mosquitoes many times before and can confidently assert that these are the worst ever. They are quite capable of biting though thick trousers and socks. Later I discovered that some people had reacted very badly to them and needed treatment. Diane and I were prepared with insect repellent from Finland (strong stuff) but even so I got nasty bites on my legs and chest. It was several days before the swelling went down.

With everyone back on the ship, we could continue along the fjord. Scoresbysund branches like a tree. The main trunk is 110 km long before it branches into multiple channels up to 350 km long. This makes it possibly the largest fjord system in the world. It is deep too. From 600 m down to 1,450 m in places. The walls are steep and imposing. They rise to 2,000 m and are punctuated by many glaciers. This rock is old, very, very old. Whereas, Iceland is geologically brand new at a mere 16 million years, Greenland rock dates back over 3 billion years. Almost to the birth of the planet. In Iceland the strata was simple and mostly flat, here the rocks are bent and twisted. Geological forces, the collision of continents, intense heat from deep underground and time, an awful lot of time, have shaped and reshaped the rock. Folding and twisting. Cracking it open and filling the gaps with molten rock. Then folding and twisting it again. Finally, ice sheets and glaciers carve great fissures deep into the strata, laying it bare and exposing the great metamorphic complexity to the world. There is so much raw history in the walls of these fjords as to be breath-taking at times. Dark, austere, imposing and powerful like some hallowed monument celebrating the dawn of planet earth. That day and much of the next, we made our way slowly through this amazing network of channels. I saw very little life. There is some here but it is sparse. Patches of grasses growing in flat areas near the water was the most of it. Very occasionally there was a bird. Of animals on the land or in the sea we saw nothing.