Icebergs, Polar Bears & the Northwest Passage: Detlef Palm

Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage

To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea

Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage

And make a Northwest Passage to the sea.

These are the opening lines of Stan Rogers’ iconic song, capturing the enduring longing of explorers and outdoor enthusiasts to undertake the ultimate voyage through the Northwest Passage. Few places have accumulated quite such a formidable mixture of romance, mystery and bad weather. Made famous by Sir John Franklin’s disastrous expedition, the Northwest Passage has ever since beckoned travellers and dreamers alike. And, eventually, it beckoned us.

Turn the volume up and click the arrow to unleash a heavy metal rendition of the song.

Approximate route, mostly north of the Arctic Circle

Nuuk Icefjord

As a start, we took a little boat trip from Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, to Qoornoq. Qoornoq  is an abandonned fishing village 50 kilometres into a fjord called  Nuup Kangerlua. Two glaciers are draining the Greenland ice sheet flowing into the fjord.

Fifty years ago, my uncle raved about the idea of tasting whisky on Greenland ice. He mused that Greenland ice has a bluish tint and makes a particularly satisfying crackling sound when dropped into a drink.

There is some truth to the story. Ordinary ice in your freezer looks white because it contains lots of tiny air bubbles. These bubbles scatter light in all directions, giving the ice its white rather than transparent appearance. Glacial ice, by contrast, has spent thousands of years being buried under ever more snow. The Greenland Iceshield is up to 3 km thick, and some of the ice underneath has been estimated to be 120,000 years old. The pressure squeezes out much of the air, while the ice crystals grow larger. Light can therefore travel much farther through the ice. Ice absorbs a little more of the red, long-wavelength light, while more of the blue light survives and is scattered back towards your eyes. The longer the optical path, the stronger the blue becomes.

So the highlight of the trip was a taste of Talisker whisky on Greenland ice. We picked a piece straight from an iceberg floating by. As Greenland ice is formed under pressure, its ancient bubbles pop with a distinctive fizzing, crackling or tinkling sound. The thus liberated air may be a 1000 times older than the whisky in your glass.

Cheers to the ancient ice

Because of the foggy weather, or perhaps because of the whisky, the whole affair inevitably acquired a mystical quality.

Field Trip to Itilleq 

Itilleq sits on an island one kilometre off the mainland, two kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, on the shores of the Davis Strait. At least once a year, the sun refuses to set on the village and its 90 inhabitants. 

Access is by small boat only, in our case by Zodiac. There are no roads in Greenland between settlements. A helicopter can be called from Sisimiut. People hunt, fish or work in the fish factory. Fresh water comes from desalinated seawater. (Click on any image to enlarge).

The tiny village seems to be on the itinerary of most “exploring” travellers to western Greenland. We don't know exactly why, except that its residents are accustomed to tourists and welcome visitors into their homes for tea, coffee and cake, in a ceremony called kaffemik. Perhaps most travellers want to see, at least once, how the Inuit live. A deal is made, and off we go.

 

We remove our shoes and sit on the sofa. Starting a conversation is not easy.  Translation is not available. Only the school-going children may possibly speak English. I realize that I have not prepared nearly enough to communicate with the locals, who, by contrast, have prepared themselves by baking a cake and setting the table. 

This isn't a scripted UN field trip where a luminary asks polite questions and hosts recite rehearsed answers.

I should have known better. Hans Enoksen, Prime Minister of Greenland from 2002 to 2009, was born in Itilleq. He was a native speaker of Kalaallisut, and, rather impressively, a unilingual one: Greenlandic was his only language.

Still, it’s better than going to a coffeeshop—especially if there isn’t one. And Gabi manages to reconstruct the family history of our hosts, identify their offspring in the photographs on the wall, and secures confirmation that mobile phone service is available and Amazon delivers, albeit at a premium.

Disko Bay

Sitting about 350 km north of the Arctic Circle, Greenland’s Ilulissat Icefjord is the seaward end of Sermeq Kujalleq, one of the few glaciers through which the Greenland ice cap reaches the sea. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Sermeq Kujalleq is one of the fastest and most active glaciers in the world, annually releasing more than 35 cubic kilometres of ice. The combination of an enormous ice sheet and the dramatic sounds of a fast-moving glacier calving into a fjord already crowded with icebergs makes for a natural spectacle that is difficult to compete with.

