Tag Archives: ellesmere island

Saturday 20th July 2019 – HVALSEY!!!!

Today was a really exciting day in which a great deal was accomplished. Another one of my lifetime destinations has been reached.

But it wasn’t quite like that at the start. I awoke, just for a change, at 05:00 and couldn’t go back off to sleep. But that’s not to say that I was up and about very lively. I did manage to beat the third alarm but only just, and staggered into an early breakfast looking something like the Death of Nelson. I’m not feeling myself these days which is just as well, because it’s a disgusting habit.

After breakfast I went back to my room and relaxed for a very short while before we were called to the boats, and then we set off for Hvalso.

Hvalso is better-known by its Norse name – Hvalsey – and is internationally famous as having probably the best-preserved Norse ruins in North America. It’s long-been my ambition to come here and this is probably one of the main reasons why I’m here on this voyage.

There are the remains of a magnificent stone house with all of the outbuildings and other offices. No-one can really tell the date of when it was first constructed but it was expanded over a period of several centuries culminating in some work as late as the very early 15th Century, towards the very end of the Norse settlement in Greenland.

Not only that, there are the remains of a magnificent Norse church from maybe the 13th Century and which are quite intact considering that it has been abandoned for 6 centuries or so. Highlight of the church though is an incredible arched window of a type that I have never seen before in Norse architecture. I had no idea that they knew the principle of arches and keystones. And what is more, it is still intact and that is even more of a surprise.

Another claim to fame is that the last written event in Norse Greenland took place here. The Norse here were never very into writing so written records are … errr … scant. But in 1408 here is a record of a wedding that took place in the church between a local girl and an Icelandic man. And after that, there is no written word that ever came out of Greenland until the 18th Century and a new breed of settlers.

The fate of the Norse is unknown and any suggestion is mere speculation. However we can rule out that they returned to Iceland or Norway despite what some people suggest. While it’s certainly true that some did – the husband at the wedding was recorded as being in Iceland a couple of years later – they would not have sent out search parties to Greenland during the next few centuries to look for any Norse survivors had they all returned to Iceland or Norway.

And suggestions that they returned because of land inheritances in the rest of Norse Europe becoming more available after the Black Death is quite clearly absurd when you consider that the Black Death took place 70 years (or three generations) previously.

And even if that were the case, it’s by no means certain that every last man or woman would leave. We’ve seen for ourselves that when the Inuit at Grise Fiord were offered the chance to return to their homeland after just 20 or so years and leave the desperately inhospitable environment of Ellesmere island, a great many of them chose to cling on.

The church here at Hvalsey was built on the site of an earlier, smaller church and one of the walls was built over part of the old graveyard. Consequently as the bodies rotted away and the graves caved in, the wall on that side sagged dangerously but has now been stabilised.

While I was there I took the opportunity to go for a wander around with the geologist. I’d been attracted to the fact that in the walls of the church were several blocks of pink granite, quite unlike the main stone in the area, that has been so well-cut that there was not a single tool mark upon them. The general opinion, from our archaeologist that they had been cut by hand seemed most unlikely to me.

However, we soon found what we had been looking for. Not too far away, a bed of granite had at some time infiltrated the metamorphic rock and at one point there was a twin-fault line that passed right through it. The granite had been cleaved by Nature on both sides to absolute perfection and there was clear evidence that some of this rock had been removed.

So that answered my question far more easily than I had imagined. My opinion of this archaeologist is going downhill quite rapidly, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

We also had a kind-of stone corral for horses, several foundations that looked as if they might have base of medieval tithe-barns and warehouses, and a load of stone walls, clearly man-made but using some of the heaviest stones that you could imagine.

There was also something that looked very much like an Inuit grave or cache but this was disputed, and Nature had provided the site with all kinds of wild herbs that would have been a boon to any Norse chef.

One thing that Yours Truly uncovered that had been missed by the excavators of the site was some writing chiseled into the lintel over the doorway into the church. Anyone who knows anything about European architecture of the middle period of the Second Millennium will know that builders had a habit of carving the date into the lintel. That was what I had been looking for.

