… last night that I was looking forward to a decent night’s sleep, then once more I found myself being quite disappointed; I was so determined that I didn’t even attempt to watch a film when I went to bed, but even that didn’t help.
In something that is becoming rather too much of a regular occurrence these days, I was awake at 04:00 and needed a trip down the corridor. Back to sleep but I awoke once more at about 05:55. And that’s not the same as saying that I was ready to leave the bed. I did manage to beat the third alarm call – but only just.
After the medication I went up on deck to see what was happening, but I needn’t have bothered. Back in the open sea again and we are shrouded in fog and mist. There are a couple of offshore rocks and islands appearing through the gloom but that’s the best that I can do. I came back downstairs to my cabin in disgust.
Once breakfast was over, it was time to prepare ourselves for our little trip out. We are anchored offshore at the island of Uunartoq Qeqertaq.That’s Greenlandic for “hot place” so as you may expect, there is a hot tub here and many of our fellow passengers wanted a dip.
It’s an exciting place to be too, because it’s one of the world’s most recently discovered islands – dating from September 2005.
And if you are scratching your head wondering about that, let me explain. Until that date, it was “attached” to the mainland by a large ice-sheet and no-one knew for sure what was under the ice. But climate change is so rapid in this part of the world and the effects so devastating that the ice sheet finally receded at that date and we could see that underneath it was nothing but the sea.
What was much more interesting from my point of view was the fact that there was formerly an Inuit village here with many well-defined sod huts and several other features too.
Everyone shot off on the zodiacs to the shore and split up into several parties in order to go our separate ways. Those of us who were interested in archaeology headed off across the island towards the site.
We hadn’t gone far before we came to a grinding halt. There were several clearly-defined rows of pebbles all across the mountainside. These are quite clearly raised beaches and it shows just how depressed the island was under the weight of the ice-cap during the ice age, and how much isostatic rebound there has been.
It was quite noticeable that the Inuit settlement was entirely below the lowest line of raised beach, which shows that the latest major rebound must have been at least more than 600 years ago. It wasn’t until probably well into the 15th Century that the Inuit reached this far south.
There was however quite a cliff – probably about 20 feet – down from the settlements to the beach, and that’s quite possibly an indication that isostatic rebound is still taking place. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in Labrador a couple of years ago we saw evidence of rebound that has taken place within the last 70 years.
As for the site itself, our attention was drawn first of all to a row of single-family sod houses right on the cliff edge. These are unfortunately eroding away as the cliff face crumbles underneath them.
Set farther back was a row of multi-family sod houses, some with a clearly-defined dividing wall and one that even had two entrances. The stone lintels for that one were still present and almost in place.
What was surprising though was that even though we are in the tundra, each site was surrounded by a complete mass of wild flowers that resembled buttercups. All of the sod walls, part of the interiors and areas that were probably refuse pits were covered in them.
This is an indication of how much refuse each of these houses had accumulated during its occupancy and how fertile the soil must be at those spots. The thick and high sod walls would also help to contribute to this too.
There were plenty of other signs of occupancy too. We saw a variety of stone food caches in various states of repair, and several tent rings from Inuit summer camps in this location.
A square low wall only one stone high was there too. speculation was that this was the base of a more modern timber building of some description. There were several such wooden cabins on the island.
What must have been the most interesting find was the presence of several Inuit graves – low stone walls covered with slabs. Most had fallen down but one was still intact and we could see that there were human remains inside that one.
Someone else saw what he reckoned was the remains of a Norse longhouse but when we all went off to look, he could not find it again.
By now it was time to return to the ship so we had to abandon our exploration, which meant that I didn’t have time to visit the more modern graveyard. I would be interested to see what that was all about and who might be in it.
After lunch we had a series of lectures. Our Greenland guide gave us a discussion on farming in Greenland, after which there was a lecture on pre-historical archaeology in the High Arctic which was interesting.
There was then a 15-minute break before a concert given by our musicians Charlie and Nive. I went down to my room where I fell asleep, only to wake myself up by snoring too loudly.
The concert was short but very interesting and I had quite a talk with Nive afterwards She actually came from Uummannaq she was able to identify the girl who had posed for me there last year.
Tea was rather catastrophic. There must have been a problem in the kitchen because the food took an age to come to the table. Almost as if half of the kitchen was out of action. And they kept trying to serve me things that I couldn’t eat. Something of a disaster that all was.
And I had an argument with a fellow passenger – all about the Norse. He had been listening to far too much of the lectures given by our historian and to far too much of the newspaper speculation of 70 years ago. But things have changed dramatically with the discovery of new material and the application of new techniques. What was the current way of thinking back then is no longer appropriate.
Bu now the lights in the public rooms are being turned out. Someone is obviously hinting that it’s time for me to go. And while I’ve been loitering around here ,the ship, having gone up a fjord, reversed back down and has now turned round about 45° to starboard. She’s switched the engines onto tick-over and dropped anchor so it looks as if we are here for the night.
So I’ll go to bed. Tomorrow we will be landing at one of the destinations that is at the top of my wish list. That is, if the weather lets us.
