My son Daniel (born 1988) and me on Aasiaat, Greenland, June 2019

A few years after my parents divorced, my Dad married Ingrid from Norway and they moved to Greenland running a kindergarten in the mining town of Qullissat sometimes spelt Kutdligssat on Disko Islandin north-western Greenland. This was the early 1960s and I was 10+ years old and wanted badly to visit my Dad there. However, somewhat to my disappointment that never happened, and when I later started travelling out on my own, Greenland wasn’t top of my list. It is a big place with long distances; the terrain is just rock and ice. There are also not many animals, western Greenland only has three terrestrial mammals; no I am not kidding, you can see twice that many during a single good day in Alaska! 

But something funny happened after my son Daniel (born 1988) graduated from Århus University in 2013, the next year he got a job … in Greenland, right opposite Disko Island, in Aasiaat, some 150 km only from where my Dad had worked! 

Still, I wasn’t THAAT keen to go. It is a long journey from Singapore, you can really only go during a few short summer months, and something else always seemed more important. I sent my Singaporean son Mark (born 2002) there is 2017, he was only 14 at the time but made the grueling trip on his own. 

Then in 2019 I felt the time was right. I had decided to relive my 150 km hike across the Brooks Range (see ‘Alaska 2021’) and wanted to field-test my hiking and camping gear. And I wanted to see Daniel as well of course … in situ and at work. Well, yes, Greenland too after all. I knew there wasn’t much habitat, but I had heard it was a grand place; my Dad loved it there, as did my Mother who visited several times as a Danish Member of Parliament and representative for Nordic Council. As it happened, Daniel resigned from his job shortly after my visit and left Greenland the next year in 2020, so I just managed to go there in time. 

I had a fantastic time in Greenland; it was one of my best trips ever. Seeing the Arctic again, visiting my son in his home and meeting his friends and colleagues. Walking on nearby uninhabited Sarqardlip Nuna, away from it all (sometimes spelled Sarqardlit, Saqqaliit or Sarkardlek). It was all worth it. The only disturbing part of the trip was the almost complete lack of birds and animals in western Greenland. To make a long story short: All marine birds, mammals and fishes have basically been shot and caught out of existence by the local Inuit population, which now completely rely on the Danish central government for welfare payments to get by. If you don’t believe me, get a copy of the frank and well-written book, A Farewell to Greenland’s Wildlife by Danish investigative journalist Kjeld Hansen. If you can still access that link, I reflect a bit on the ownership of Greenland here. 

Then on to the snap-shots I took in 2019 for the rest of the story.