But as for what the writing might be, It seemed to be something like …CLL … and the rest was covered in a heavy growth of lichen that was clearly the original growth. Obviously it’s against the Law to scrape away any of the lichen so I shall have to leave that to the experts. But it doesn’t seem to suggest any kind of Roman numeral that I might be able to identify

While all of this was going on, we were overflown by an eagle. And there was a fisherman out there catching the cod that were leaping about all over the place. It was all quite lively. What wasn’t lively though was the farm further down the valley. Greenland has 37 farms, of which 35 are working. However this one is one of the two that isn’t. It ceased operation in 2006 when the owner retired and it was bought by people who use it just as a weekend retreat.

Back on the ship and lunch, by which time we had sailed to the town of Qaqortoq. This is the largest town in south Greenland, with about 3,000 inhabitants and our stop for this afternoon.

A guide took us around the town on a guided tour and showed us the sights. We were walking around for about 90 minutes and saw plenty of things, but nothing that I would call “startling”, except for the only public fountain in Greenland.

Somewhere round by the river we fell in with a couple of little girls aged about 7 or 8 or something. They were proudly displaying a bottle in which were several tiny little fish about an inch or so long. Obviously following in the Inuit traditions There were some young teenage boys leaping off a high cliff into a freezing cold lake. Rather them than me.

We finished up in the modern church, built in 1973, and had a tour around the local supermarket to see the prices in there. Not quite as outrageous as I was expecting compared to Northern Greenland.

The museums were interesting, especially the Norse museum where there were remarks that seem to confirm some of my ideas, and then we went for a coffee at the local hotel.

A little later, I took Strawberry Moose for a walk around the town and for a few photo opportunities, which he enjoyed immensely.

Tea tonight was a vegetable biryani which was probably among the best that I have ever eaten. It was totally delicious although I would have liked it to be more spicy, as you might expect. I can’t be doing with this North American idea of spicy food.

In the evening, while everyone was watching a film, I was typing my notes when Ben the Chef came over for a chat. A huge mountain of a man he was born in Brisbane but came to the UK when he was 3 and lived in Liphook and then in Wiltshire. We chatted about quite a few things for quite some time.

He told me that one day soon we are to have a banquet of local delicacies. He had been ashore today and bought a load of whale meat and things like that for us to try. And when I say “us”, I don’t mean that I will be participating. It all sounds pretty revolting to me and anyway I’m a vegan, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

So I’m now off to bed. No chance of an early night with so much going on, but I’d be happy if I could just sleep through until when the alarm goes off. One of these days I might just manage it, but I’m not holding my breath.

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Sunday 16th September 2018 – JUST BY WAY OF A CHANGE …

*************** THE IMAGES ***************

There are over 3,000 of them and due to the deficiencies of the equipment they all need a greater or lesser amount of post-work. And so you won’t get to see them for a while.

You’ll need to wait til I return home and get into my studio and start to go through them. And it will be a long wait. But I’ll keep you informed after I return.
***************

… I fell asleep last night as soon as my head touched the pillow.

But not as long as I would have liked because by 04:00 I was awake again. Clearly my guilty conscience is acting up again.

However I did manage to drop off (figuratively, not literally) again until the strident tone of first David Bowie and then Billy Cotton dragged me out of my stinking pit.

We then had the usual morning performance and then off to grab a coffee and watch the sun rise over Disko Bay. Beautiful it was too.

Two of the crew came to join me for breakfast but they couldn’t stay long as the team meeting had been brought forward. So I ended up mainly on my own – the usual state of affairs these days seeing as I seem now to have upset almost everyone on board ship one way or another.

This morning’s entertainment was a ride out in the zodiacs. We’re right on the edge of Disko Bay where there’s a huge glacier that calves off into the water. The trouble is though that there’s a huge subterranean terminal moraine at the head of the bay and the icebergs are too deep to pass over it.

And so they have to wait until either they melt enough to pass over the moraine or else there’s a collision from behind that forces them to capsize so that they might float over the top

Consequently the bay is packed with all kinds of icebergs waiting for the chance to leave. And then they head north on the Gulf Stream until that peters out and they are picked up by the Labrador Current that floats them back south again past Ellesmere island, Baffin Island, Labrador and Newfoundland and on into the Atlantic for their rendezvous with the Titanic.

