Category: Atlas

Sharp brittle gravel born of many-hued crystalline rock crunches sonorously under our boots. We are exploring the abandoned mining village of Ivittuut, to the north-east of Kap Thorvaldsen. Founded in 1854, this village was built around the cryolite mine, the only one on earth. 150 years later, in 1987, with the mine exhausted, the village fell into disuse.

Cryolite is a rare white or colourless mineral that was used as a catalyst in aluminium smelting before a synthetic substitute was invented. It is peculiar, brittle and crystalline, shattering readily in our hands. Its name means ‘ice stone’, a fitting name, as this mineral has a strong resemblance to ice. When cast into water, the clearest of it will become as invisible as translucent ice, since it refracts light the same way water does. It is Greenlandic ‘ice’ that lasts, ice we can slip into our pockets as tokens to remind us of this place.

Four years prior, on our own boat, we visited Suriname in South America, a former Dutch colony embedded in the latticework of Amazonian tributaries. On an excursion into the depths of the Amazonas rainforest, we drove past a large aluminium factory now equally out of commission. An entire forest valley was flooded to create a vast dammed reservoir, the Brokopondo, to satisfy the immense power thirst of the aluminium production.

The trees in the lake died and, though waterlogged, curiously didn’t rot. They remain standing tall in a bizarre and baffling graveyard of white wooden skeletons above and below the water surface, creating an eerie and unreal landscape reminiscent of scorching deserts containing only the pallid bones of what was once alive. The lake is deep and we navigated on it in a boat, following the former valleys so as not to run ‘aground’ on the towering trees.

Today, those trees are valued as tropical hardwood that, being dead already, doesn’t face the export restrictions rainforest logs are usually subject to. They are felled underwater by divers who descend into the darkness of the caffe-latte Amazonian water with hydraulic chainsaws. Imagine diving 30 metres deep in water as dark and impenetrable as ink, with a sharp chainsaw in your hands to cut down trees you can’t see and which will vanish to the bottom as soon as felled if not chained on and pulled up right away.

There is a strange and poignant symmetry to now coming across this vacated mine in Greenland, nigh on at the other end of the hemisphere, but linked by nearly the same longitude, which produced the material needed in the tropics to extract the aluminium from its ore by heating and melting.

In the tropics, decay is rapid, life is constantly renewing itself and the rate of change is quick. Houses left to their own devices are soon overgrown by prodigious plant life and sheltering a host of animals. To someone used to temperate latitudes, tropical habitations can have the appearance of neglect, when in reality, the decomposition of organic material is simply much faster, and upkeep a constant battle. The very soil under our feet felt bustling and alive.

The Arctic and Subarctic, on the contrary, preserve inorganic and organic material in a state that seems frozen and timeless to us. Decay here is an immensely long drawn-out process, making the landscape appear unaffected by the passage of time. Despite better knowledge, on approaching the village, we had the impression it was only recently left by people. The paint of some of the houses seemed impeccable, the roofing intact, pathways clear.

A pocket of a harbour cut into the village’s embankment sports a wharf in good nick that we can tie up to. With fenders and lines prepared, we moved into the water pouch at a slow pace. Large wooden posts rammed into the ground and secured with forearm-thick bolts to the side, a ladder to climb up and several cleats to make fast our lines. This could equally be the pier of one of the Greenlandic towns we have visited.

Only on closer inspection is the deterioration revealed, the havoc caused to the forsaken town by high winds, frost, vandalism, moisture, salt, and ice becoming visible. There is a stark and intense beauty to the decay of human traces in this Arctic landscape. What remains of industrial and domestic buildings are the mining facilities and the residences of overseers and managers, while the workers’ dwellings have long ago collapsed and disappeared.

Electric motors of colossal dimensions, conveyor belts on tall stilts, large areas of excavated material, a giant workshop building with an aesthetic old-school truck next to the opencast mine, now a crystal-clear lake connected through a fault in the wall with the fjord. The tide pours into the pool, slowly raising the water level. Large logs float about, parts of the protective fence surrounding it, broken and tumbled down. The pit was 90 metres deep at its lowest point, and had to be pumped out constantly while the mine was in use.

