A sunny Sunday afternoon

While Europe is suffering from heat wave Greenland is keeping its cool. On good days the sun is shining and the thermometer reaches about +15 degrees. On bad days the sun is not shining and the thermometer hardly makes it to +5 degrees. But I guess that comes from living in an “arctic climate”. None the less the summer up here is nice. The days are long and the views from different part of the town are stunning. The whales have also come to town and if one is lucky one can spot them on the water surface coming up for air.

Other, much smaller, animals are also making their presence known. A short walk to the coast or up a hillside will acquaint you with two new best friends – a Mrs. Midge and a Mr. Mosquito (in Danish a.k.a. “Knot & Myg”). As most new acquaintance they try to make the most of it and thus keep following you around and tend to stick around long after a “visiting hours” are over. They truly are a nuisance unparalleled.

If one is to venture out into the neighbouring wilderness one does well to bring not only the average mosquito spray but also a full body “mosquito net” (or at least a face net), various kinds of mosquito balsam and sprays and then still be prepare to make a run for it if your new best friends decide to accompany you on your little walk with the whole of their extended family. In Denmark there’s a phenomenon known as “black sun” which as when hundreds of starlings gathers together in big flocks creating fascinating shapes in the air. And with the amount of insects up here there simply must be a similar phenomenon made up by these annoying little creatures. However, since I’m one of those people who tend to always be bitten or stung by every little insect with the ability to bite or stick I tend to spend my sunny afternoons in door or at least fairly far away from these creatures natural habitats.

And thus yet again I enjoy the magnificent view of the towns surrounding mountains from indoor. This time while enjoying a cold beer and reading from the latest addition to my library of “Greenlandic literature” which is a nature guidebook to Greenland’s flora and fauna. In easy language yet with comprehensive details it tells the reader of the many different types of insects there are to be found in this magnificent land and all the bites and sticks they can inflict upon encounter with them. Although I’m tempted to go out and enjoy the good weather this book has persuaded me to stay indoors making this little blog entry possible.

Café breaks (the princes and princesses of Nuuk)

Every now and then I tend to spend a few hours in one of Nuuk’s small cafés. It helps me maintain the illusion that I live in a big city with life and versatility. Obviously this isn’t true, in reality I live in a very small town with few people and very little big city life, but I once read that one is most happy when one is daydreaming and fantasizing and I guess that’s way I tend to return to my cafés.

My café breaks are very nice and to some extend it’s also charming to live in a small city because the people at the other tables are often the same. The guests becomes almost as an extended family. This being said every family has its black sheep and my café family is neither an exception nor short of any black sheep. In fact, I think my café family has a bit too many black sheep. Or maybe it would be more appropriate to call them black lambs, because they’re all children. They’re like little, awful cousins whose parents are those aunts and uncles you never really understood you are actually related to.

I don’t mind people bringing their children with them in cafés or at the cinema or for an art exhibition and so on, but I do mind when the parents don’t control their children or attend to them. Unfortunately, I seem to be the only one here in Nuuk who has this condition. Everybody else seems fine with drinking their coffee and reading their news paper while a bunch of screaming children runs about and plays dog kennel underneath the café tables. Just this day I was at my café, drinking my coffee and reading a book when all sudden a small child crawls up under the table and starts barking at me after which he takes the chair opposite mine and starts to drag it across the room. I found myself rather startled at this behaviour but even more startled when I realized that the parents just smiled and praised the boy for being such a good dog(!)

I guess I just have to learn that up here children have the last word. They are notoriously spoiled and pampered and act just accordingly. They truly are like little princes and princesses who never does anything wrong. The boys especially are brought up to think the whole world revolves around them and as consequent teenage boys are often very arrogant and rather rude.

So now I’ve found a new café without children, with eminent coffee, very reasonable prices, excellent music and a marvellous view. And best of all, I’m guaranteed to always get a seat, since the café is set in my own living room. I realized that even though I do enjoy the odd day out at a café I really don’t feel like paying 40DKK (5,40€) for a coffee and then have to drink it in a noisy dog kennel when I own a most excellent espresso machine myself and I have a very nice couch to settle into and a fairly good range of various books to become lost in. So, here’s to Nuuk’s first dog kennel free café – it’s well worth the visit for those who needs a break from their noisy everyday life.

It says "spring" in the calender but does the weather know that?

The weather is always a great conversation opener at the bus stop or at a social gathering where you know no one. And so, I thought it far enough to have my say on the spring weather here in Nuuk. It’s really rather strange that people talk about the weather so much because it’s really not that interesting to know about unless you in the middle of it and it frustrates you. None the less, I just want to point out to people that the spring weather up here is nothing like any other spring weather I’ve experienced so far.

Today for example it’s about +6 degrees Celsius and semi-cloudy. That’s how it usually is in the weekend. For some reason the weather up here is great in the weekdays and then Saturday comes and the weather sucks big time. This Wednesday we had +20 degrees Celsius and high sun, I was out grilling with my neighbour (who works at the same place I do), and we talk about redoing the grill-night this weekend and what happens? Yesterday everybody in Qinngorput (that’s where I live) lived in cloud made of thick fog and the temperature dropped to only +2 degrees. Today it’s cloudy and windy and not really grill-weather – but I bet that come Tuesday the weather will be great and warm and sunny...

I learnt, however, that although the Greenlanders aren’t normally flexible people they certainly are it when it comes to the weather. The other day when the sun was shining and everything was wonderful the office was more or less deserted apart from us silly Danes that stick to regular office hours. All the Greenlanders had gone out sailing. Even our Premier had gone out hunting seals with one of his friends and employee.

So the lesson for me to learn here is definitely not to don’t bother about office hours and start focusing on sun-hours

In the search of wildlife

The other weekend I went of hiking in the surrounding mountains in the search of a bit of wild life. I’ve recently received a nature guide book and so I thought it fun to try to track down some of all these amazing life forms that the book advertised for. Spring has finally made it to Nuuk and although it is far from any kind of spring I’ve experienced before at least it has made most of the snow disappear. The smaller mountains are therefore rather easy to hike in if one just wears sensible shoes and stick to the tracks.