But if you want to see them, don’t wait too long. Global warming is such that the glacier here is breaking off and calving at 35 metres PER DAY. It won’t be very long before the glacier grounds out and then there won’t be any icebergs at all. It will all just slowly melt away.

However, I was feeling dreadful.

I’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that there have been times on this journey where i really haven’t feel like going off on an outing, and today was the worst that it got. I was flat out on the bed with all of my issues to comfort me. I wasn’t going anywhere.

But our team was last out and so by the time that we were called I was able to at least struggle downstairs to the changing room and dress for the weather.

It made me feel a little better, being out in the fresh air, and we did have a really delightful morning out, weaving in and out of the icebergs in the bay. Some were large, some were small, some were high, and they were all spectacular.

We had to return for someone who had missed the boat but once we were back out we stayed out for more than 90 minutes, freezing to death in the cold weather. But the view – it was totally spectacular.

Half of the boat was missing at lunchtime. They had gone on into town for restaurant food like Mooseburgers, walrus sausage and the like, at the invitation of the Tour Director. “Running short of supplies, are we?” The cynic inside me mused.

I stayed aboard though and was accompanied to lunch by the garrulous lady from a week or so ago and, true to form, I struggled to fit a word in edgeways.

I hadn’t changed at lunchtime because we would be first off in the afternoon. Heading for the town of Ilulissat on the side of the bay.

It took an age to reach there though. Our rather timid captain didn’t want to approach too closely for fear of the ice, so were were about 7 or 8 nautical miles offshore. That’s about 12-14 kms out so you can imagine the journey that we had. And in the freezing cold too.

But judging by the mass of blood on an ice floe that we passed, our passage must have disturbed a polar bear’s lunch break.

I can’t now remember if Ilulissat is the second or third-largest city in Greenland … "it’s the third-largest" – ed … but I do remember that it has a population of about 4,500.

Another claim to fame of the town is that it possesses the most northerly football pitch that I have yet to encounter, with the “grandstand” being a large and rather solid outcrop of rock.

There was a shuttle bus running around the town to take us to different places, but I went on foot for a good look around. Amongst the exciting finds that I made was an old DAB Silkeborg bus – a type that I haven’t so far encountered. After all, it’s been years since I’ve been to Denmark.

There were several memorials to various individuals and events and as my Danish isn’t up to much, I shall have to make further enquiries about them.

The docks was the place to go so I found the bridge where there was a good spec and took a few photos, including one of a chain suspension pipe – not a bridge.

There was also an exciting find where they had been widening the road. They had been drilling down into the rock in order to weaken it to break it off, and the drill bit had become stuck. And there it was, still embedded in the rock even today.

The boardwalk was the place to go, though. Up past the shops, the petrol station and the football ground. And then past the field where they kept the sled dogs.

Everyone whom I met told me how far it was, but I kept on going on foot despite the offer of lifts; and had a really enjoyable walk. I was really striding out now and it seemed that my worries of the morning had long-gone.

There were some antique sod-house ruins on the way past. And I wasable to identify them, much to the delight of our archaeologist. And some really stunning views too. But I climbed right up to the top with Strawberry Moose who had come along for the day out.

He had his photo taken on many occasions, including a few by me, and we all relaxed and chatted at the top for quite a while.

On the way back we missed our trail and had to retrace our steps for a while. I picked up one of the staff who accompanied me and she pointed out the UNESCO heritage sign as well as a few other things such as the home of the explorer Knud Rasmussen.

The dogs took exception to our leaving the area however and set up a howling cacophony of noise as we passed by.

Back in town, I had quite a laugh. A couple of young girls had bought a tub of ice cream (in this weather!) and, not having any spoons, were scooping it out with their fingers. One girl was rather timid but the other let me photograph her.

Our departure from the port was delayed as a Danish warship called, would you believe, Knut Rasmussen wanted to enter (he wasn’t bothered about the ice). And when we eventually managed to leave the port we were treated to the sight of a couple of men butchering three seals on an ice-floe.

It made me wonder about the earlier blood.

There were whales out here – we could hear them – but not see them. And we froze to death yet again as we raced back to the ship to miss the storm that was building up.

The Naughty Table was rather subdued tonight at tea. We had a new member who had been everywhere and done everything, and wasted no time in letting us all know, even to the extent of destroying the stories of another new member.

