We spent the full day in Qaanaaq. This Inuit community is near the US military base and is the furthest north settlement in West Greenland. It sits close to the Greenland Ice Sheet and has been inhabited for centuries. The earliest discovery of Thule culture artifacts was from this area.
Qaanaaq has a large harbor at the mouth of a long fiord. There are a lot of icebergs in the channel, particularly at low tide. The tidal swing is large; when we arrived, many boats were sitting on the mud and we had a challenge to get from the zodiacs up to the pier. Qaanaaq is a thriving town of about 600 inhabitants. Over 200 children attend the school. There is a senior center where the residents live for free.
We learned a lot about their lifestyle and hunting methods; subsistence hunting is essential, and Greenland allows them to sell excess meat to one another (but not to non-Inuits).
The sun goes below the horizon on October 24 and reappears on February 16. While this is called the polar night, for about a month on either end there is some light from the sun being just below the horizon. They appreciate the polar night for the moonlight and starlight.
The polar night corresponds to extensive sea ice, which enables long distance travel by dog sled. They have different size sleds depending on how long they intend to hunt. It is too dark to use a rifle, but nets under the ice or harpoons through breathing holes can capture seals… important for feeding the dog teams.
They camp by placing a tent over the sled, and sleeping up on the sled to be off the snow. The tent poles are made from narwhal tusks. The hunters wear clothing made from seal and caribou hide shirts and polar bear hide pants. The clothing is custom fitted to the hunter as the fit is essential to retain warmth and movement. The clothing is hand stitched using narwhal sinew as the thread. Women and children’s clothing also features Arctic Fox fur.
The return of the sun is a cause for celebration. The ice starts to break up in April, with the harbor clearing in July. Hunting shifts to kayaks. The kayaks are carried up the fiord on motor boats, but once the pods of narwhal are seen, the motors are turned off. It is essential the the kayakers paddle completely silently to approach the narwhal. A hand thrown harpoon snags the animal, and an inflated seal “float”ensures that it stays on the surface so it can be dragged back to the boat.
Each kayak is hand made to fit the hunter.
There is a quota for the number of narwhals that can be taken each year, to ensure sustainability. Boys start going out with the hunters as young teens, and in the summer hunting can become a family outing. There is clearly great pride in the Inuit culture and the Greenlandic language.
A dozen teens were invited onto the ship for a tour. They clearly enjoyed meeting the captain and his crew — and especially getting to blow the ship’s horn!
Pictured: Qaanaaq’s location looking from the North Pole perspective, the harbor at low tide, a view of the harbor at high tide, a view of the village Main Street, a boat carrying a kayak, a kayak complete with harpoons and seal float, two elders of the community in their traditional clothing, polar bear pants.
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