So, I found my fairly sensible shoes, packed a small bag with necessary essentials such as water, camera, mobile phone and a light snack and off I went in search of a track. (Of course no sense in bringing a map, compass, an extra sweater or stuff like that...)

After 3 hours of huffing and puffing up and down cliffs and rocks getting my feet wet from irritating spring creeks and huge areas of wetland I had not managed to track down a single life form worth a picture. Everything out there is just brown, dead and boring. Sure the view’s nice and the air is fresh but I can get that from just sitting on my terrace enjoying my sea view. No need to climb up a cliff with a waterfall or climbing over huge rocks with supporting yourself on all fours... No thanks.

In the end I’d almost given up but at last I found something – a greenish looking plant that looked fairly alive and two ducks looking very much out of place in a mountain lake.



So much for Greenland being a land of wildlife!

New design...

I decided I'd try a new design for my blog. I've noticed that I write rather long blogs which is probably not the way to do it but then again I've never been able to follow trends and the latest new ideas/ways. However, I've tried to find a design that might just work better for looooong blogs so the text is easier to read. Enjoy:-)

The Greenlandic flag - Erfalasorput ("Our flag")

A few months ago I was involved in an assignment concerning the Greenlandic flag. The assignment itself was of little interest but the information I gained while slowing the assignment was rather amusing. Without breaching any duty of confidence I will now try to pass on the story I discovered. None of the information I pass on is secretive but neither do I think it is considered common knowledge here in Greenland.

The Greenlandic flag was hoisted for the first time on June the 21st 1985 which is the national day of Greenland. However, the idea of a Greenlandic flag was first introduced back in 1973 when a group of people suggested a flag consisting of the colors green, white and blue. The year afterwards the Greenlandic newspaper Atuagagdliutit/Grønlandsposten (a.k.a. AG) published 11 proposals for a Greenlandic flag. Ten of these proposals suggested a flag similar to the existing Scandinavian flags with a cross as a main part. In 1980 the Greenland home rule organized a competition of designing a Greenlandic flag. 555 proposals came in whereof 293 of these came from Greenland. However the home rule government was incapable of reaching a joint agreement on what a flag should look like. Therefore a group of artists were invited to come up with their suggestions for a flag. The Landsting (the Greenlandic parliament) gave its final decision voting 14 pro the flag we see today and 11 voting for a cross flag similar to the other Scandinavian flags consisting of the colors green and white. Many people were very upset about this decision because they felt they ought to have a flag with greater similarities to the Danish flag. However, today this dissatisfaction seems long forgotten. The Greenlanders love their flag and I doubt they would ever change it if they were given the opportunity.

However, it is in fact not quite safe to say that the Greenlandic flag is in fact Greenlandic and who knows one day the Greenlanders might just be given the opportunity for a new flag…
The man who designed the flag we see today was Thue Christiansen, a previous member of the home rule government and today a painter and graphic designer. He explained his design of the red and white colors and the circle in the middle by saying that the white color symbolized the inland ice while the red part of the circle symbolized the many bays and fjords in Greenland. The red color symbolized the ocean and the white part of the circle symbolized the many icebergs and pack ice. The two colors also suggested a connection with Denmark and circle was also to be seen and the rising and setting sun in Greenland. All in all, the flag seems to fit very well to the country of Greenland, however there’s just one small thing that seems a bit odd.

The design of the flag already existed at the time Thue Christiansen delivered his idea to the home rule government. If one was to take a look at the Hei-rosport’s homepage (a sport club for rowing in Jutland) http://www.hei-rosport.dk/%C3%85REFEDT one would see that their pennant bears the exact same design as Erfalasorput and they flag is from 1969 making their flag older than the Greenlandic one. This information has on some occasions been challenged in Greenland but today it seems to have been forgotten. This might be because the sport club in question has allowed Greenland to use the current design for their flag as long as it’s not in the shape as a pennant. Thus one only sees pennant of the Danish flag in Greenland, never pennants of the Greenlandic flag. As long as the sport club accepts the use of the Greenlandic flag but if they were once to withdraw this accept Greenland might just have to come up with a new design. One can also wonder from where Thule Christensen originally got his idea when it seems so similar to a pre-existing one…

Few knows this little story and that is probably for the best because it’s the Greenlanders love their flag and to them it would surely seem impossible to imagine another flag at the top of their flagpoles.

Finding your way around Nuuk

Nuuk is, as you may or may not know, not a very big city. Of course in turn of Greenlandic standards Nuuk is huge. However for those of us who come from abroad Nuuk is and feels very small. And thus it stands to reason that it ought to be an easy city to find your way around in. But as with so many other things here in Greenland that is of course not the case. Nuuk is not one of those cities like for example New York that was basically designed after a chessboard with straight streets and roads all neatly categorised with numbers.

Instead the streets of Nuuk twist and turn in a seemingly random order and are only occasionally blotted down on a city map and are almost never accompanied with proper street signs. Of course it doesn’t help that the city is build on cliffs and ledges creating different, natural levels and distances within the city. For example, I live slightly outside the city centre, about 10mins on the bus, and in a “normal” nice “flat” city, I’m quite sure it would take me no more than 25-30mins to walk to the city centre, however in Nuuk it takes me about an hour because I either have to cross or walk around 2 smaller mountains to get anywhere.

Fortunately for me (and everybody else on foot in Nuuk) what the city might lack in roads it certainly makes up for in staircases. Never have I been to a city so intertwined with an almost incomprehensible network of staircases. They are everywhere and they take you places you never knew existed. To beautiful breathtaking views and dodgy back alleys over flooded with abandoned furniture and general rubble. One small problem is however that this wonderful network is never to be found on the maps. Like the most useful and important streets (the ones that zigzag across the city and gets you from A to B faster than the big main roads), stairs are not to be found on the city maps.

