Greenland : Qeqertarsuaq Part I

Qeqertarsuaq (Storø) Island, Kalallit Nunaat (Greenland).

Distances are deceiving here. I have become accustomed to judging distances fairly well, especially after having travelled two thirds of the way across the United States by car. But this…this is something else. It’s ethereal.

On board the MV Sterna, my soon to be wife Robin and I are heading into the depths of the fjord system surrounding Qeqertarsuaq in Kalaallisut, the native language of Greenland, also called Storø in Danish. The ship’s captain is a tall slender handsome man named Erik Palo, whom my fiancé has known for over thirteen years during her time as a set medic for a television show filmed in Greenland. Accompanying us is his first mate Nujalina, a quiet bright eyed woman, steady on her feet, and a smile that is brighter than the sun glinting on the diamond sea spray tossed up by Sterna. Both Erik and Nujalina are completely at home here in the solitude of towering mountains.

Erik and Robin reminisce, catching up on the gossip and whereabouts of the people involved with the show. We learn that the show is considered a bit of a joke among people here. Reality television is not so real as it turns out to no one’s surprise. I mostly tune out the conversation. I am just completely enthralled by what I am seeing.

Qeqertarsuaq, Kalallit Nunaat.

The cliffs, five thousand feet tall, plunge almost verticaly into the deep steel grey and shallower emerald green water. Beneath these waters, the mountains plunge almost as deep, the nadir of these valleys creating a broad U-shape if the water is drained away. All around is the evidence of the erosive power of ice that descended from the great Greenland Ice Sheet. This ice sheet is the second largest frozen repository of fresh water on the planet after Antarctica. This ice, which has been in withdrawal for the past ten thousand years, is rapidly increasing its rate of retreat. The water becomes more placid the further we get away from the capital city of Nuuk and into the fjords. I say fjords, because it is a maze of islands and inlets that are incomprehensibly BIG. The overall fjord in Danish is Gotåbsfjord, meaning “Good Hope Fjord”.

I alternate between being on the deck and inside the comfortable warm cabin to switch lenses. We are paralleling a large island, more a mountain soaring directly from the water like a leviathan shaped from grey ancient rock, some of the oldest rock on the planet in fact. It is starkly beautiful with rivulets tumbling from distant lakes perched high above.

“You might recognize this place”, Erik says to my fiancé, slowing the engine.

“Oh my god!”, she exclaims. “Right there is where our camp was!”, and she points toward a flat area about thirty feet above a narrow gravel beach. “I wonder if we can find that tent that blew away?”, and she leans over the side of Sterna. Erik slowly draws Sterna closer, practically within arms’ length of the stone ledge dropping into the water.

“How did you guys even get up there?”, I ask. My fiancé points at a steep slope to our right, “Right about there. It doesn’t look that bad, but it’s a really tough climb. We had to carry everything up there, back and forth”.

The flat area is covered in wind blasted sedges, shorter grasses, lichens and mosses. There is no cover here or protection from the wind. A small stream tumbles down joyfully over the edge of the rocks and plunges into the sea. Wow, this is where she lived for three months. Sterna hovers here for a brief moment like a giant humming bird, sleek and graceful in the water, and then flits to the northeast.

A little further, Erik says something to Nujalina while pointing Sterna to a steeply sloping mountainside. She returns with a long net. Erik coaxes Sterna closer and closer to the rocks. Is it safe to get this close? I think. I lean over the port side to see the depth of the water. The green shallower area was ahead, but becomes darker as the rocks plunge below. Of course, have faith in your captain. As soon as we are in arm’s length, Nujalina leans out with the net, and starts pulling urchins off of the rocks below the waterline. She collects about a dozen from different points, careful not to take too many from one area, and dumps them on the bow as Erik drifts Sterna away. Once at a safe distance, he sits himself next to the urchins, and with one gloved hand picks up an urchin, pocket knife in the other, slices into the lower portion containing the mouthparts, which pops off like the pull top from a can. He quickly dumps out the liquor inside, hands each of us a bamboo spoon, “Do you see the orange parts? That’s the part you eat”.

