Greenland, Land of Ice and Thursday Night Open Thread

Aluu!  That’s welcome in Kalaallisut (aka West Greenlandic)

Kalaallisut is the official language in Greenland, although most people also speak Danish and English since Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark and English is useful to know for all sorts of reasons.  Tourism is actually a fairly minor industry in Greenland as the majority of tourism occurs during the short summer season.  Government jobs and fish processing are the major industries.

Greenland was in the news a few years ago for Trump’s silly idea about buying the place.  It’s easy to see why he might want it, as Greenland has loads of minerals and other natural resources and is already the location of quite a few US military bases and at least one missing US nuke.  Kangerlussuaq, currently the hub city for Air Greenland, was formerly Sondestrom Air Base, which the US sold back to the Greenlandic people for $1 when the base was disbanded in 1992.  I’m pretty sure they could have gotten a pretty good return on that $1 investment if they had offered Trump just a partial interest in Kangerlussuaq, as he seems prone to making terrible deals.

Kangerlussauq is nowadays known as the gateway to the ice sheet.  The ice sheet is second only to Antarctica in terms of giant slabs of ice.  Like all giant ice sheets, it’s great for scientific study as you can learn a lot about climate history and the atmosphere by taking ice cores.  Then you can use the million year old ice in a cocktail afters.  If you have a lot of gear and the motivation, you can hike from Kangerlussauq over the center of the ice cap all the way to the east coast of Greenland in about 30 days.  The first few days of the hike are up and down as the edges of the ice sheet crumple up as they’re compressed against the rocky coast and make their way out into the fjords via one of the many glaciers.  Soon you’ll be on a steady uphill climb to the center of the ice sheet, where it’s always below freezing and therefore the ice is growing thicker rather than thinner like at the edges.  You’ll reach the middle and then it’s all downhill from there, except of course for the bumpy bits at the end.  It’ll be chilly, and noisy from the wind, and you’ll be doing this in summer so it’ll be 24 hours of daylight over the featureless (except for the glare) white landscape.  Sounds pretty great, huh?  Let’s do this for the DFOCon after Vegas, yeah?

If that’s not quite your cup of tea (you can make excellent tea out of herbs that grow wild in Greenland!) maybe a shorter hike overlooking the UNESCO World Heritage site Icefjord is for you.  The Icefjord is located by the town of Ilulissat, the third largest town in Greenland with a population of almost 5,000 permanent residents.  The fjord itself opens into Disko Bay, and is much deeper than the bay so larger icebergs get trapped in the fjord until they melt or break up into smaller pieces that can enter the bay.

You won’t find Greenland competing in any sports that are on TV tonight.  While you can watch Argentina v. South Africa in the Women’s World Cup, Greenland’s national team is not a member of FIFA.  This is probably all FIFA’s fault since they’re perfectly happy to accept the national teams of other countries that have difficulty providing a grass pitch year-round.  If their application is eventually accepted, they’ll join as a member of CONCACAF which I think we all would enjoy.  They also have handball, badminton, and table tennis teams that have competed internationally, and they participate in the Island Games, a sort of mini-Olympics for island nations, and the Arctic Winter Games.  The 2024 Arctic Winter Games are set to be held in Alaska, and I would love to watch some of the traditional Arctic Sports events like the finger pull!