And to make matter worse there are two kinds of stairs. There are the ones that take you places, that is to say to different areas in the city or to one of those al important “vein” streets mentioned above in brackets, and then there are those that takes you to a house. Those are the ones you don’t want to use because you look rather silly if you’ve walked all the way up a crocked staircase only to find yourself in front of a front door to which you have no key and which leads onto a home in which you don’t know who lives. I mean, the door might just suddenly open and a complete stranger might invite you in for a “kaffemik”, a speciality in the Greenlandic home consisting of huge among of very strong coffee combined with even bigger and more overwhelming cakes. Al of which is partaken off while you are being put through a kind of third degree interrogation about your family, your current status, your birthplace and anything else your host might think of asking about – all in Greenlandic of course. This speciality is hugely enjoyed among the Greenlanders themselves and I guess if you speak Greenlandic and actually knew some of the people interrogating you it might also be a fun way to spend a few hours, but when you’re just making your way up the stairs for the purpose of finding a nice view or a street that will take you closer to home a “kaffemik” in a complete stranger’s home is just a bit too much culture. Or at least it is for me.

Unfortunately these two kinds of stairs look completely the same and often the stairs are so long and they bend too much for you to see what is at the other end, making every journey on them slightly advantageous. Sometimes a staircase will split into two staircases halfway up a hill and then you have to make a choice and you can be sure that one of your decisions will most certainly take you to one of those front doors you are so eager to avoid. I very much like the idea of the staircases but I would so wish that the two kinds of staircases were easier to distinguish.

Fresh air in Nuuk

This input is about the air in Nuuk. Not so much about polution which I'm sure there's quite a lot of but I don't really know anything about that and it's far too boring to write about. No, I'm gonna write about the effects of the air here in Nuuk, and probably in Greenland in general.

The air in Nuuk is very dry which has a variety of effects. On the posive side you can see incredibly far on a day, creating beautiful pictures like the ones above. On some days you can see as far as 20km away. The view from my office is particularly good because the office is situated on the top floor of the building and overlooks the water with mountains on the other side. My "old" view was quite amazing as well because one had an great view of Sermitsiaq and on really good days one could also see some of the other mountains behind Sermitsiaq.

The pictures above are taken from different places around the city. The first one is taken on my way into the city and it overlooks a "suburb" called Nunaffik. The second one is overlooking the old and the new Atlantic Harbour. (This is where Royal Greenland has it's ships and shrimp trawlers so the next time you eat some shrimps from RG you now know they were packed in this harbour). The third picture is one I took the other day going back from the city. It's Nuuk city center that is visiable on the right side. And the last picture is from my "old" view with Sermitsiaq in the background. As one can see from all of these pictures it possible to see very far and that's because of the dry air.

It certainly creates some breathtaking moments when one is walking around the city and suddently a view like the ones above apear from almost out of nowhere. Nuuk is build on big and small rocks/mountains and because of this the city is situated in many different levels, giving almost all the inhabitants amazing views. And sometimes when you on a street going upwards and you turn a corner you're met with something looking like the pictures above. It's really quite nice, and it certainly a definitive possitive side effect of the dryness of the air.

However, there are also some not so positive side effects of dry air. In fact they're rather negative. The most commen ones are skin irritation, the feeling of a constant cold body and awlful awlful static eletricity.

It's a good thing I chose to bring all my many different lotions because I have never used so much lotion as I have these past few weeks. It's always important to take care of one skin but uphere it's REALLY important. I've always had lotion in my handbag but I've had to "upgrade" it a bit to an extra extra strong one because your skin just dries up in the matter of minutes. It's insane. You're out for 5 minutes and coming back in you have to put on lotion. You can literay feel your skin drying up and starting to itch. You're eyes can very esaily start itching as well, so now I also always have eyedrops in my handbag :-P

Then of course the dry air also makes your body feel colder than it really is. Even though the temperature might just be 1 or 2 below zero it can often feel as if it's about -10 on your body. So when you come inside after a long trip outside you get a feeling of tiredness because your body feels so cold. It's really not that nice.

But the absolute worse thing about the dry air is the awful static eletricity. This causes metal objects to become eletrical charged and thus everytime you touch something that is metal or that is connected to metal you get an electrical shock. Of course it's a rather mild shock but when you get it every day, several times, it gets rather annoying. And of course it also makes your hair look like something created by Frankenstein's hairdresser. Bad. Very bad. So, imagine a normal monday where the weather might be really beautiful with a clear sky and a good view but a really strong wind is blowing. You go outside, your skin dries up, you get to work, and immediately feel tired because your body is so cold and then you touch the doorknob to your office and you get the day's first eletrical shock making your hair stand straight up. Then you go inside your office and turn on your computer and immediately you get your second shock of the day. And so it goes on and on and on.... Then there's the window that needs to be open because the indoor climate is so incredibly bad that you can't breath properly unless you have an window open, and then there's the desk lamp that needs to be turned on because it's still dark in the morings and I could go on and on. These constant shocks, combined with a cold body and dry skin really makes some days quite awlful and no view no matter how breathtaking it is can really make up for it. (Of course if you are in need of a "pick-me-up" all you have to do is touch a doorknob;-P)

So, the air uphere might make for nice pictures as the ones above but unfortunately there's the everyday drawback of dry skin, cold body and statics that comes with it:-(

Nuuk's fashion

As I mentioned previously I promised to write a bit about the fashion here in Nuuk and for good reason too. Because although the fashion might be fairly similar as to the rest of the West European world there certainly also some differences, which I believe to be specific types of Greenlandic fashion.

