Qaqortoq, Sunday, 23rd July 2023

We’re back in Qaqortoq, the town where we first made landfall in Greenland. Summer has arrived here yesterday, and the sun is hot and strong. I’m sitting by the side of a clear rivulet that gurgles through the town into the harbour basin and is supplied from the large freshwater lake behind the town which also serves as the reservoir. Feet dangling in the water, I’m marvelling at all the things we’ve done, heard, observed, and been part of since we first arrived. We closed a first loop.

The heart of the town is the protected harbour and an adjacent small square with a picturesque fountain in the centre and a bridge across the stream. Every evening kids, teenagers, and adults alike gather here to fish, casting their fishing rods and reeling them in. This square plays a major role in many events in the town, as we saw last time we were here.

Around the harbour, the town rises in the rounded hills surrounding it. Its southwards facing slopes in particular are densely dotted with wooden houses, painted every vivid colour of the rainbow one could imagine — purple, blue, green, turquoise, yellow, orange, red, carmine. They give the place a very cheerful aspect that matches its outgoing, friendly and welcoming people.

In the winter months, those pigments must create a fabulous contrast to the white of the snow and the ice, and the dark of the night. The more time we spend here, the more I notice how my curiosity rises to be here during the time of frost, snow, and darkness. Spring and summer are the time of light and the ice.

Although blossoms had been out when we were here a month ago, particularly purple lupine and some shy yellow buttercups, now they are truly abundant and lavish. The whole place is a riot of colours and liveliness.

The riverbanks are ablaze with buttercups and the grass has grown to hip-height and radiates in tints of lush green. Carrying heavy heads that harbour the ripening seeds of next year’s meadows, the stalks are bent in graceful arches. The arctic poppies grow in backlit bushels of delicate creamy-white, flaming orange and deep yellow, blossoms bobbing and twisting in the slight breeze. Their unopened buds hang downwards, green and purple promises of boisterous hues to spring forth. The lupines with opulent blossoms of violet, navy, and white grow in dense tufts. They have a certain geometry to them that reminds me of an organic checker board.

We go for a swim in the lake the stream originates in. Now, the water is aswarm with the local kids in wetsuits, jumping off cliffs, floating with air mattresses, snorkelling with goggles. When we were first here, we hiked around the lake and dove in for a moment or two, the water being chilly then. Now, we can go for a real swim, and enjoy stretching out and floating in the water. The lake’s temperature having risen to what feels like 15°C or more, it feels balmy to me after swimming in the sea peppered with ice.

A kid calls us and we crawl over to chat with him. He tells us how he learned swimming in the sea in Turkey, how salty the water was there and that he made friends with the hotel owner. It being school holidays now, he says, all the kids are just in the water all the time, spending four hours or more enjoying the wet. Not having the benefit of the wetsuit, we do get a little chilly after a while and say goodbye to our lovely little friend who swims towards the cliff jumpers to join them.

Earlier we met the friendly taxi driver again who had showed us around the first time we were here. On the rainy national day, he picked us up at the market place after we had watched the butchering of a seal, to bring us to the sports hall, where everyone was gathering for the live music and the throat singers. On the way there himself, he offered to give us a ride. Rather than go straight there, he showed us around.

Clearly proud of his charming town, he pointed out useful places like the bank and the supermarkets, and took us up the hills to the best views. One of them being right next to his house on Qaqortoq’s “Blueberry Hill”, so-called for the abundant blueberries in summer. A sweeping view over the harbour and the fjord towards the sea awaits us when we stop there for a short break.

We planned to spend our time in his area, the south-west Greenland, part of the commune Kujalleq. So we chatted about the area and life in Qaqortoq with him. Born and raised in Qaqortoq, he is in love with and is proud of the region. However, for most of his professional career, he worked in Nuuk for the government. With two high-pressure jobs, he found himself burned-out some years ago. This was a turning point, and he decided to return to his hometown and to put himself and his family first. To live, not just to work and exist. Once back, he started his own business ‘in his own time and without deadlines.’

When he asks us now how we like the south-west after having spent a month here, I admit having fallen in love. ‘It’s the best place, isn’t it,’ he beams, and I have to agree. He tells us how on coming back from Nuuk, he, too, fell again for the beauty of the area. There is no one single aspect or simple list that one can compile that makes it. A superficial glance, looking for the extravagance of the tropics, might miss it altogether. There is an intense beauty to Kujalleq that reveals itself with time. It gently unfurls and allows for gradual and intimate discovery that asks for time and dedication, and gives abundance in return.

Angie

Ivittuut, 15th July 2023

From various sources we had heard that there are muskoxen not just in the north and east of Greenland, but in the south too. They lure us, entice us, seeming just out of reach. What a marvel it would be to set eyes on one of those striking animals that appear as though they have travelled through time from days bygone – the past ice age. Greenlanders call the umimmak, “the animal with skin like a beard”.