The views are otherworldly. Every now and then, a sharp crack rings out across the ice. This is the moment when everyone stops and starts scanning the water. Somewhere out there, an iceberg may be splitting apart or rolling over, sending a mini-tsunami across the fjord..

A boardwalk leads to a viewpoint overlooking the Sermermiut valley and the ice-filled fjord. We continued from the viewpoint along the fjord for a while.

The new nearby Icefjord Centre provides background and the latest scientific knowledge on glaciers, early settlements, climate, weather and more. Among other exhibits, there is a room with a series of individual speakers broadcasting sounds generated by the movement and melting, rumbling and crackling ice of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

 

Ilulissat has just over 5,000 inhabitants and is Greenland’s third-largest town. It has more sled-dogs than residents and is the country’s most popular tourist destination. 

 

Unlike just a few decades ago, Disko Bay no longer reliably freezes over in winter. For local hunters, the loss of the sea ice makes it much more difficult to reach hunting grounds that were once accessible by dog sled.

Uummannaq the Beautiful

While beauty is subjective, Uummannaq is widely considered one of the most picturesque towns in Greenland. It sits about 600 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, surrounded by deep blue fjords, drifting icebergs, and massive glaciers. It also sits below the iconic 1,170-meter peak Uummannaq, which means as much as "heart-shaped" in Greenlandic. 

As we arrived the clouds were still lingering, so we cruised around in our Zodiacs to inspect the floating icebergs.

Brightly painted wooden houses climb the rugged, rocky slopes of the small island. With 1,400 inhabitants, Uummannaq is the eighth-largest town in Greenland. One of them is Santa Claus, who lives in Spraglebugten Bay in the west of the island. 

His special letter box is in the middle of Uunnammaq town. Now I’ve found an explanation for why Trump thinks Greenland belongs to him: He thinks he’s Father Christmas! 

Hunting is the livelihood. Here, blubber is removed from a seal skin. Uunnammaq is a delightful little place to spend a few hours or days. It is also the country's most northerly ferry terminal. 

Highly recommended: Uummannaq music video

by Uummannaq Children

Crossing Baffin Bay

Equipped with all manner of expedition gear, including a science lab and libraries, our vessel offered enough to keep everyone busy 24 hours a day, should anyone be so inclined, while inviting travellers to participate in citizen science.

A glimpse of the wheelhouse.

A team of naturalists, local guides, and experts was always on hand to share insights into the region. Their expertise spanned everything from climate phenomena, ocean currents, and local wildlife to the history of ancient peoples and the fine art of classifying prehistoric stone tools.

The science lab, contributing in small measure to original research.

During the last half century, the Arctic has warmed 4 x faster than the rest of the globe. This Arctic Amplification is also the result of the Ice-Albedo Effect, the Lapse-Rate Effect, the Cloud Feedback, Planck Feedback and, most importantly, the Oceanic Heat Transport. Now you know. 

Our sub-marine. This time, I didn't do a dive, but next time I will.

 

Storytellers brought the history of Arctic exploration to life, regaling us with tales of countless shipwrecks and heroic attempts that ended rather less heroically—all delivered with a dose of witty and cultured entertainment.

The entire trip was an immersive learning experience, delivered by people who actually knew their science, without the need for institutional language of the kind produced by UN committees and polished until all the knowledge has leaked out of it. 

Pond Inlet - The Jewel of the North

Having crossed Baffin Bay, our ship had arranged for customs officials to fly 1,000 kilometres from Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, to Pond Inlet to stamp our passports. Home to fewer than 1,600 residents, Pond Inlet does not quite generate enough immigration business to warrant an immigration office of its own.

 

With more than two million square kilometres, Nunavut is the largest subdivision of Canada. The Nunavut landmass is larger than that of France, Spain, Germany, Italy and Poland combined. With just 36,000 people, there is quite a lot of space per person.

Getting our Zodiacs ready for landing in Pond Inlet.

Pond Inlet is often referred to as the Jewel of the North. It sits within the Arctic Cordillera, surrounded by dozens of glaciers, fjords, ice caves and icebergs. The waters are ice-free for barely three months of the year.

For the Inuit, Pond Inlet has always been Mittimatalik, or the place of Mittima, although nobody seems to know who Mittima actually was. Archaeologists have identified some 4,000 years of human use of the area, with hunting and fishing on land, sea and ice. 

We were the first cruise ship of the season to arrive in Pond Inlet.  The ice had disappeared only a week earlier, and the town was waiting for the narwhals to begin their annual migration. We imagined this to be something like the wildebeest migration in the Serengeti, except that here the participants arrive by sea.