Nuuk has a fairly good variety of stores and it is therefore possible to get hold of most of the latest fashion. Adults seem less than interested in acquiring the newest trend but teenagers are all for it. They’re dressed exactly the same way as they would be in any other big city in Europe. The only thing that is slightly different in their style is perhaps their overcoats. Here, everybody either wears a North Face jacket or a Canada Goose jacket. And I mean everybody. It doesn’t matter if you 65 or if you’re barely a 1 year. You still wear one of these jackets. They even come as romper suits (sparkedragt) for babies, something I’ve never seen before. (Btw 65 might not sound old but people here don’t live to be much older so it is sort of the limit).

Babies and young children are also seen wrapped up in various kind of sealskin clothing and they look absolutely adorable. They look like cute little baby seals. Although skin is still very popular among people here most tend to just wear a pair of sealskin gloves or skin hat. Some also wear jackets but you never see people dressed from head to toe in sealskin. Sealskin btw comes not only in various patterns it also comes in various colours. At the time it seems very popular to wear red (mailbox red) skin hats and purple skin gloves/jackets. Personally, I find it a bit strange to dye the beautiful skin any of those colours but I guess that’s just because I’m still not used to seeing skin as a clothes fabric. Another skin item that is frequently seen and that I wouldn’t mind owning myself is skin boats. They come in various shapes and sizes and some of them are really beautiful. Again red seems to be the preferred colour but of course who says you have to follow the trend:-)

Even though skin items are very popular and the material is easy to come by the prices are certainly not for everybody. A pair of gloves is about 250-450kr (30-60€) and the same for a hat. The boats are from 800kr and up to 3000kr (100-400€). And a jacket is about 15.000-20.000kr (2000-2700€), so you might want to think twice before you wrapped yourself up in one of nature’s furry friends. Of course the Greenlanders hunt themselves and therefore often sew their own skin clothing or at least they get them done cheaper at locale workshops because they supply the skin themselves.

At work there’s not really such a thing as a proper dress code. People sometimes look like they chose their clothes in the dark. I especially like the combination of sneakers, a pair of sweatpants, a t-shirt, an open washed out short-sleeved shirt combined with a colourful tie. I’ve never seen that combination before and I’ve decided to put it down as a unique type of Nuuk fashion. It’s very popular among the men, young as old, low incomers or CEOs. It certainly noticeable, though I’m not quite sure I like it. Everybody are dressed very causal at work (although not necessarily as causal as described above) and even when there are prominent guests visiting no formalities in clothing is seen. A couple of weeks ago Naalakkersuisut (the home government) was visited by a group of people from the OECD and although I had nothing to do with them and really knew none of the people working in Naalakkersuisut, it was still quite clear who was a visitor and who was a regular worker. All you had to do was look at the style of dressing:-)

One can also see the peculiar choice of style when one sees people’s washing hanging outside. The interesting choice in colour combination seems to exist in other areas than just clothing, such as bed sheets, curtains and towels. I’m all for a bit of colour in the daily life but why would you like to have pink and green curtains, orange towels, and brown and yellow sheets? After having seen combinations as the one above and others equally bizarre I can’t help thinking that maybe, just maybe, a rather large portion of Nuuk’s population suffers from colour blindness...

Birthday in Greenland

Just a small note about my birthday in Greenland... This day has been very much the same as most other days up here and then at the same time it has been unlike any day up here because it's the first time I turn 26 in Greenland. Well, actually it's the first and last time I turn 26 anywhere.

I've been getting greetings from all over the world and through out the day I've felt a bit like a Eurovision Song Contest with "greetings from Barcelona, greetings from London, greetings from Budapest" and I know not where. In return I will rank it with 12 points from Greenland and hope everybody, where ever they've been, have enjoyed celebrating my birthday today:-D (Eventhough I couldn't be there in person).

Soon I will head back to my apartment for a quite night, and although I don't have any technical stuff there to connect me to the rest of the world or any friends for dinner, I can boost of having something quite spectacular and utterly amazing. The location of my apartment right down to the water with a view overlooking an illuminated Nuuk while the apartment itself is embedded in total darkness creates the perfect possibility for viewing aurora borealis, also more commenly known as nothern light. This time of year every night sky is lit up with a green nothern light, floating and vibrating it's way over the sea while slowly moving towards the city. Never have I experienced this on a birthday before and who knows when I will again.

Tourist guide stuff

I've titled this input "tourist stuff" not because I'm gonna write page after page about all the amazing tourist offers we have here in Nuuk (because at this time of year that wouldn't even take up a whole line) but because I've been asked to write some very general textbook/guidebook material for people who don't feel like reading a rough guide themselves or who's unable to look up Greenland at Wikipedia. So, if you're one of them then enjoy the read:-)

To start with Nuuk (which means "the headland") it has just under 16.000 inhabitants and is by far the biggest town in Greenland. Next biggest town is I believe Sisimiut (meaning "the inhabitants at the foxholes") with around 4500 inhabitants (who all aparently live close to a foxhole;-P) and after that you have Maniitsoq (which means "the rugged place") with about 3000 inhabitants. Most towns are situated either in South or on the West coast. The East coast is less populated because of more intens weather making it difficult to both reach the area and get away from there again. Often in winter time people are stranded for weeks either in Nuuk wanting to go back to the East coast or in of the towns over there trying to get back to Nuuk.

Country wise Greenland is part of the Danish Kingdom and is therefore not a country of its own. However, in 1979 it was granted home rule which means that it was given a local government and its own parliament. Also it was given some legal areas with which it could make up its own rules. Since that time Greenland has been granted more and more legal areas and today the Danish governement only remain in charge of foreign affairs, security and the financial policy. As a financial aid to the country Denmark gives out a subsidy of about 3,4 billion kroner every year. That's about 467 million € or approximately a yearly check for 8300€ for each Greenlander. And before you start to wonder let me just tell you that that's a lot. Greenland has to some extend an illusion about becoming independent one day and who's to say that won't happen, but the only road heading in that direction is the one cutting the subsidy little by little until one day it's completely gone. And the way the economic situation looks right we're looking at a very long roadtrip, so for now Greenland stays Danish.

