Please vote for me to become the official blogger / artist for an expedition to the North Pole!Image: Greenland iceberg, © Margaret Sharrow 2008
All images this site copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008-2010, unless otherwise noted
Showing posts with label north pole. Show all posts
Showing posts with label north pole. Show all posts
Sunday, 2 January 2011
Friday, 17 December 2010
Hot off the press: blog entries from Margaret Sharrow in Greenland!
Greenland ice sheet and glacier, image copyright Margaret Sharrow 2008
I have entered an online contest to create a work of art I'm calling ULTIMATE STILLNESS at the North Pole and I need votes from the public to be one of the finalists. As a way of saying thank you, and to show how much I really, really want to go to the North Pole and to be the official blogger / artist on the wonderful expedition (via Helsinki, Murmansk and the remote islands of Franz Josef Land), I thought I’d do a little delayed blogging about my most recent Arctic expedition, to Greenland in 2008. (After all, the main purpose of that trip was photography and art - I did not become a blogger until after I was back at art school so most of my stories have been waiting patiently in storage since then.) Last night I sat down and got the ball rolling by looking at a few photographs, and, without any particular plan, had penned (or, rather, keyboarded) two thousand words in two hours. The plan is to deliver one installment of my Greenland adventures per day between now and the final day to vote for me in the contest - let’s call it the 14th of February, to avoid any issues of time differences for those having to calculate their local time versus Eastern Standard Time lest they accidentally vote too late on the last day.
So, vote for me, then sit back and enjoy the traveller’s tales (or better yet, forward them to your friends and ask them to vote for me as well!) I am not, like Scheherezade, asking for my life - though going to the North Pole would certainly be a turning point in my life - just for your vote. And in exchange, I’ll give you my stories. That seems fair enough, doesn’t it?
Please vote for me to be the official artist / blogger on an expedition to the North Pole!
http://www.blogyourwaytothenorthpole.com/entries/166
Here's the archive of stories
Saturday, 29 May 2010
Greenland blog 12: experiencing Ultima Thule via the telephone directory
Complete listing for Siorapaluk, Greenland telephone directory. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008.
In a place where there aren’t a huge number of entertainments, everything available becomes interesting. The most extreme example of this phenomenon I have yet encountered was not in Greenland but in Shetland, where some years ago I stayed for several days on the remote island of Foula, where there were no public buildings aside from the shed that is the airport, and a brand new school-cum-community centre, which served two pupils and some thirty other year-round residents as well as a trickle of bird watchers and archaeologists. Each field, farmhouse, raggedly unshorn sheep, horse, child, angry bonxie (great skua) defending its oversized teenage young, puffin, waterfall and rainbow became precious, as did my domestic arrangements (an unrennovated summer hut where I spent most of my time drying my clothes, and eating the food I’d brought on the gut-wrenching two hour rough crossing). And I needed to have brought all my food: the island had no shop at all, except for one house that sold knitwear. It was there that I bought the beret you see me wearing in the photo that adorns my North Pole competition entry (http://www.blogyourwaytothenorthpole.com/entries/166). I took that photo on the Greenlandic coastal ferry, proving that the hat travelled with me round Greenland.
This digression should help explain, not just why I sported a tan mohair/wool beret on the ferry through Greenland’s coastal fairyland, known as Hamborgerland, but also why I found it interesting to look at the Greenland telephone directory at my landlady’s flat in Nuuk. Yes, the entire country’s telephone numbers are contained in one slim volume (the population is around 56,000 - that’s the population not of Nuuk, but of the whole country). And yes, Greenland (and the world’s) most northerly civilian town, Siorapaluk (population 68), boasts a listing that can be encompassed by a third of a column. That includes around ten business numbers, as well as residential numbers. I have a feeling that not everyone needs to have a land line. After all, if there was an emergency, one could always knock on a neighbour’s door... If I had been able to go to Qaanaaq, the town created when the US military displaced the population en masse from Thule so that a base could be built, Siorapaluk would have been a short dogsled ride, or, considering that it was summer, a fifteen-minute helicopter ride away. And why would I have wanted to do this? People in Nuuk, and points further south, all raved about the far north every time it was mentioned. Nuuk was not the real Greenland, I was told. ‘What are you doing staying here?’ said the bus driver who took me into town from the airport, peering puzzled through his reflective sunglasses, cool in his Manchester United shirt with short sleeves while I stood bundled in two pairs of thermal trousers and a mock-fur down lined jacket purchased in Wyoming. ‘You want to go to Ilulissat, go dog sledding.’ And another man in the hostel in Narsarsuaq went into a rapture of nostalgia, speaking the name like that of a lover, ‘Ah, Thule’, pronounced like a lapping brook, ‘TOOL ah’.