In the meantime, Yulia the bar attendant had seen His Nibs on the way out of the boat earlier today and lay in wait for a photo-bombing session.

Sherman was on the guitar later and we all had a good evening listening and joining in when we knew the words.

But I’m thoroughly exhausted so I’m off to bed.

The photos can wait until morning.

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Wednesday 12th September 2018 – WHAT A …

*************** THE IMAGES ***************

There are over 3,000 of them and due to the deficiencies of the equipment they all need a greater or lesser amount of post-work. And so you won’t get to see them for a while.

You’ll need to wait til I return home and get into my studio and start to go through them. And it will be a long wait. But I’ll keep you informed after I return.
***************

… horrible night!

About 00:45 when I finally settled down to sleep. And something awoke me at 03:30 – no idea what it was – and that was how I stayed, drifting in and out until the alarm went off at 06:00.

A beautiful morning with some lovely streaks of light. Several icebergs and a couple of islands away astern too. Have we reached Greenland already?

As a true measure of my popularity I took breakfast alone this morning. It seems that I’m the rattlesnake in the Lucky Dip again. I wonder who I’ve upset today. And more importantly, how?

At least I managed to have a chat with Jerry Kobalenko about Labrador. Apparently I can find out much more information by looking in his book, “obtainable in the gift shop”. I suppose that my explorations are pretty much small beer compared to the routes that he has travelled.

My morning caught up with me though, and pretty quickly too. By about 08:45 I was flat out on the bed and there I stayed until about 09:45. Dead to the world. The only trouble with this though is that I feel worse now then I did before I crashed out.

At least there was a nice view of Greenland through the fog and that might cheer me up a little. An iceberg went sailing past at one point, hard up against the Greenland coast and so I went out to take a photo or two.

There was a lecture on “the Vikings” – not “the Norse” – and Latonia started completely on the wrong foot, telling everyone that Lindisfarne was on the north-west coast of England.

Another discussion that we had was on the failed Adolphus Greely expedition of the 1880s. And what annoyed me about this was that we were just 30 miles or so from where they came to grief and there was no proposal whatever to take us there.

With all of the disturbances and failures that we have had with our voyage, I would have thought that they would have done what they could in order to make our journey more exciting and instead of this messing about in Lancaster Sound, we could have come up here instead.

I’m dismayed about all of this.

At lunch I sat with Natalie and Deanna and we chatted about last night’s entertainment. And good that it was too – the chat as well as the entertainment. I threw in a few tales from Carry On Matron too while I was at it.

By now we had arrived off the coast of Etah in Greenland. This is the last place on our list – the farthest north at 78°18′, 1300kms (750 miles) from the North Pole and I was half-expecting to be turned away from there too.

But we clambered aboard the zodiacs and off we went up the fjord. It’s long, narrow and also shallow so the ship couldn’t go too far up there. Instead we were treated to a 45-minute zodiac trip. And it’s just as well that we did because we went past three herds of musk-oxen.

We stopped to take photos of them. The best estimate is that there were about 20 of them in total.

Etah was the farthest-north permanent settlement in this part of the Arctic. The first Europeans to visit here were John Ross and William Parry in 1818 and in whose shoes we have been travelling.

Ross called them his “Arctic Highlanders” and attempted to signify his peaceful intentions towards them by holding aloft a drawing of an olive branch. Which considering that there were no trees in this part of Greenland, never mind an olive tree, was a rather strange thing to do.

After several minutes of bewilderment on both sides, the holding aloft of a basket of presents did the trick.

Etah really was right on the limit of what was possible in the way of permanent settlement and even in the late 19th Century the inhabitants were just clinging on in there, declining rapidly in numbers. Two separate expeditions of Isaac Hayes, in 1854 and 1861, noted the rapid decline in numbers of people living there, comparing the latter with the former.

There are the remains and mounds of a considerable number of huts here, and one that I inspected still had the furniture and the cast-iron stove in there. These were apparently from a failed attempt to resettle the area in comparatively modern times.

I found a considerable number of pottery shards scattered about and in the absence of a measure, I recorded the length using the camera zoom lens.