The history of Greenland is both very short and very long. It's very short in the terms that it wasn't really "discovered" and populated until 1721 when the Danish-Norweigian missionary Hans Egede dropped by and decided that Nuuk (at that time Godthåb) was the place for him. As a missionary his goal in life was to pour water on strangers' heads and give them new names, preferably while giving some all important speech about his favourite friend, God. Unfortunately, he wasn't very good at finding volunteers for getting wet or he's competition was too hard - the German Herrnhuts were also in town doing the same thing just with better music and drinks, and so 15 years later he went home leaving his son Paul Egede in charge. Little by little however people started responding to names like Hans, Kirsten, Anne and Erik and not so much Minannguaq, Ajassaussuaq or Sapiitsoq and before you know it we've reached present time.

The history of Greenland is however also very old because of the Paleo-Eskimo settlement which have been here since around 2500BC. The cultures these settlement brought to life are still vital to the people living here today and because of this Greenland has indeed a very long history. In between these two "histories" is also the Norse settlement lead by Icelandic and Norwegian vikings from around 936AD and forward. (For those of you who like vikings check out Erik the Red, a Norwegian viking who founded the first Norwegian settlement in Greenland. He came here due to a 3 year exile sentence placed on him by the Icelanders for quite a lot murders he'd done back in 982AD. The history holds a lot of blood, battles and swearing but is actually rather good and entertaining).

Coming back to the present, everyday life here is fairly traditional. People are very tied to their family and think a bit "in the old days"-kinda style. Young people don't really educate themselves, eventhough it's quite possible to do so, and they tie familiy bonds at a young age. Girls often become pregant when they're about 16 years old and young men (age 16-17) tends to look for hard labour rather than taking an education. Therefore the society here is very divided, both between rich and poor but also between Greenlanders and Danes. Danes often come here with a higher education and thus gets a better job while the Greenlanders are often seen in very low educated jobs. F.ex. at my work most employees in higher positions, like the head of a department or the middle-leder are mainly Danes, whereas the people working in the cantine or doing all the service jobs (like setting up conference rooms, receptionists and light case management) are all Greenlanders. In some ways it's extreme, especially because it doesn't look like it's gonna change anytime soon.

In the spare time people spend the time with their family. They go to "kaffemik" which is basically a coffeebreak at someones house with lots of homemade cakes and very strong coffee. Some Greenlanders also drink quite a lot and tend to spend their spare time at one of the towns local "pubs". The "pub" style is good old Danish bodega style, a.k.a. dity, shabby and stuffy little places with (in Denmark cheap) beer and old music. Young people drink less than you'd perhaps expect and many don't drink at all. Here, you either "drink like a fish" (dansk = drikke sig i hegnet) or you don't drink at all. Very few choose the middle road where "less is more".

The town has, condering its size, quite a lot of cultural offers. The culture house often has a concert of some kind and the cinema shows movies 3 times a week (the movies are the same as the ones in Denmark). Otherwise there's also a few facilities around town for families that want to host their own party but don't have room. If there's something going on in the town, like a concert, everybody goes to it. And often people go out to dinner before. There's 2 exclusive resturants in town, about 3 midleprized ones and quite a few cheap pizzarias/grillbars. Fastfood has certainly made it to Nuuk big time and the young families seems to live off it entirely. Among the middleprized places are Hereford Beefstouw (a Danish steakhouse of better quality) and Godthåbs Bryghus (a brewery combined with a restuarant), they're both okay but still a bit expensive (a main course is about 250-300kr, e.i 33-40€). Service here is very slow and most waiters are from Thailand (or at least Asian) speaking a very funny combination of bad English, Danish and Greenlandic... Fingers and pointing seems to be the preferred way of ordering food here. The reason for the Thai polulation here is that Danish men seem very fond of heading in that direction for vacation bringing back more than just petty souvenirs and sexual diseases. Sometimes they bring back just a girl but often it seems they get more than they bargained for and end up with a whole family of siblings and cousins.

The nature here is of course also a very fond spare time occupation. Most people own a boat and many fish and hunts. Among the poor population hunting is a necessary income which most can't live without. Often they hunt just to put food on their own table but sometimes you can also see them selling their meat in front of city's the food shops.

The people my age are rarely seen. I'm not actually quite sure where they are but they're certainly not at my work. At my work we have around 700 employees and I'm the only one in the 20'ties, something I find that rather remarkable and strange. I've been told that young people either go to Denmark for an education (if they come from rich families) or they settle down and start up families, making them almost invisible in the townscape. Another reason is unfortunately also the high suicide rate. Many people my age commit suicide for various reasons and the rate is specially high here in Nuuk. It's not something talked about in the news or on the street but everybody are aware of it and most tend to just shrug their shoulders when confronted with the fact. The Greenlandic have a history for suicides both between young and old and in some ways it seems like they find it naturally that some people can't handle life. The cemeteries here are filled to the brim with white anonymous crosses with nothing but a number on them. Names or dates are never used and so it's difficult to "read from history" when crossing a graveyard. (It's also not possible to have a family grave but often relatives lie in "split levels" one above the other. This is because graves are dugged in rows parallel to each other and often the men dies before the women. Due to this the husband is burried in one row and by the time the wife dies the graves have started in a new row, often placing the wife just above her husband. Freaky, but true!).

When it comes to the youngest part of the population, the children and babies, they're booming the place. Everywhere you look there's a bunch of kids. The children are in some ways spoild in the way that they're brought along everywhere and can make as much noise and racket as they wish without as much as a finger-wagging from the parents or anybody else in the room. However, in other ways you can't help wondering about their future when you consider the poor quality of the education up there (9 years of public school is required but its quality is bad due to too few teachers and not enough interest from neither Danish nor Greenlandic politicians) and the few possiblities they have in a society moving so slowly in comparison with the rest of the Western world.