Nujalina collecting eqqusaq (sea urchin)

A Greenlander snack box of eqqusaq (sea urchin).

Now, I am adventurous with food, but seafood is something am not well versed in. Except urchin. I love urchin. My fiancé, a sushi aficionado, looks at me inquisitively, probably unsure if I will dig in, but I dig in first. It’s delicious. More than delicious, it is the best urchin I have ever had. Slightly briny, a hint of the seaweed and algae that makes up the urchin’s diet, clean and delicate. “What do I do with the shell?”, I ask. Erik, after finishing his, casually tosses his shell over the rail into the fjord. I follow suit. “Give it back to Mother Greenland”, my fiancé says.

Mother Greenland.

Yes, she is Mother. Ancient, wise, cold but not distant. She provides everything that people need. However, one just needs to look where to find it. Food, shelter, water. Spiritual calm. Her lessons are ones gained by experience, passed from mother to daughter, father to son, and sometimes also alone. Sometimes the lesson is harsh. Everyone who calls her home knows one of the most important lessons that all peoples of the Arctic know well…to live, very few make it completely alone. Community is how you find abundance and survive.

Sterna, with her four wards, continues northeast following the rocky shoreline until Erik chooses a shingle of rounded stones. We pull up as close as possible and Nujalina motions Robin and I to a large boulder slick with the greenish yellow hair of rockweed. Nujalina and I clambor onto the slick stone, the sea weed’s air bladders popping underfoot like bubble wrap, and my fiancé follows. I put feet onto the gravel beech first, and offer a hand to my to my fiancé who has crawled on her hands and knees. Once on terrafirma, Nujalina returns to Sterna who slowly powers away from us.

“Erik’s giving us some time alone with Storø”, Robin says.

“I was hoping we’d get that chance”.

We lean against a large striped boulder that has been warming in the sun, its soft curve perfectly cradling our backs. She turns to kiss the stone. After all, she has a close relationship to this island that she is sharing with me. The only person in her life with whom she has shared such an important and formative place. It is changing me too, in a fundamental way. Greenland is becoming part of my DNA too. The only sounds are the wind, the gentle lap of water sucking the gravel back into the sea, and the fading motor of Sterna rounding a nearby headland.

I suppose many would not correlate the word “paradise” with a lonely rocky beach on a fjord surrounded by nothing but the sound of waves without a soul in sight. I am not saying that it would be sustainable, but in that moment with my the woman who will soon call me husband, combing through sparkling stones of black, red, grey - some banded with quartz on the beach and scrambling around on the rocks - in this moment I couldn’t be happier. This place is ours even if for a moment - in the mountains, with the fjord, and the puffy white clouds grazing the blue pasture of the sky.

Sterna’s engines, under the delicate control of Erik, rumble toward us as she approaches the rocky shore, this time with Nujalina lowering the ladder at her bow to the rocky shore. We both climb back aboard, and are soon continuing our path northeast, leaving our beach behind.

Nujalina collecting glacial water.

Moving deeper into the fjord, we follow the western shore of Qeqertarsuaq to a place where a waterfall is spilling from under hanging ice. Nujalina grabs a large plastic pitcher that reminds me of the ones from my youth on Friday nights when my family would go to Pizza Hut. Erik skillfully cut the engines of Sterna and lets her drift toward the waterfall. Nujalina leans out, one arm stretched forward similar to the Warrior’s Pose, catching the clear water in the pitcher. Once full, she climbs back onto the deck and pours each of us a tall cup of water. We each take a drink. This water has been frozen for at least a hundred thousand years. It is delicious. It doesn’t taste like nothing. With each sip I can taste a different mineral. I can taste the Earth.

