Greenland blog 03: aerial perspectives

River estuary, west coast of Greenland. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008

I am always fascinated with what landscapes look like from above, which reveals so much more than what we can see from our day-to-day perspective on the ground. The rivers that I saw were not places seen from a bobbing boat, or from the shore while scanning for abundant trout, or glimpsed indifferently from a bridge while sailing on to somewhere else by coach. (There is very little travel by coach in Greenland, as none of the settlements are connected to each other by road.) No, the rivers I saw on that first descent were unencumbered by boats or bridges or fishing-folk, but grand free silver bands, winding and braiding and unbraiding themselves as they slipped through a brown rainbow of silt towards the sea. It was the first of many occasions when I wished I had some knowledge, any knowledge, of geology, but somehow knowing whether or not this was an example of a terminal moraine would probably have detracted from the experience of pure joy at the colours, the shapes, the fluidity of it all. 

26 August 2008 09:39 recalled 7 January 2011

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Photo: Iceberg, north of Aasiaat, Greenland. Copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008.

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Hot off the press (or, why I'm blogging about Greenland)

01: Flying high to Greenland

02: How my art took me to Greenland, and a Danish tongue twister

03: Aerial perspectives

04: Scrum in the fjord

05: On Greenlandic airports, or, what to do in an emergency

06: The inland icecap

07: Colonial legacies

08: Housing old and new

09: Time in Timerlia

10: Humanity and nature

11: A fascination with cemeteries

12: Experiencing Ultima Thule via the telephone directory

13: Frantic construction and quiet hygge in Nuuk

14: Arts centre med kaffemik

15: Dawn on deck

16: Maniitsoq - life on the edge

17: A snapshot of industry

18: Happy in Hamborgerland

19: A tale of one ferry

Greenland blog 05: On Greenlandic airports, or, what to do in an emergency

Dash-7 propeller, Kangerlussuaq airport, Greenland. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008

I should say here that my change of planes was necessitated not just by the convenience of the Air Greenland network, but by geography: the reason that international flights do not go directly to the capital, Nuuk, is because of an almost complete lack of flat land in Greenland. There are only two places on the entire west coast with enough flat land to create a runway long enough to accommodate modern jumbo passenger craft: the deep fjords at Narsarsuaq and Kangerlussuaq. Thus anyone wishing to travel to Nuuk from abroad must first land at Kangerlussuaq, then transfer to a smaller plane that can land at Nuuk’s smaller airstrip. Said airstrip, blasted out of four billion year old rock, is the largest that can be built at Nuuk, not because there isn’t more land (a new suburb is springing up beyond the airport), but because there isn’t any more flat land. Like all the towns in Greenland that I visited, the mountains rise up pretty sharpish behind the last rows of houses.

The prospect of the next leg of my journey was made a little odd by the abrupt termination of my view of the interior of the plane by a wall, two rows in front of my seat. Somehow on a plane seating only around sixty I had been expecting to see the flight deck, to have some sense of where we were going. My unease was compounded by the on board safety cards. These depicted fabulous scenes of what would happen in the event of a crash, how one was to be bundled up, Michelin man-like, and await rescue sitting on plane seat cushions in the middle of a glacier.

The engines started, the propellers buzzed into action, and I prepared my 35mm camera, one of my medium format cameras, and my digital. There was no time for panic or disappointment. Like an understudy thrust into the spotlight, I was on!

26 August 2008 10:11 recalled 9 January 2011

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Greenland blog 06: the inland icecap

Inland glacier/icecap, between Kangerlussuaq and Nuuk, Greenland. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008.

Flying again over the icecap, I was struck with the present moment, as I would be for so much of my time in Greenland. And the present moment said: Greenland is big. Greenland is enormous. Before I had even boarded the plane in Copenhagen, I knew that Scotland had a far bigger feeling, space-wise, than Wales, and that Shetland had a far more remote feel than highland Scotland, each place having a feeling of bigness or remoteness about ten times more than the previous place. So if every landscape in Scotland felt ten times bigger than a similar landscape in Wales, I figured that the emotional impact of Greenland would be about ten times that of Scotland.