This is to some extend some of the tourist stuff you're find in a guidebook. In my next input I'm gonna write more about the shops up here, especially the food shops which is quite an experience, and I'll might also touch upon the style of peoples' clothes because I don't want people to think everybody here goes around in nothing but kamiks and sealskin:-)

I also have a little "story" about the Greenlandic flag, I'll write down once I'll find time for it.

Feel free to mention if there's something in particular, that I should write about and I'll see if I can gather some thoughts on it:-)

Pretty pictures from Nuuk :-)

This is the view from my balcony. The mountain in the background is Sermitsiaq (it means "constant ice"). It's a known landmark up here. This is actually the same view as above just in a different light...
This is a picture I took on my way home from work. Although it doesn't seem like it, it is in fact taken from inside the citycenter. It's the daily view for the people employed at the city's hospital (I mean in the evening when the weather's up for it...).
This picture is taken from the same spot as above just in a different direction. The pictures are even taken at the same time, so as you can the view changes a great deal in a very short time.

Odd things in Nuuk

After having written that rather serious piece of information concerning my first two weeks in Nuuk, I feel the need to write something a little more cheerful and silly. I don't believe life should always be taken too hard or serious and although my life at the moment may not be all I could wish for, I feel it important to still try to enjoy my time here in Nuuk, hence my attempt to write about small and insignificant things in a humorous maner in this blog.

There are quite a few practical matters here in Nuuk that have brought out a smile on my face. Although they are grave in the sense that they have to some extent cause me troube, I have decided to just face them with a grin.

My current housing f.ex. is one of these matters. Not the fact that I'm actually without proper housing for the time being and can look forward to many relocations in the near future, that actually stresses me out quite a bit, but rather it's the apartment itself in which I'm living at the moment that I find rather amusing. You see it's located on an old Inut burial site and people up here are rather superstitious making them believe in spirits are such things. Because of this not that many people wish to live where I live and others don't want to come to close to you once they here that you live out here. In some way, it's really too bad because the area is very nice and the view from out here is absolutely spectacular. True, it's slightly isolated from the citycenter and quite "dead" due to the many empty houses but this would all change if people would just overcome their superstition and move out here.

Plus the apartments themselves are really rather nice. The one I live in right now has a big living/dinning room connected to a spatial kitchen and 2 good sized bedrooms. Also there's a small entry and a big bathroom. The amusing part is however that although this apartment is very nice and fully furnished with all sort of modern interior (it has a big flatscreen tv, nice leather sofas and a washingmachine etc. etc.) it somehow seems that it hasn't been taken into consideration that one or several persons will in fact be living here. F.ex. all the rooms are very high-ceilinged and the closets go from floor to ceiling, making them equally high and of course very big. But for some reason the coat hangers in the closets have been hung all the way at top of the closets making it absolutely imposible to reach them or hang anything on them without the aid of a chair or small table. Considering the fact the Grenlanders themselves are a rather short nation (I'd guess the average height is about 1,60m) one have to wonder why the people furnishing this house ever decided on placing the coat hangers so high up. I mean, the builders themselves have most likely been rather short people and so it does not seem natural that they should place the coat hangers so high.

Another thing in this apartment that is a bit odd is the rather strange placements of the power sockets. There are at least 10 sockets within my view at the moment from my place at the dinnig table which I suppose could be considered a good thing. However most of these sockets are placed in quite obscure places suchs as just under the ceiling or behind a radiator or behind a bookcase. And then there are areas in the apartment where there are no power sockets whatsoever as f.ex. in the bathroom. So becasuse of this my electrical toothbrush is right now recharging underneath one of my sofas...

And then there's of course the Internet connection... Here in Nuuk you actually have one of Europe's best Internet connections in terms of good cables. However the company distributing the Internet is obviously publicly owned (as all other companies are here in Nuuk) and so the agreements one can sign and the connections one can actually obtain are really really bad. The Greenlanders aren't use to use the Internet and haven't really understood the amazing wonders connected to the virtual world and therefore the subscriptions one can get aren't to the advantage for big-time Internet users. You pay for two things, one your actual subscription and two your actual use. Use that requires a lot of data-transfers such as downloading a film or uploading some photos costs a fortune. And in public places where there is Internet, pages such as Youtube, CNN and Alluc are blocked due to the high costs connected to them. So even if you could get a decent connection up here that doesn't necessary mean that you would be able to be online because you might not be able to pay for any actual use.

All this is in some sense just a matter of development. In time I'm sure Greenland will be as much online as the rest of the world. Unfortunately for me I don't think it's necessary gonna happen any time soon.

However the odd thing about the Internet that I wanted to mention isn't really about the Internet at all. It concerns the actual Internet socket itself. It's placement in this apartment truely shows that people here are not used to the Internet at all. Instead of making serveral sockets (as one would probably do in Denmark) and placing them around the aparment I have only one socket. Placed very strangely in the remote corner of my bedroom underneath the bed... Now this would be nothing if the Internet was wireless or one had a really really long wire to connect to the computer. Unfortunately when I first got online I had neither of these things. Next, my Internet is one with a modem and such a thing requires electricity and thus a power socket. However, the bedroom is one of the other places in the this apartment which is hardely crowed by sockets. In fact there is only one and that one is connected to the room's only lamp. So now you have to choose if you either want to sit behind/under the bed in total darkness but online or if you want to have light in the bedroom but no Internet connection. I chose the first option and therefore spent my first happy moments online in my own place sitting behind my bed in total darkness... Unfortunately it was a short found happiness as my computer was also in the need of eletricity and by plugging in the modem I had consequently run out of valiable power sockets.

Needless to say the very next day I went down to the town and brought the longest Internet cable I could find and two (just to be sure) additional outlet sockets. So now, I'm in business;-)

My first two weeks in Nuuk

Prevously I mentioned that this weekend would be the weekend where I would write about my first two weeks here in Nuuk, and so I'm here at the computer trying to figure out what to write. I have certain limitations as to what I can write about in this input due to the fact that anybody can read this blog. This means that I won't be writing any detailed information about my job or my co-workers (not that I actually have any...), or any other issue that I consider inapropriate for a blog. At the same I don't want this blog/input to be an actual log of all my movements because that would be far to boring for me to write and way to boring for you to read:-) So, I imagine this input to be more of a desciption of what I've experienced during these first two weeks combined with some actual events.