I didn’t notice while sipping my glacier water that we were drifting further out to the middle of the fjord. Erik cuts the engines, and he and Nujalina bring out large spools with a handle on them. They each insert a peg into a socket on the port side of Sterna. Erik explains that we are fishing for Redfish. Erik shows us how to unhook the large metallic weight and then we drop the weight into the depths. The line rockets from the spool as it unwinds, and there are hooks spaced evenly…1…2…3…4…the last one, and the line seems to endlessly unwind. That is impossibly deep! I think. After what seems like an eternity (in all actually it was probably less than a minute), the large silver weight at the bottom touches the bottom of the fjord. Erik then shows us how to grab hold of the line and slowly raise and lower the line. Ah, it’s just like jigging, I think to myself. He explains after the third or fourth time, you need to pull upward hard on the line to set a hook in the mouth of a fish. “How do you know if there’s one on the line?”, my fiancé asks. “You’ll be able to feel by the weight of the fish”, he says.

“I think I got one!”, and starts to reel in the line. “How about you?”, and she looks over to me. I can’t quite tell. Maybe? I give the line a few more tugs, and begin to reel in. A few moments later she shouts, “I got one!”, and in the greenish water below there is a glint of silver. “You caught a cod”, Erik says. Nujalina helps her pull up a good sized, spotted, grey, large eyed fish. Meanwhile the end of my line is in sight. Nothing. “Ok, Aaron, you need to take the fish off of the line for me”, my she says. After a few moments of trying to wrench the large hook set in the cartilaginous jaw of the wriggling cod, it falls into a plastic bin with a satisfying thud. “Great job!”, I say giving her a high-five.

Saarullik (Atlantic cod) and Suluppaagaq (Atlantic Redfish).

I release the weight again into the depths in hopes of a fish, and she drops hers again in a race to the bottom. I jig the line for a few moments and then I can feel the weight. I have something on the line alright. I quickly start to reel in, and in a few minutes I hear Erik say, “You got a Redfish!”. Indeed I do. Unlike the cod who dwells a little higher in the water column, redfish like to be deep, sometimes over a thousand feet deep. After it has travelled from the depths to the surface, it is deceased. A spiny red saucer-eyed monster with what appears to be a tongue sticking out of its mouth greets me as I grab its lower jaw. Everything about this fish is armored, even its gill plates have spines, ready to slice into flesh. I carefully remove the hook and drop it into the bin. It twitched. “Oop! It’s not quite dead yet!”, I exclaim. “That’s probably just a reflex”, Erik says fatter of factly.

“Oooo, I caught more!”, Robin shouts. Indeed, she has three more cod on her line. By the end of our deep water angling, all in all we have five fish in the bin.

On the way back to Nuuk my Robin and I unveil the gifts we have brought from New England: maple syrup from our state of New Hampshire, and a can of Moxie. If you are not from New England, Moxie takes a little explaining, perhaps even an apology. Folks from Chicago might know the kind of apology that needs to be given thanks to their local aperitif called Malört (Kentucky, you’re also on the hook for Ale 8, and North Carolina, you have no excuses because you have Cheerwine). Regardless, Moxie is one of the first sodas produced in the United States, and it is something…peculiar. It is either something you love, or detest, and there is no in between. Erik and Nujalina bravely took their first sips of Moxie. The response was 50/50. Erik didn’t mind it so much, however Nujalina had something else to say about it.

Nujalina tries Moxie for the first time.

The sun is getting lower, throwing long shadows throughout the fjord. It will get dark here quickly. We begin to head back. The setting sun, which soon will not set again until mid-August, begins to turn the water black with silvery waves appearing and then disappearing like quantum foam popping in and out of existence. Soon, we see the lights of the prison in the distance, and a little further still, we can see Nuuk nestled on low promontories and the harbor.

Once we dock, and we give the cod to Erik, but I keep the redfish to cook for this evenings supper back in our suite. Even still, that fish is twitching.