Flying over a white expanse that seemed to press right up to the window, an undulating sea of snow broken by dark peaks of mountains breaking through like rocky froth, I revised my scale of bigness. It was Scotland, times a hundred.

26 August 2008 10:39 recalled 10 January 2011

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Greenland blog 01: flying high to Greenland

Air Greenland wing, flying over the west coast of Greenland. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008

I decided early on that the Air Greenland fleet was the handsomest fleet of airplanes I'd ever seen. They were all candy apple red, with a ski for a wheel (no, not that, I'm thinking of the Beach Boys) and just as lusciously shiny as a childhood treat, sprinkled with a logo of white dots forming a snowflake. In a rebranding that was the stamp of the dashing new CEO, the airline bent over backwards to give its passengers a first-class experience, which helped in a great measure to offset the first-class prices. In an ideal world I would have flown as far north as it was possible to go, Qaanaaq, but my entire grant wouldn't have covered the airfare. As it was, for the cost of the flight from Copenhagen to Kangerlussuaq, and from Narsarsuaq back to Copenhagen was more than a round the world ticket. But they were very generous with the food (quality, quantity, cutlery), the wine, the film (a Swedish drama that climaxed on the massive bridge spanning the Baltic from Malmö to Copenhagen), the courtesy. And overgenerous with the views on descent. Having come through rather unnerving turbulence over the icecap, the parting of the clouds alone would have resulted in joy. However, the ever-changing views of the rocky coast resulted in a sort of photographic ecstasy, of which more tomorrow.

26 August 2008 12:32 GMT -3 recalled 5 January 2011

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Greenland blog 04: scrum in the fjord

Kangerlussuaq airport, looking down the fjord, Greenland. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008

Having landed, my perspective changed back to that of a land-dweller, and I was dealt my first and only disappointment in Greenland: it suddenly looked all too much like the Scottish highlands. Why had I bothered to come so far, at such expense, I thought peevishly, when I could have stayed in the country I love and call home, and seen much the same scenery? Now this narrative is not meant to be about my own psychological blips and foibles, but forgetting that I’d spent a less-than-luxurious night on a bench in the food court at Copenhagen airport, my perspective was a little skewed at the sight of ruddy snow-capped mountains rising up on either side of the airstrip, a fjord stretching away very much like a sea-loch in Wester Ross. What wasn’t obvious from my perspective was just how long the fjord was (190 km, nearly three times as long as 65 km Loch Fyne, Scotland's longest sea loch), which accounts for the climate in Kangerlussuaq being somewhat warmer and more stable than almost anywhere else on the west coast, except for the similar fjord at Narsarsuaq, which is much further south.

There wasn’t much time for negative thinking, as action was called for: we emerged down a staircase directly onto the tarmac (ah, this was what flying was like in the 1960’s) and walked less than a hundred metres to the terminal, passing a sign with fingerposts giving the distances to Moscow, London, Washington, etc. Once inside the claustrophobically tiny terminal there was no attempt at customs but an immediate scrum inside the duty free. Toblerones, cigarettes and especially alcohol flew off the shelves while staff at two tills stoically coped with queues bursting in and out the turnstiles. I was worried about my luggage in the hold, or missing my next plane, but needn’t have been; by the time I emerged clutching a single bottle of white wine (encased in some ingenious Scandinavian fishing-net type plastic mesh to prevent breakage) my bag had been magically transferred and it was time for a gentle stroll back onto the tarmac, and to board a Dash-7 standing ready, bound for Nuuk.

26 August 2008 09:49 recalled 8 January 2011

Want more? VOTE FOR ME TO BE THE OFFICIAL BLOGGER & ARTIST ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE NORTH POLE http://www.blogyourwaytothenorthpole.com/entries/166

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and stay tuned for another episode tomorrow!




Greenland blog archive