 

Signboard at the visitor's centre, depicting Narwhales

Narwhal is considered a delicacy by the Inuit. The spiralled tusk of the male narwhal can reach between 1.5 and 3 metres in length. It is actually a protruding left canine, thought to have several functions, including sensing changes in the water, displaying dominance and attracting mates. Quite a lot of responsibility for one tooth.

A walk through the hamlet did not reveal much that could be described as jewel-like. Pond Inlet looks remarkably like a frontier town in the American West: electricity poles, small houses and enormous pickup trucks ploughing along its 2.5 kilometres of dusty roads. There is a Co-op, where fruit and everyday necessities are flown in from Montreal, some 3,000 kilometres away. 

 

Later, we learned about the dispute between Baffinland Iron Mines Corporation and the Pond Inlet Hunters and Trappers Association. Baffinland operates an iron-ore mine about 160 kilometres away, reportedly containing some of the richest deposits ever discovered. Shipping the ore through the area, however, could dramatically increase marine traffic and affect animal life in and around the channel.

 

On the other hand, Nunavut Tourism seems to be rather pessimistic about the area's tourism potential, largely because of its remoteness. Nor is it clear how much longer hunting caribou, seals and narwhals can sustain local livelihoods. The Jewel of the North comes with a complicated price tag.

The Mirage

As we were leaving Pond Inlet, we had our own phantom iceberg: an apparition conjured by the Arctic atmosphere just as we were setting off into the Northwest Passage. These Arctic mirages are created when light travels through layers of air at different temperatures, bending the image and making distant objects appear to float, stretch or even hover above the horizon. Such optical illusions have caused confusion and, historically, more than a few unfortunate navigational decisions.

Polar Bears at Croker Bay

We finally enter the Parry Channel which forms the main part of the Northwest Passage. 

The crew looking out for something

Several glaciers flow into Croker Bay, and the waters are sufficiently calm to allow for some splendid kayak and Zodiac excursions. The bay is part of Devon Island, which is the largest uninhabited island in the world, about the size of Croatia. There are few better ways to explore the Northwest Passage than from a small boat, surrounded by glaciers, icebergs and, potentially, the occasional polar bear.

Three of our Zodiacs in Croker Bay

As we entered Croker Bay, some of us spotted a polar bear swimming alongside the ship. Following a swimming polar bear with your eyes is surprisingly difficult. Most of the animal disappears beneath the surface, leaving little more than its black snout bobbing up and down in the water. It looks almost too small to belong to the enormous creature beneath it.

The bear climbed onto an iceberg and then continued towards the shore, where we watched him scramble up a steep rocky slope. A little later, another bear appeared, making its way down a different mountain and into the water.

Polar bears are good climbers

Although they are the largest land carnivores on Earth, polar bears are classified as marine mammals.  They spend much of their lives on sea ice rather than on land, where they hunt their favourite prey: seals. The seals, in turn, feed on cod, cod feed on smaller marine organisms, and ultimately the whole Arctic food chain depends on tiny creatures living off phytoplankton. Plankton keeps the show on the road.

 

(Photo by Edwin)

Polar bears do not usually dash after their prey. Instead, they can wait for hours, sometimes even days, beside a seal's breathing hole, patiently waiting for dinner to surface. When it does, sharp claws and teeth are ready for the briefest of encounters. Seal meat also provides most of the moisture they need, so they rarely have to drink fresh water.

 

Polar bears are remarkably well adapted to the cold. A layer of blubber up to ten centimetres thick, combined with a two-layered coat of fur, keeps them warm. The outer hairs are hollow and help insulate the animal. Their insulation is so effective that they emit almost no detectable heat through their fur, making them hard to spot with infrared cameras. Their greatest thermal problem is not freezing but overheating. Being a walking, swimming fur coat has its disadvantages.

Croker Bay was named after Croker (an Irish politician) by Parry, a renowned Arctic Explorer who conducted the most successful expedition before Amundsen finally travelled the complete passage. Parry pioneered the use of cans for food preservation. However, his techniques were not infallible: in 1939 viable spores of certain heat-resistant bacteria were found in canned roast veal that had travelled with Parry to the Arctic Circle in 1824.

Beechey Island: Frozen in Time

The sea was a bit choppy when we went ashore at windswept Beechey Island, the westernmost point of our journey before turning back. The island is small, barely 2.5 kilometres across at its widest point.

