Ilullisat, Disco Bay, Greenland
We came to Greenland hoping to see ice. Big ice. Today certainly did not disappoint. The largest glacier of West Greenland, the Ilullisat Glacier or Jakobshavn Isbreen, carries immense quantities of ice from the Greenland Ice Cap above to the sea below, disgorging its load of freshwater ice into Disco Bay. In recent years both the rate of flow of the glacier and the retreat of its face back from the sea have increased dramatically. The glacier now flows at over 100 feet per day, and its face has been retreating one mile per year. Huge blocks of ice are dumped daily into the ocean. Yesterday, we were told, the wind and ocean currents were whisking the ice away into Baffin Bay, between Greenland and Arctic Canada. Today, with a change in the wind, it was piling up to block the entrance to Ilullisat harbor and our intended dock. And thus the flexibility of operations on the National Geographic Explorer came to the fore.
Local boats came to the ship to take us through and around the ice, and our Zodiacs carried us through the ever-changing maze of floating ice between ship and shore. Some opted for helicopter flights over the ice. From this vantage the sheer quantity of the ice and the size of the chunks was even more impressive. On land we could walk through the colorful town and hike to a nearby scenic lookout. In the afternoon a tasting of open-faced Danish sandwiches made with traditional Greenlandic foods was served at the Hotel Hvide Falk (Gyrfalcon), offering a taste of Arctic char, halibut, Greenland shrimp, caribou, and muskox. Up the street we found the store where such traditional foods are sold. Its sign, on a silhouette of a beluga whale, carried the wonderful Greenlandic word kalaalimineerniarfik (“the place where we can get Greenlandic food”), showing how a single root word can grow into a sentence. Both the use and the meaning of the word show us that the Native Inuit people of Greenland continue their language and culture in this rapidly changing world. May it ever be so.
We came to Greenland hoping to see ice. Big ice. Today certainly did not disappoint. The largest glacier of West Greenland, the Ilullisat Glacier or Jakobshavn Isbreen, carries immense quantities of ice from the Greenland Ice Cap above to the sea below, disgorging its load of freshwater ice into Disco Bay. In recent years both the rate of flow of the glacier and the retreat of its face back from the sea have increased dramatically. The glacier now flows at over 100 feet per day, and its face has been retreating one mile per year. Huge blocks of ice are dumped daily into the ocean. Yesterday, we were told, the wind and ocean currents were whisking the ice away into Baffin Bay, between Greenland and Arctic Canada. Today, with a change in the wind, it was piling up to block the entrance to Ilullisat harbor and our intended dock. And thus the flexibility of operations on the National Geographic Explorer came to the fore.
Local boats came to the ship to take us through and around the ice, and our Zodiacs carried us through the ever-changing maze of floating ice between ship and shore. Some opted for helicopter flights over the ice. From this vantage the sheer quantity of the ice and the size of the chunks was even more impressive. On land we could walk through the colorful town and hike to a nearby scenic lookout. In the afternoon a tasting of open-faced Danish sandwiches made with traditional Greenlandic foods was served at the Hotel Hvide Falk (Gyrfalcon), offering a taste of Arctic char, halibut, Greenland shrimp, caribou, and muskox. Up the street we found the store where such traditional foods are sold. Its sign, on a silhouette of a beluga whale, carried the wonderful Greenlandic word kalaalimineerniarfik (“the place where we can get Greenlandic food”), showing how a single root word can grow into a sentence. Both the use and the meaning of the word show us that the Native Inuit people of Greenland continue their language and culture in this rapidly changing world. May it ever be so.