So, unable to journey to the Ultima, I had to content myself with seeing the telephone numbers of the people I might have encountered in near round-the-clock daylight, eager to talk to any unlikely visitor, offering hot dogs and sled dogs that were not packaged for tourists but part of daily life. And, yes, it also meant that although I would be achieving a new ‘personal north’, I would not have that feeling of having gone as far as I could go, before turning around with a feeling of satisfaction that I had seen all there was to see. Is it any wonder that I want so much to stand on the North Pole and feel the entire earth turning beneath me?
29 August 2008 08:11 recalled 16 January 2011
Want more? Then please VOTE FOR ME TO BE THE OFFICIAL BLOGGER & ARTIST ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE NORTH POLE! http://www.blogyourwaytothenorthpole.com/entries/166
then lope over to my Greenland blog http://margaretsharrowgreenland.blogspot.com/
and stay tuned for another episode tomorrow!
In a place where there aren’t a huge number of entertainments, everything available becomes interesting. The most extreme example of this phenomenon I have yet encountered was not in Greenland but in Shetland, where some years ago I stayed for several days on the remote island of Foula, where there were no public buildings aside from the shed that is the airport, and a brand new school-cum-community centre, which served two pupils and some thirty other year-round residents as well as a trickle of bird watchers and archaeologists. Each field, farmhouse, raggedly unshorn sheep, horse, child, angry bonxie (great skua) defending its oversized teenage young, puffin, waterfall and rainbow became precious, as did my domestic arrangements (an unrennovated summer hut where I spent most of my time drying my clothes, and eating the food I’d brought on the gut-wrenching two hour rough crossing). And I needed to have brought all my food: the island had no shop at all, except for one house that sold knitwear. It was there that I bought the beret you see me wearing in the photo that adorns my North Pole competition entry (http://www.blogyourwaytothenorthpole.com/entries/166). I took that photo on the Greenlandic coastal ferry, proving that the hat travelled with me round Greenland.
This digression should help explain, not just why I sported a tan mohair/wool beret on the ferry through Greenland’s coastal fairyland, known as Hamborgerland, but also why I found it interesting to look at the Greenland telephone directory at my landlady’s flat in Nuuk. Yes, the entire country’s telephone numbers are contained in one slim volume (the population is around 56,000 - that’s the population not of Nuuk, but of the whole country). And yes, Greenland (and the world’s) most northerly civilian town, Siorapaluk (population 68), boasts a listing that can be encompassed by a third of a column. That includes around ten business numbers, as well as residential numbers. I have a feeling that not everyone needs to have a land line. After all, if there was an emergency, one could always knock on a neighbour’s door... If I had been able to go to Qaanaaq, the town created when the US military displaced the population en masse from Thule so that a base could be built, Siorapaluk would have been a short dogsled ride, or, considering that it was summer, a fifteen-minute helicopter ride away. And why would I have wanted to do this? People in Nuuk, and points further south, all raved about the far north every time it was mentioned. Nuuk was not the real Greenland, I was told. ‘What are you doing staying here?’ said the bus driver who took me into town from the airport, peering puzzled through his reflective sunglasses, cool in his Manchester United shirt with short sleeves while I stood bundled in two pairs of thermal trousers and a mock-fur down lined jacket purchased in Wyoming. ‘You want to go to Ilulissat, go dog sledding.’ And another man in the hostel in Narsarsuaq went into a rapture of nostalgia, speaking the name like that of a lover, ‘Ah, Thule’, pronounced like a lapping brook, ‘TOOL ah’.
So, unable to journey to the Ultima, I had to content myself with seeing the telephone numbers of the people I might have encountered in near round-the-clock daylight, eager to talk to any unlikely visitor, offering hot dogs and sled dogs that were not packaged for tourists but part of daily life. And, yes, it also meant that although I would be achieving a new ‘personal north’, I would not have that feeling of having gone as far as I could go, before turning around with a feeling of satisfaction that I had seen all there was to see. Is it any wonder that I want so much to stand on the North Pole and feel the entire earth turning beneath me?
29 August 2008 08:11 recalled 16 January 2011
Want more? Then please VOTE FOR ME TO BE THE OFFICIAL BLOGGER & ARTIST ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE NORTH POLE! http://www.blogyourwaytothenorthpole.com/entries/166
then lope over to my Greenland blog http://margaretsharrowgreenland.blogspot.com/
and stay tuned for another episode tomorrow!
Vote for Margaret Sharrow to create ULTIMATE STILLNESS at the North Pole!
Photo: Greenland glacier, copyright Margaret Sharrow 2008
Vote for me to win a competition to make my proposed work ULTIMATE STILLNESS at the North Pole! Photos, blogs, books and opportunities for global participation will follow... I need as many votes as possible to be chosen as a finalist, so I'm counting on the generosity of the hundreds of people who read my pages every month!
Read the full proposal and vote at http://www.blogyourwaytothenorthpole.com/entries/166
Thanks!
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