Like the workshop and the crushing place, the doors to some of the other houses are open. The former mess with its large kitchen appliances, a two-storey cavernous oven, fridge containers, and stainless steel work surfaces nearly ready to allow one to start cooking a meal, if it weren’t for the collapsed ceilings and the debris on the floor.

The manager’s house is the noblest and most beautiful, with a generous conservatory and terrace to the south, overlooking the former vegetable garden: a patch of vibrant green and the startling yellow of butter cups and arctic poppies, standing out in a landscape dominated by mellow tints of sage and olive green, auburn and copper, dark brown, ochre and cream, silver and ash grey, white and ebony. The broken glass panes of the framed windows now let in the air, and debris collects in the plant basins surrounding the conservatory. Inside, we find wooden parquet flooring and a grand open fireplace that asks to be lit.

Nearby, the minuscule Norwegian pavilion of the 1889 World Expo in Paris has found its resting place. A flight of stairs leads up to it with an impressive pair of antlers adjacent to the door. It seems to be one of the few places still in use. There is a Refleks diesel heater with a tank that seems ready to go, clean tables surrounded by benches, a felt blanket and some photos of the former tennis court, of which it used to be the club house, and instructions for assembling the picnic bench outside pinned to the wall. The tennis court was once the pride of the village, and allegedly the one with the most expensive ground, of cryolite.

As we step around the pavilion, we see a movement. A dark brown mass in the midst of greyish-green willows. A muskox barely 20 metres from us browses solemnly amongst the bushes.

Angie

North of the cape, we are heading into a wild area. These fjords have not been fully surveyed. There are rocks and sparse soundings marked on our charts at first, but as we make our way deeper into the fjord, these become less frequent. The charts eventually give out altogether; we carry on with satellite images. They suggest open water with few hazards, and the water where we are now is deep, so we continue.

We see an irregular white line in the water, crossing our path and the fjord. We slow down. It appears to consist of flotsam, collected in this place by some interplay between the rising tide and outflow of the glacier meltwater rivers at the end of the fjord.

Beyond, the blue water becomes increasingly milky, filled with sediment created by the erosive power of the ice, and carried out to sea by the rivers formed as it melts. Suddenly, the bottom starts shelving at a steady pace. 10m, 8m, 6m, 4m. We reach a point where the depth sounder only reads just over 2m – there is now but a foot of water under the boat. Slowly, we turn.

We are in the middle of the fjord. A few minutes earlier, the water below us was very deep. Can it really be so shallow here, or is the depth sounder simply unable to penetrate the concentration of sediment? Arnaud assembles an improvised lead line with a diving weight and casts it over the side. There really is a bottom just a couple of metres below us!

Cautiously, we explore the surrounding water. Is there a way through, in deeper waters? We don’t find one. It seems that there is a bar stretching right across the fjord.

Only around 2 nautical miles from the bay we had intended to drop anchor in, we’re close enough to reach it by dinghy, if we can find a protected anchorage nearby. On a first, direct, approach to a promising bay, we are again thwarted by a shallow sandbar. We study our recent satellite images more closely. Combining what we can discern in the images and observe outside, we are developing an understanding for how the slight colour shifts in the images relate to the depth of the water. The images show darker blue, so deeper water in the bay itself, with a plume of sediment deposited along the side of the main river flow protecting it like a breakwater. We work our way around this bar and into the bay, anchoring south of two rocky outcrops in 10m of water.

Not long after, to our surprise, we hear the roaring sound of an engine; another boat is heading up the fjord. They are making straight for us. A small, open, white fibreglass boat with a bulky powerful outboard. On board are a beaming Greenlandic couple. They ask if we speak Danish, which we don’t. But they have a little English too. They want to know whether the passage to the town of Narsarsuaq lies further up the fjord. They have come from all the way from Paamiut, further north, and are on their way to the festival happening there. We tie them up alongside and invite him aboard to look at our charts together — the passage they are looking for is a little further down the fjord, back where they have come from. Grateful for the directions, they head on their way, smiling and waving as they go. ‘Takuss!’

Crossing a narrow causeway stretching between an island and the mainland just in front of the boat, we spot reindeer. A remarkable sight. Richard would like to film them, while the rest of us head further up the fjord with the dinghy, to the anchorage we had originally hoped to reach.

Before we set out, Richard makes a quick and delicious dinner of tagliatelle with porcini mushrooms and cream. After eating, we gather our gear and get ready to go.