Another thing that we saw were bones. from the odd bone even down to several skeletons – mainly of musk-oxen but of other stuff too. More caribou horns than you could shake a stick at.

Once the beach area had been cleared, we could walk down to the glacier.

It’s called the Brother John Glacier, named by the celebrated and famous (or infamous) American explorer Elisha Kent Kane – he of the Margaret Fox and spirit-rapping fame – in honour of his brother

It looks quite close but it was actually not far short of three kilometres. And on the way down there on the path flanked by the polar bear guards we encountered an Arctic Hare watching us from the rocks.

Strawberry Moose had a really good time there. I took a few photos of him, and several other people insisted on photographing him. It does his ego a great deal of good to be the star in other people’s photographs.

Including aerial photography. There was someone filming the glacier with a drone and His Nibs features on some of the film.

I did some serious photography myself. There’s a couple on board who are making some kind of profile of themselves for some kind of modelling assignment, and I used their cameras to take a few pics of them

On the way back I went the long way around. A lap of the lake and it wasn’t as easy as it seems. Not only was it all “up and down” there were several piles of loose scree everywhere and I had to negotiate them clutching a moose. It wasn’t easy.

Another thing that I had to negotiate was a woman lying prone on the path. Apparently she was smelling the Arctic plants, so I was told.

And then we had the stepping stones over the river. That was exciting clutching His Nibs.

All in all, the walk back around the lake from the glacier was interesting and exhilarating. And probably the first time ever that Golden Earring has been played at Etah.

One thing that I did do – you might think is bizarre – is to take off my boots and socks and go for a paddle in the Arctic Ocean. Well, although I intended to, I went in quicker and deeper than I intended due to a wet slippery rock upon which I was standing.

Absolutely taters it was – far colder than in that river in Labrador this year. I must be out of my mind.

Hot tea was served and I was so busy talking that I almost missed my zodiac back to the ship. And they waited so long for me that it had grounded and it took a while and several people to refloat it.

But that wasn’t as bad as one of the other drivers. He had struck a submerged rock in his zodiac and broken his propellor.

There was a storm brewing in the distance and it was touch and go as to whether we would make it to the ship before we were caught in it. Of course, we were soundly beaten and arrived back at the ship freezing, soaking wet and covered in snow.

In my room I had a shower and a clothes-wash, and then after the resumé meeting I went for tea. With my American friends again. She’s a former gymnast and did in fact judge the gymnastics at the Olympic Games;

Tonight there was a Disco – a Viking-themed one and although I didn’t do all that much, I had spent some time getting His Nibs prepared for the show and he won a prize, which cheered me up greatly.

I had several chats, several dances and the like but, as expected, His Nibs had more success with the ladies than I ever do.

They are still dancing and Disco-ing in there. I’m writing up my notes and ready to go to bed. I’ll go for my midnight walk to check the compass and the twilight, even though we are now ahead one hour seeing as we are officially in Greenland.

There’s a pile of the younger ones in the hot tub where, apparently, they have been for some considerable time, enjoying the water and also the Arctic twilight which is magnificent tonight

Tonight’s binnacle heading is 144°, which is slightly south of south-east. So that’s it then.

We didn’t make 80°N or any of the farthest-north outposts of Arctic exploration, or even Annoatok (the farthest-northerly seasonal settlement which is only 20 miles further north than here and where Frederick Cook set out on his alleged attempt at the North Pole), but having hit John Ross’s farthest north we are on our way home. And I’m so disappointed that we have accomplished so little of what I wanted to do.

I set my foot on Ellesmere island and also at Etah, but the rest has been a big anti-climax.

You can’t win a coconut every time but just once every now and again would do fine for me.

I’m off to bed.

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Monday 10th September 2018 – ELLESMERE ISLAND …

*************** THE IMAGES ***************

There are over 3,000 of them and due to the deficiencies of the equipment they all need a greater or lesser amount of post-work. And so you won’t get to see them for a while.

You’ll need to wait til I return home and get into my studio and start to go through them. And it will be a long wait. But I’ll keep you informed after I return.
***************

… at last. 76°07”N already and pushing on towards the 80°N mark. And who knows? With the progress that we’ve made overnight we might even make it too.