So, what have I actually experienced?... That seems to be the million dollar question now that I'm sitting in front of my computer. Well, for starters I did quite a lot of basic reading about Greenland before I left. I especially looked into the society and political situation in the hope that this would help me once I started working here. However, coming here I realized that it's just not possible to prepare youself for a society such as this one. No matter how many books you'll read I'm quite sure that once you're here your own opionion will differ substantially from most of what you have read.

Personally, I find it a rather hard society to live in. Not like any other I've lived in before. To me it feels like I have open a door an walked straight through to the 1950'ties. Everything here somehow has a slower pace and people seem to be concerned by other problems. And yet, Nuuk as a city has everything you'd find in a modern capital. There are plenty of stores with a decent variety, places to go out both for eating and dacing, crimes, gangs, the latest fashion and newfangled gadgets. And still, I feel as if the people here have somehow not moved with the same speed as the city itself. I see it in my work where I deal with citiziens and politicians on a daily basis and where I'm closely connected to the whole administation that runs this society. And I feel it walking down the streets watching the people around me. Nuuk is a capital in every way that defines a capital, but at the same time it's also a provincial town. It has fewer that 16.000 inhabitants and I think it's because of this that all things good and bad in a capital becomes much clearer up here. When so few peolpe live in such a "big" city lines become very visable and opposits inforced. The city might be a capital but its inhabitants are like farmers from a provincial town. As a result, I can't help sometimes feeling more isolated that I really am. Being on an island far a way the rest of the world is one thing, but not feeling part of a society is something else entirely.

What I've come to realize this short time I've been here is that my type of lifestyle which in many ways focuses on the selfish individual is not really compatible with this type of society. Here, a familybased lifestyle is valued and expected. Most young people I see on the street are surrounded by children. Young people don't necessary get married but they get children at a young age and seeing a girl at 18 with 2 children is not frowned upon in any way. Children here are simply seen as blessings to society. In confirmation of this you see almost no people walking alone, neither young nor old. People move in groups were you can clearly see the different generations. To me this is striking since I come from a society which in these days, in many ways, propers on my type of lifestyle. So coming here has certainly taught me valuable information about both myself and the society I used to live in. It as given me some insights as to what type of society I would like to live in in the future and what I value in my daily life. I think people at my age with my kind of options and possibilities take many small but important things for granted and having lived now in a society so different from my own has made me realize this much more than I did previously.

So, I guess at the bottom line you just don't know what you got until it's no longer there;-)

The topic of salt...

Before I'll start writing about my first two weeks here in Nuuk, I would like to make a small input about the mineral salt. This mineral is really one of those small things in life that certainly makes a big difference. Something I've come to notice living here in Nuuk. The thing is I rarely think of salt in my daily life and I think this is because it's always there. So when it's not there anymore one truely sees the amazing things salt does to ones everyday life.

For some reason Greenland seems to have lost out on this wonder mineral, or at least their lacking a bit behind. Of course there's plenty of salt here in the North, otherwise there wouldn't be any people around, but that being said salt doesn't seem to have gained any ground in the more practical areas of its use.

F.ex. there are two places were I find the use of salt most valuable - on the road and in the food. However, here Greenland seems to disagree with me for neither on the road nor in the food does salt seemed to ever be used. Never ever.

Nuuk being placed where it is on the globe and weather being what it is in Febuary, roads up here tend be rather icy on some days. Especially in these days where it's warm during the day, resulting in the snow/ice to melt and nights being cold resulting in the snow/ice to freeze up again making the roads as slippery as skating rings. Here the use of salt would, at least in my opinion, be most advantageous. However for some reason it's never used. Nore is any other similar substance such as ruble used instead. No, every morning one has to slowly and carefully try to make ones way down to the nearest buststop without falling too many times on ones behind while at the same time trying not to look like bambi skating on, well, ice. The strage thing is that there are plenty of excavators and trator shovels out each morning clearing the roads from the non-exist snow but none of them spread salt behind them. They just drive and up and down the roads for no reason what so ever (expect of course to employ the people driving them...)and seem perfectly carefree of the fact that the roads are in fact covered in ice.

An even stranger thing is that the Greenlanders don't actually seem very fond of ice or anything connected to ice such as ice skating. So far I haven't seen a single person ice skating or enjoying walking on an icy road, and the one place were a laying of ice would be most appropriate, meaning the towns skating ring, there is none at all. It stands desolated and deserted without any ice, but has instead three old sofas placed in the middle. Sofas which do however seem to be much loved by the local dogs. It's all very odd...

Food, as I mentioned above, is another place where I find the use of salt most beneficial. At my work, we have a cantine which in my belief has a great potential of improvement. The food is not only poor in taste (due to the lack of salt obviously), the choice of courses are ancient. Among the choices this week were fried pork with parsley sauce (stegt flæsk m persillesovs), dumplings in curry (boller i karry), pork loin with red cabbage and potatos (flæskesteg m rødkål og kartofler) and lobscouse (skipperlabskovs). Even with a proper seasoning these dishs aren't really to my taste, but the complete lack of seasoning altogether certainly doesn't improve their quality, eventhough one might have thought so. I am quite sure that just a pinch of salt would make a world of difference. Unfortunately, salt is not avaliable at the tables or at the hand out of the food. So either, one has to bring ones own salt, which seems a bit overacted or one simply has to do without the posibility to taste what one is eating.

Looking on the bright side of this situation is of course that most days I don't have to time eat and is therefore not obliged to make that hard choice:-) And so, as I often say, there is no thing so bad that it's not good for something(Intet er så galt, at det ikke er godt for noget).

