Adventures with Julia

 

July 14, 2017

You all have asked for more photos so here are some of the best of the day’s take.  The day was all about icebergs around Ilulissat.  There is more to tell than these photos, but I need to go to bed.  Will write more tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 15, 2017

We are in the air flying over Greenland back to Iceland. The ice cap below us is 3000 meters thick and is the highest point in the country. The cap is so heavy that the ground underneath it has been sinking for eons. Melting glaciers on the west coast are causing the land there to rise—very slowly. The currents on the east side are very cold and flow south, while the currents on the west are warmer and flow north. There is very little settlement on the east side due to the cold air, sea and snow and rough terrain. Settlements are plentiful all along the west coast, including Nuuk, the capital in the southwest. The southern part of the island was occupied by the Vikings between the 800’s and 1200’s.

Remember Eric the Red. Turns out he was not lying about the place being green as I had been told. During those years Vikings settled the area and raised cattle, sheep, and other food products. They never traveled north so did not encounter the Inuit, who did not travel south. By the 1200’s the climate had changed and become much colder. Those Viking who did not die, moved away, just as the Inuit, who liked the colder climes moved south. Thus the two cultures never met of mixed. The Danes did not arrive until the late 1700’s.

Our time in Ilulissat was delightful. The weather was warm and sunny our first day, sunny and a bit cooler yesterday and overcast and cool today. No rain, no freezing temps. While there we managed two good hikes along the glacier fields of Jacobshavns Isfjords, a very pleasant boat ride among the icebergs flowing out of the glacier, during which we saw many icebergs, a humpback whale and had a long conversation with the boat captain, who happens to be the German step father of the Sri Lankan waitress who served us lunch the day before. No wonder the girl was so charming. Her step dad was very engaging and knowledgeable about the area, having lived in Greenland for 30 years. HIs Sri Lankan wife owns the Inuit Cafe we enjoyed so much and her daughter, due to her eclectic family background, speaks 5 languages: Danish, English, Greenlandic, Sri Lankin and German. What a rich heritage. Makes me wonder how many other people in the area have such interesting backgrounds.

Ilulissat, Greenlandic for “Icebergs”, lies slightly north of the 66th parallel, which demarks the Arctic Circle and the land of the Midnight Sun.

So we had no darkness while there, but slept fine anyway. Too tired to notice. I included photos of Ilulissat, our hikes and the boat ride to give you a fuller picture of our experience.  Here are a couple more from our second hike the next morning.

 

Although the town is small, the place is very hilly so we got a lot of exercise walking around. We visited the local museum, which showed the history of the Inuit people who have lived in the area for centuries. We saw the oldest building in Ilulissat dating from 1741 and built by Jacob Severin, who received permission from the Danish King to developed a trade monopoly with the Inuit. We saw the largest fish processing plant in Greenland next to the harbor and learned that halibut gravitate to the area and are very plentiful, along with cold-water shrimp. As we wandered around and chatted with people we learned that native residents speak Greenlandic and most also speak Danish, but little English. Danish transplants all speak English, including a number of college age Danes in town for summer jobs. We had no trouble communicating.

Out on the boat, our captain shared a lot about the life of the glacier and the fjords. The glacier is named Sermeq Kujalleq, which means “Fast Glacier” in English. It is the largest and most productive glacier in the Northern Hemisphere. Jacobshavns Isfjords refers to the flow of Icebergs from the glacier. It has been in recorded retreat since 1850. During the last forty years it went from retreating 22 meters per day up to 40 meters by 2011. Since then it has slowed down, but it is not known why. Also, the icebergs were twice as large when he first arrived in the area and are not getting smaller.

The icebergs at the mouth of the glacier field get bunched into a large mass as they scrape the bottom of the shallow inlet and get stuck until enough pressure pushes them into deeper water. When jagged bergs become top heavy, they will roll over and expose their smooth bottom. When this happens they create a small tsunami that can capsize small boats that happen to be nearby.

Since the glacier has been in retreat since long before global warming became an issue, he is inclined to believe that the forces of nature have played a larger role than anything else. There is evidence, he said, that the glacier has gained and retreated several times during the last 10,000 years.  As far as we can tell, there are no trees on Greenland.

There is only a tiny bit of soil, with mosses and small alpine-like plants covering the volcanic rock and large exposed granite boulders, which blew out of the earth during the many volcanic explosions.  We saw a couple of cemeteries that looked like dirt had been brought in to make graves.