I took several photos of the midnight twilight too, but how do you take photos from a rolling ship into a fog with a zoom lens in the half-light? There’s no chance whatever of taking a really sharp photo that does justice to the view.

Just for a change, last night we had another Sleep Of The Dead. I wasn’t sure about this though for just after I had settled down my neighbour returned to his room, from somewhere I have absolutely no idea where, and decided to switch on the TV. That made more noise than I was wanting so it’s a mystery to me how I managed to drop off to sleep.

And also a mystery to me how I managed to stay out so long. A deep sleep too and my sleep patterns might be slowly starting to return because I was off on a nocturnal ramble last night.

And in something that will come as a surprise to regular readers of this rubbish, the first since I’ve been on board ship. However, I’ll spare you the gory details. After all, you’re all probably eating your breakfast right now.

While we are on the subject of breakfast … "well, one of us is" – ed … I had my breakfast in the company of an elderly woman. Now I know that I can talk … "surely not! Perish the thought!" – ed … but I’m afraid that I wasn’t any kind of match at all. It’s not very often that I have to admit defeat, but here I am today …

One thing though. Judging by the description of the arrangements that she has made in her room in order to accommodate her affairs, I can see that she is a kindred spirit.

And after the warning that we were given last night about the weather, I was half-expecting to find the dining room crockery scattered all over the floor and smashed into smithereens, but nothing of the sort. Something of a false alarm that was, I reckon.

Can’t have been more than a Storm Force 8

Somewhere over there in that vicinity is the settlement of Grise Fiord, Canada’s farthest-north civilian settlement. It’s an artificially-created settlement and it’s really a political thing. There’s this idea about the Arctic islands of “use it or lose it” and with the oil and mineral discoveries in the Arctic, possession of territory is of vital importance in order to give a country a right of claim.

And so the settlement here on Ellesmere Island, to confirm a claim to the territory.

We had a discussion about marine mammals in the Arctic, and I learn quite a lot, despite not really having a great deal of interest in animal life.

Chatting to the crew a little later, the question of the good sleep soon resolved itself. Apparently I’m lodged right over where the anchor is and when we are stationary during the night, they haul it up as first light, which is about 05:15 or so.

Last night though, we kept moving so there was no anchor-hauling at all – hence the silence.

We had a kind of multi-workshop thing going on this morning. about 7 or 8 different ones, and I wanted to go to about half-a-dozen. In the end, I settled for the one on the Inuit language and the one on photography.

And while the language one was interesting and I can now write my own name and those of my friends (both of them!) in Inuit, the photography one was in a sense a little disappointing because while the leader was teaching us how to organise and archive our images, I find that he uses the same technique as I do – albeit on a much higher level due to the nature and amount of his work.

Lunch was a mystery to me. I sat with Lois the Inuit guide and a guy who had been with me at the photography lecture. He gave me the names of a few freeware programs that are available that might help with my image-editing plans, and I’ll look those up when I return home, if I ever do.

But it wasn’t without its excitement because, having finished the lectures early, I went down to my room for a quick 5 minutes rest and awoke 20 minutes later. right out, I was. Definitely feeling the pain, I am.

This afternoon we had a quick briefing and then we were off.

We’re at South Cape Fiord and peninsula which is on Ellesmere Island. Although this is one of the most southerly points of the island, the farthest north point of this island itself is one of the farthest north masses of land in the world. So we are now really and properly in the High Arctic – nothing north of this island except the North Pole.

The ride out to the shore was much calmer than yesterday’s ride, and it was walmer too, so I brought His Nibs for a day out.

And he proved far more popular than I ever am – loads of people stopped to talk to him and have their photos taken with him, and I suppose that he enjoyed every moment of it.

The beach here is very interesting. With the land being heavily depressed by glaciers in the past and slowly liberating itself from the heavy weight, it’s rebounding. Our resident geologist reckons that he has counted as many as 10 raised beaches which were formerly washed by the tide at one point; And with global warming melting the glaciers even more, who knows how many are now submerged yet again?

There were still plenty of glaciers to see, and plenty of icebergs drifting into and out of the fjord. And while it didn’t quite have the same effect as yesterday’s leisurely stroll in the blizzard, I reckoned that it was one of the most beautiful places on earth.

One of the most wild too if you ask me.