 

Beechey Island

Going ashore

Before our landing, bear guards equipped with deterrents and guns were sent ashore to scout for polar bears and take up positions at strategic vantage points. It is wise to keep an eye out for anything that might eat you.

There are four lonely graves on Beechey Island.

Permafrost preserves the historic gravesites on Beechey Island.

This is where Sir John Franklin and his crew of 128 men spent the winter of 1845–46, after setting out from England aboard two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, to navigate and chart the Northwest Passage connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. For more than 400 years, European explorers had searched for this shortcut to the trading markets of Asia. Many expeditions met tragic ends, but none more famously than Franklin’s. We are not particularly fond of hero worship, but standing here, surrounded by nothing but barren land, ice and an enormous sky, does make you think.

 

Arctic poppy (Oreomecon radicata) on Beechey Island

What happened to Franklin and his crew has become the stuff of legend. Their fate prompted numerous search expeditions over the following decades, which uncovered bodies, personal belongings and handwritten notes suggesting starvation, hypothermia and scurvy. The once-popular theory that lead poisoning from the expedition’s tinned food was a major factor has since been strongly challenged. After all, during the same period, the average Londoner drinking piped water could ingest comparable amounts of lead. Inuit accounts, meanwhile, suggest that the surviving crew members split into small groups and eventually perished. What we know for certain is that none survived.

 

The wrecks of Erebus and Terror were finally discovered in 2014 and 2016, respectively, almost 170 years after the expedition disappeared.

 

Roald Amundsen eventually succeeded where Franklin had failed, making the first complete passage by ship between 1903 and 1906. He and his six companions spent three winters in the Arctic unable to push through the ice cover. Today, climate change is reducing the extent of sea ice, and in 2007 the Northwest Passage became navigable without the assistance of an icebreaker. Experts predict that by the end of the century, the passage could be navigable for as much as four months a year.

Returning across the rough seas of Beechey Island

Maxwell Bay

The weather improved once we were back aboard. Satellite images had shown that the sea ice in Maxwell Bay was beginning to break up, so we went to have a look and to test our ship’s ice-going capabilities. Having come this far into the Northwest Passage, it would have seemed rather rude not to give the ice a proper try.

Kayaking at Dundas Harbour

We arrived at Dundas Harbour in foggy weather, with visibility at a premium. The plan was to take the Zodiacs ashore, land, and explore the surroundings.

 

This part of Devon Island has been frequented by Inuit for centuries. They call it Talluruti, which in Inuktitut refers to a “woman’s chin with tattoos on it”, a reference to the lines and markings of the landscape, reminiscent of traditional Inuit facial tattoos. There are also remains of settlements dating back thousands of years, left by the Dorset people, as well as settlements of the Thule people dating from the 11th century.

 

An outpost was established here in 1924 as part of the Canadian government’s efforts to establish a presence in the High Arctic and curb foreign whaling and other activities. Several Inuit families were relocated from the mainland to Dundas Harbour, partly to strengthen Canada’s claim to Devon Island. Thirteen years later, however, they returned to the mainland. The station was briefly reopened in the late 1940s to maintain a patrol presence, but was eventually abandoned because of its remoteness and the difficult conditions created by the sea ice. It is now a ghost town, with a handful of weather-beaten shacks and no permanent inhabitants since 1951.

As always, an advance party, accompanied by bear guards, went ashore to assess the landing site. Their verdict was not encouraging: visibility was too poor to spot an approaching polar bear in time. In the Arctic, this is not the sort of weather report one argues with.

 

The bear guards nevertheless left some scientific equipment near the beach for a Canadian government research team expected to arrive by air and establish a nearby camp. We had been remarkably lucky with the weather so far, so perhaps the Arctic felt it was time to remind us who was in charge.

 

Instead of landing, a small group of us went kayaking in the slightly choppy sea, which fortunately calmed as time went by. And yes, that's me, in the rear.

Two walruses, on the right, frolicking in the icy water. 

 

And, naturally, just as it was time to leave, the clouds lifted. There, in glorious visibility, was a polar bear making its way towards the huts of Dundas Harbour.

 

Anyone who had been grumbling about the cancelled landing could now appreciate the wisdom of the decision. The bear, presumably, was less impressed by our expedition planning.

 

Long after we had returned home, we learned what had happened to the scientific team whose equipment our crew had helped to put ashore. They eventually had to abandon their camp and research project because of the persistent presence of polar bears and repeated attacks. During one of the incidents, they had to fire their weapon and wounded a bear, an event that subsequently triggers lengthy investigations and possibly fines.

