Anchored in an all but landlocked bay near Kap Thorvaldsen, our magical dwelling place for the past days, I sit on the foredeck with my breakfast musli bowl, listening to the snow buntings and Lapland longspurs offering their morning greetings to the sun. The tide is out and a strip of ochre-coloured seaweed glistens on the rocks in the intertidal zone — a space in between the low and high water mark, belonging fully neither to the sea nor to the land.
At ebb the seaweed makes a thick, soft carpet to step on when we land with the dinghy. A little attention never goes amiss when clambering onto land, for the shoots of the seaweed can be slick and slithery, sending a leg sliding into the water until the boots fill up.
At flood, we float through an astonishing forest garden of bewildering beauty. The light sparkles in the air globules clinging to the plants, sun beams filter through the canopy and the boundary dividing air and sea, and abounding animal life tend to their many affairs.
A large iceberg with two towers sails serenely past the entrance of our little fjord. Deep rumbling reaches my ear, interrupting the birdsong and the constant roar of the sea lapping the coast outside our bay. The sea’s sound reminds me of a mountain stream more than waves lapping ashore, and that’s with calm seas. I try to imagine the roar of a heaving storm surge hitting the coast.
Large icebergs collapse all around us, invisibly. Hidden by the rocky islands surrounding us, or around the corner in the next bay. Sounds travel far in the Arctic. It bounces and echos off the rock walls that tumble into the sea around us.
Pervading everything is the constant buzz and zzzzzz of the ever-present cloud of mosquitoes. They only ever really leave us alone out at sea — that is, if we haven’t scooped them all up in the boat before — or when sufficient wind picks up to pin them to the ground. When hiking, we often wear head nets to keep them from eating us alive. Having been in the tropics and the rainforest, this still feels a level up! There, the mosquitoes at least seem to stick to some kind of diurnal rhythm, whereas here, they are always awake and ready to sting. No moment is free of them.
I’m shrouded in a cloud of ‘the sons of devil’, as they are called here, and realise just too late that I left a little strip only covered by my sock between the shoes and the trousers available to them. By the time I notice the first sting, I have 10 on my feet and now they itch like mad, leaving me in half a mind to scratch the skin off my bones.
A recent memory surges up to my consciousness. During National Day in Qaqortoq, we joined the music festival, which took place in the local sports hall, which has all amenities one could wish for. We are sat among the locals, taking in the hum and our surroundings after watching the seals being butchered after the seal hunt race not half an hour before. Suddenly, we are stirred to our feet, transfixed by alluring voices. The local rock band has handed the stage to a pair of Inuit throat singers from Canada. The two of them are dressed in splendid traditional clothes rimmed with brilliant colours.
One of their songs tells of the sound of the mozzies circling around our heads. The days being rainy, cold and overcast when we arrived, we hadn’t had the ‘chance’ to experience this lunacy ourselves back then, but now I can fully relate.
The two ladies spin a sublime multilayered tapestry of sounds that enchants me. The unusual sounds of throat singing are so different to what my ears are accustomed to, so mysterious. Their songs capture acute observation and subtle attention to their natural surroundings, picking aspects in turn and transposing them into emblematic melodies. Other tunes tell of the meanderings of a river, and the flight of a Canada goose. In the past, Inuit women would gather when their men were out hunting, and sitting together, they’d spin songs that spring from their environment.
Back in the present, the iceberg has moved past the third of the four passages that lead into our anchorage. The sun is hot in a deep blue sky, but the little breeze that has sprung up is pure bliss. The others are still asleep down below. I’ll brew myself a coffee and jump onto the paddle board for a little exploring.
Angie