We had our polar bear guards here again and I found myself in trouble … "yet again" – ed … for straying out beyond the bear cordon. If you disappear beyond the cordon, the guards can’t see you or what might be creeping up on you. There have been enough encounters, some of them rather terminal and not for the animal either, with people wandering carelessly out of sight of others in the High Arctic.

But I stood on a ridge overlooking the sea for quite a while admiring the icebergs, of which there were plenty, and taking photos of our ship silhouetted against the tidal glacier across the fiord. It was all rather spell-binding and somewhat emotional.

Not as emotional as it might have been for the passengers on one of the zodiacs. A fuel line burst and they were stranded in mid-fjord. A rescue party had to go out to recover them and tow them in.

Three hours was the time that had been allotted for our visit ashore. And in that time I had done about 108% of my daily activity scrambling over the rocks, and I was well-nigh exhausted after my exertions. I was warm too. All of my jackets were unzipped and I had rolled my hat back. I’d have divested myself of a few layers had it been practical.

There were some strange animal tracks that i encountered. Rather like a trident with a very long shaft. No-one could decide if they were lemming or bird. Bird was the general opinion but there were a lot of them and they walked for miles so I’lm not sure.

One of my fellow passengers is a Japanese guy. He doesn’t speak much English but he’s certainly adventurous. He started out on our series of walks by staying on the beach but as time has progressed he’s walking further and further along in order to enjoy the whole experience. I bumped into him up on the high ridge.

You won’t believe this either but as I neared the coast, with a beautiful view of the fjord and the icebergs, I disappeared into a fold in the ground. And when I emerged, one of the guards on the hill shouted to me “did you see it? Did you see it?”

Apparently in just that simple moment when I was out of the view of the sea one of the big icebergs had capsized. And I had missed it!

More tea was being served up on shore so I took advantage of it. And once again, it went cold in an instant.

Aaron the historian was in charge of our zodiac taking us back to the ship and he proposed a sightseeing visit to the capsized iceberg. Everyone voted in favour so off we shot.

Magnificent it was too, especially the bright blue bits which had until 20 minutes ago been under water. It’s hard to believe that all of this is rainwater or snow that fell to earth thousands of years ago long before there was any pollution.

And I can add that today is probably the first time ever that Fairport Convention and Liege And Lief has been played on Ellesmere Island.

I had a shower, a coffee and little relax for a few minutes and then came out to do some work. But ended up assisting in a promotional “arctic dip” sales pitch run by Michael and Breanna. That was quite fun, I’ll tell you.

For tea I was invited to sit with my American friends and a couple of others, and I ended up being involved in a silly argument. I’d noticed the other day that they had said on board ship that they need to bring the Inuit in more to benefit from the economic advantages of tourism, and yet the ship was crewed by Filipinos and Indonesians.

I commented on this fact this evening, and then was treated to a very long diatribe as to why this should not be allowed. Lots of colonial paternailsim in their argument (such as “it’s wrong to take them out of their environment” – which means that it’s right to leave them in despair and on welfare) but that wasn’t the point.

As they say, irony is not the strong suit of most North Americans, and this clearly was the case here,

There was a film later on – “Martha From The Cold” by Martha Flaherty, grand-daughter of Robert Flaherty, he of the Nanook of the North fame.

It concerns the resettlement of the Inuit from Northern Quebec to Grise Fiord and the injustices that surrounded it. Of course, it’s almost word-for-word the same story as that of the Inuit, Innu and Métis in Labrador, but I was interested just the same;

We had a round-table discussion afterwards and of course I interjected the story of Williams Harbour and Black Tickle to show that the policy is still going on, and much more insidiously too.

In the end there were just four of us left. John Houston the animator, Yours Truly, some Korean guy and a girl. The Korean had a large whisky in front of him and the further down the glass he went, the more animated he became;

In the end, there were just the girl and me remaining.
“He was sailing close to the wind” said the girl.
“Sailing?” I retorted. “He’s positively steaming!”

At midnight I went off for my evening walk. Outside we have another Midnight Arctic Twilight and 105° on the binnacle. However we are stationary so I might have some sleep tonight.

We can always live in hope, I suppose.

And I’ll sort out the photos tomorrow. I’m off to bed.

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