I first got to know of these prehistoric animals just 10 years ago, in a talk by Arctic photographer Florian Schultz, who shot an emblematic photo of three muskoxen bulls walking side by side in an advancing line, facing the wind in an evening snow drift. The low mellow light on their faces in a white-out landscape, their legs invisible, the snow wafting and coasting near the ground, their long, glossy coats of dark brown, chestnut, and sienna colours billowing and rippling in the breeze like mares’ tails, the pale downy wool on their saddle tangling the rose light. Their muzzles raised, these three musketeers look into the distance.

I was taken by this photograph and Florian Schultz’s vivid descriptions of these extraordinary Arctic animals. I guess it was then that a desire and longing took root somewhere deep inside to some day go and see them myself.

Although muskoxen have for a long time populated all northern coasts of Greenland, they are not endemic to the south-west. Possibly the ice expanse of Melville Bay prevented them from moving further south. Nevertheless a shred of unfounded, unreasonable hope has been glimmering inside me that, despite all implausibility, we might just see some while in Greenland. But really we are far too far south. Or so I thought.

We had been anchored near the “Serengeti” with its herds of caribou pouring and eddying over the hills into the fertile verdant glacier flood plains, like grey wood smoke over a web of meandering streams the colour of pearly aquamarine. Consulting the weather forecast, the charts, and our ideas and longings, we pondered whether to return south or carry on following the lure of the muskoxen further north. Seductively close by then, they were but a long day sail away. The dice fell in favour of finding those special animals — we’re all too excited to let the chance slip — so we set forth to retrace our wake out to sea, around a couple of increasingly mountainous and towering islands.

The first we see of the umimmak is a small herd with several young on a hillside above the sea while approaching the outer stretches of the Ivittuut peninsula. 15 individuals were introduced here in 1987. By now, the population is estimated to be around 800-1000. They stand out in the landscape like dark brown big boulders. We can discern several adults and a couple of youngsters.

We decide to head in and find a decent anchorage just around the point before a pebble beach and the backdrop of a stream snaking and curving through the lush basin of a valley that stretches towards encircling tall mountain rims. As we drop the anchor, we spot yet another muskox resting by herself in the stony riverbed, her dark coat showing prominently against the bright grey crystalline rocks.

Piling into the dinghy with our photo gear, we settle on the plan to split up into two parties so as not to approach the resting animal as a crowd. Accompanied by chirping snow buntings and Lapland longspurs, Alex and I track over the springy multicoloured willows, mosses and lichen in a wide arch inland. We crawl down into the riverbed after a bend and scramble downstream towards the muskox. Richard and Arnaud take the via direttissima.

We cut cross the river and find ourselves nearly above her, for she too has swapped sides. Backing off and retracing our steps, we traverse back and, trying to be inconspicuous, ever so slowly grope through the undergrowth and keep to the shadow of boulders along the steep slope of the river gully. Munching willows, scratching and scraping along the rocks on her side with visible delight, the muskox doesn’t seem disturbed, just attentive, when in the end she makes me out.

Their natural predators are wolves and men, the former of which don’t live here. Although muskoxen are hunted – or “harvested” – here to prevent overpopulation, they are not alarmed when they discover us.

Lying in a cloud of mosquitoes that feast on us, we watch the animal browse and scratch her body and neck to shed the thick, dense fine under-wool. It hangs in shreds between the long skirt-like glossy guard hairs that sway almost to the ground. The guard hairs protect the animal from the elements while also trapping the heat within the wool. Muskoxen wool, locally called qiviut, is said to be eight times warmer than sheep’s, and as soft as the pashmina of Kashmir goats. We dream of pullovers made of the stuff! Despite their name, muskoxen aren’t bovines, but have a sheep/goat ancestry, and their closest living relative is the takin of northern Tibet.

Later, we trek around the headland to locate the herd we had first seen from aboard the Atlas. We find them in nearly the same place as before. One large adult is lying on her side and appears to sleep, with her head periodically slipping down to the stream she’s lying next to. She reminds me of grandmother sat in a rocking chair in the corner of the room, nodding off, her head dipping onto her chest from time to time.

Across from us, three adorable young calves are gambolling about like playful little foals, while two adults graze. A sooty arctic fox stealthily zigzags across the scene and closes with one of the calves, who starts chasing it around. Entertained by the odd pair’s capers and prances, we are surprised when the entire group suddenly stampedes after them, disappearing over the side of a hill. The entire group, but grandma, that is.

Grandma lies oblivious and dreamy in her old spot. A long while later she slowly rises, sits up on her haunches and looks about sleepily. Without hurry, the muskox gets up, shakes her body, and follows the group in deliberate strides, her skirt billowing in and out with her steps.