 

So much for the tranquil Dundas Harbour.

A Balloon for the Weather

As we were going back into Baffin Bay, our ship launched a weather balloon. This caused considerably more excitement on board than one might expect from a latex bag full of scientific equipment.

 

Weather balloons are actually launched worldwide around 1,800 times every day. They carry radiosondes that measure temperature, humidity, pressure and wind, feeding the data into global weather-forecasting models. Most are launched from land, so the oceans and polar regions remain something of a meteorological blind spot. Launching them from ships helps fill the gap.

 

The balloon itself starts at about two metres across and expands to some eight metres as the air pressure drops, before finally bursting at around 30 kilometres above the ground. A parachute then sends the radiosonde gently back to Earth, where, with a bit of luck, someone finds it. Fewer than 20 per cent are ever recovered. There is a meteorologists’ joke that returning one may earn you “free weather for life.”

Our balloon, however, disappeared from view within about three seconds. Given the wind, the currents, and our location somewhere in the vast Arctic emptiness, it is probably safe to assume that our little contribution to global weather forecasting is now resting peacefully at the bottom of Baffin Bay.

 

Assuming, of course, that a polar bear did not get there first.

Crossing Baffin Bay

Sisimiut, Assaqutaq, Nipisat

After two nights crossing Baffin Bay on our way back from the Northwest Passage, arriving in Sisimiut felt almost like coming home. Not so long ago, even setting foot in Greenland had seemed like a rather distant dream.

 

With well over 5,500 residents, Sisimiut is Greenland’s second-largest and one of its fastest-growing towns. It is also the northernmost year-round ice-free port in the country. 

Colorful houses, asphalt roads and streetlights. Signs of industry and civilisation. People being busy.

 

For an excursion, I went by boat to the ghost town of Assaqutaq, where the last residents left more than 50 years ago. Some huts are occasionally maintained by young people during summer camps, giving the abandoned settlement a brief annual lease on life.

 

Gabi ventured to Nipisat, in company of a whale.

Nipisat Island is notable for its exceptionally well-preserved Saqqaq archaeological site. The island is now part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site “Aasivissuit – Nipisat: Inuit Hunting Ground between Ice and Sea”, which stretches all the way inland towards the Greenland Ice Sheet.

The visit can be wonderfully atmospheric. As for the archaeology, however, there are few spectacular wonders for the untrained eye. Mostly, one is looking at rocks and trying to imagine what the experts are seeing.

Nuuk

Nuuk is  the northernmost capital in the world, and also one of the smallest. It has just over 20,000 residents and three traffic lights.

Nuuk is a modern and pleasant city, and easy to explore on foot. After some architectural disasters of the 1960s, housing has become considerably more attractive and increasingly eco-friendly, with that unmistakable minimalist Danish touch.

A highlight is the boardwalk leading to the old harbour, with icebergs drifting through Nuup Kangerlua fjord. One of them seemed to have parked itself right in front of the old town, beyond the Egede Monument. One could almost suspect that the tourism office had hauled it in and tied it to the waterfront as an extra attraction.

 

Sermitsiaq mountain is Nuuk's most iconic landmark, incorporated into its flag and coat of arms.

Nuuk is also a sister city, among others, of Ushuaia. I thought that was a rather nice trait: two small capitals at opposite ends of the world, both keeping an eye on the poles.

*****

Other travelogues and photo-stories by Detlef:

• Lunae Montes - a journey to the source of the Nile, in 1980
• Pirates, Penguins, Patagonia (Voyage around Cap Horn)
• Operation Lifeline Sudan, the first years in pictures
• Duruusta Soomaaliya - The Somali Experience
• Chasing Aurora  (Beyond the Arctic Circle in Winter)
• Sacred Heights - Ol Doinyo Lengai (Tanzania)
• Mud Volcanoes and Candy Cane Mountains (Azerbaijan)
• New York - A Walk on the Wild Side
• Into the Midnight Sun (Journey to the North Cape)
• The Door to Hell and the Path to Health (Turkmenistan)
• Magic South (Southern Africa)
• Azhdahak (from Germany to Armenia, by road)
• Top of Mexico
• East Coast - West Coast, across the USA
• At the edge of the bog - where we live
• Rudaki, a Wedding and Proto-Urban Sarazm (Tajikistan)
• Off-Road - The Trail Is the Treasure (Eastern and Southern Africa)