And now with that fact I will leave my computer in order to cook some nice, seasoned, food for dinner, and I will leave this input and wish you, the reader, a bon appétit for your next meal. And please, remember to season your food with salt:-)

Grey Thursday

My second week here in Nuuk is almost over and so I guess I should write about how this week has been. But since I haven't written about my first week yet it might be a bit hard for people to compare... However, I sort of thought that this weekend would be my "blog-weekend" where I write about all my experience and troubles and challenges so far, (don't worry, I'll write about happy stuff as well - this is not meant to be a tragic sobstory that people would get sick and tired of reading), and therefore I won't paint a picture just yet. Which is probably for the best, 'cause I'm always really tired after work and sort of in an "off-mode", leaving me to believe that whatever picture I might decide to paint certainly wouldn't be a pretty one:-S

Since I'm not writting about my week at the moment, I've put myself in the difficult position of having to come up with another topic to write about. After all a blog without inputs really isn't much of a blog at all - that much at least I get about the concept of "blogging":-)

Being Danish I really feel that there is only one other topic which I can in this case touch upon, and that is the weather, naturally. When one has nothing else to talk about one should always talk about the weather. The problem with the weather is of course that it really isn't that interesting to read about, plus by the time this input has been posted the weather will of course have changed numourous times... Still I feel it necessary to at least briefly mention what type of weather I've experienced up here so far, because I have a feeling that it's differs slightly from what one might expect from Greenland in February.

I've heard from numerous sorces that the weather in Denmark at the moment is all a bit too much, especially when it comes to the amount of snow. Bikes seems to have disapeared in the white mass, DSB-trains are most likely delayed with several days and the employees from the National Road Directorate have without doubt had their 15 minutes of fame. All in all, winter has made it to Denmark big time.

And then there's Greenland. Which at this time of the year is thought of with a shiver because of "horror-stories" of bad weather made up by massive amounts of snow, hard wind and constant darkness. All of this have I prepared myself for and none of it have I seen or experience(!) Expect perhaps for the hard wind. That we have plently of, or at least I think so, but everyone I talk to keeps telling me that this is nothing, hardly more than a mild breeze. So I guess I haven't actually experienced hard wind either, but later on I'll give an expample of an accident occuring due to this "mild breeze".

First, let me just make something clear. We do not have massive amounts of snow for Santa's reindears to roll around in. In fact, we don't have any snow for any one or any thing to roll around in. True, one does see tiny piles of grey/darkish snow laying by the sides of the roads but that's not really anything to talk about.

The weather here has since I've arrived been nothing but rain, wind, fog, clouds and utterly boring. If I didn't know better I'd say I was still in Denmark with weather like this. It's that boring. However, the wind, as I mentioned, is what I would classify as hard (not matter what the inhabitants here say). The other week it was blowing 35m/sec and that according to the Danish Metrological Institute is "a hard storm". So there!

It has these last two weeks become a habit of mine to after work walk from my office to the town's only internetcafé and to there reconnect with the world online. The café is about 100 meter away from my office and is therefore within an easy reach. None the less, on some days it has taken me about 30min to get there because of the wind. That's how hard it blows. And if that doesn't say too much then let me briefly discribe a situation that happened to my boss. Wednesday last week he took a taxi to work and upon shutting the door a gust of wind came and blew of the cardoor straigt off from the actually car!:-! Frigthening enough the cabdriver didn't really seem to surprised by it. He apperently just got out, picked up the door, threw it in the trunk and drove of. (So, who knows there may be some truth in the saying that the wind at the moment is nothing but a mild breeze...)

Anyway, wind I would say we do have but for the rest, the world seems to be in a topsy-turvy mode with Greenlandic weather in Denmark and Danish weather in Greenland:-S

And so upon that view, I conclude my input to the blog this time, only to begin thinking of what to write about next time.

day 2 with a blog...

So, I've just arrived at work and thought I'd just check that my blog survived the night. Turns out that the Internet here at the office is soooooo incredibly slow that it took about 3 minutes just to open the blog. :-(

So, I guess I won't be writting much during my office hours (not that I'm allowed to either...) in fear of creating a power breakdown or something similar.

No, this will all just have to be an after work activity from my "home" in café Barista - the only Internetcafé in town.

Bstrid...

Yeah, about the name. I know I wrote that I spell really badly but this isn't actually a spelling mistake, eventhough it might seem like it:-) It's just a nickname my brother frequently uses with me. (So much for not writing any personal stuff...)

My first experience at blogging...

So, I've managed to create a blog, let's see if I can also manage to write a blog. I have absolutely no idea about have to write a thing like this or how to "control" it.

The thing is I'm not really sure I quite like the concept of a blog. Because it's adverticed as a logbook/dairy, but since when did one publish one's diary? And I don't want just anybody to read my blog (not that I'm gonna write any personal stuff here), since I'm one of those oldfasion people who likes to know who one is talking/writing to.

So, this is going great :-) The very first thing I write about in my newly made blog is that I don't like blogs...hmm clever...That must really inspire the reader to read on...

But just in case anyone actually makes it this far I think I should just mention a few things before I get "started".

1. I spell "som en brækket arm" (as you would say in Danish) which is literally translated into I spell "like a broken arm". By that I mean, I rarely check what I write and thus there will be quite a lot of spelling mistakes. Sorry for that, but that's just the way it's gonna be.
2. I'm only writting this blog for fun, so don't take anything I "say" too serious. It's just meant to be a fun way for me to talk about my daily life and keep friends and family connected now that I'm sort of situated "of the map".
3. Please comment, the more the better. It's always nice to hear from people and comments are a great way for me to know that people actually read what I write. So remember to say "hi" or make a smiley (if possible...don't even know if you can do that in a blog...).
4. I'm probably gonna write this blog in English due to my many international friends but you can comment in any language you'd like. Just comment and I'll be happy:-D
5. ...hmm...Have fun reading the blog?!

Let the fun begin:-)