After dropping off Richard on the mainland, we make for the end of the fjord. Past the point we had reached with Atlas, and round the first corner, we notice that the water is continuing to shoal. We need to pay attention that the outboard propellor doesn’t touch the bottom. Suddenly, we see reindeer in the shallows close to the island, splashing up water as they head towards us. An incredible sight, enhanced by the low, warm-tinged evening light. The leading reindeer stoops to take a drink — the water here, mostly river water from the glaciers, is not very salty. We watch them until they return to land before heading on.

As we continue, we shift forward towards the dinghy’s bow, using our weight to trim the boat and help keep the outboard’s propeller from touching the bottom. Still, at times we have to lift up the outboard and paddle to avoid the shallows. We see conspicuously dotted loons on the water, and eider ducks with fluffy ducklings. As we approach, the adults scoot away over the water, leaving the huddle of ducklings to dive under the water to escape. Plop, plop, plop — one by one, they all vanish below the surface. Occasionally one surfaces while we are still close — too early! — and hurriedly dives again. Everywhere around us reindeer dot the hills.

The light west wind drops and immediately the east wind hits us from dead ahead: the 180° wind shift that we have been waiting for.

At the sandy bay at the head of the fjord, we beach the dinghy below a hill topped by rocky outcrop resembling a ruined castle. The tide is falling, so we anchor the dinghy with two rocks in the sand and pay out the long line, hoping it will stay afloat and we will avoid having to carry it back into the water later, when the tide has fallen further.

Striding up the hill, the low-slung vegetation glows in vibrant colours, bathed in the spectacular light. We reach the ridge and the view opens up to a striking green plain, riddled with pools and channels of water, backed by mountains and two glacier tongues descending from the ice cap. The intensity of the green is incredible.

So many reindeer! Making their way in groups from the hills or islands on our right, they cross the main river channel to reach the flat green plains. It is like the Serengeti, in Greenland.

We perch on the hill, taking photographs and watching with binoculars; Arnaud films with his drone. We are feasting on the scene unfolding before us. Herd after herd of reindeer appear and make for the plains. Whimbrels call around us, their mysterious piping enhancing the mystical beauty of the scene.

After a long while in this heaven on earth, the sun is closing in on the horizon. We realise we are getting cold and that Richard, alone on the land back near the boat, will be too. We make our way down the hill, stunned by the wild landscape in the deep sunset light everywhere we look.

The dinghy is there, still afloat; there is plenty of water. With the wind in our rear we make our way back, speeding down the bay, the nose of the dinghy pointing high.

Ahead, in the channel we mean to go through, we spot a reindeer in the water, its legs clearly visible. We let this sink in. The water there must be very shallow now. We cautiously run for a while with the outboard angled up, probing the depth at intervals with a paddle. Once there is so little water that the outboard is liable to scrape the ground, we lift it out and paddle on until, inevitably, we run aground. Angie jumps out and pushes the dinghy, now afloat again, while Arnaud and I paddle. But we ground again. And again. We all end up out on the mud, pulling the dinghy along in half a boot height of water. On and on we go until the water rises and threatens to flood our rubber boots. Time to jump aboard again.

The wind is stronger now, and creates steep, choppy waves. I’m sitting in the front on the upwind side and, taking the brunt of the splashes, I’m getting pretty wet. I’m happy to be wearing my waterproof jacket, but I wish I had on the impermeable fishing trousers too!

The sun sets the sky on fire. Reindeer on an island, silhouetted against it.

We catch sight of another group of reindeer right out in the middle of the fjord we just passed, heading east, passing in front of a glacier. Arnaud stands upright in the bucking dinghy, photographing the wonders around us, while getting thrown about in the choppy waves. Angie paddles to keep our distance from the rocky shore. Eider ducks gather in a raft for the night.

At last we see the Atlas, riding securely to her anchor where we had left her, holding well in the deep glacial mud despite the 180° spin of the wind. We pile on board, people and gear soaked thoroughly. While Arnaud collects Richard, Angie and I light a fire in the wood stove with the driftwood gathered in our last anchorage and prepare a hot chocolate. With everyone back on board, we warm up in the cosy saloon, sipping delicious chocolate from steaming mugs and marvelling at these last hours, at all we have seen.

Alex