The three bundled up figures, puny in opposition to the vastness of miles of snow, trudged towards a gap they’d lower into the ice.
Their sled was parked close by, and the woolly canines that pulled it had been huddled on the frozen floor, barking for meals.
Man and canine needed to transfer fastidiously out right here. In some locations the ice was three ft thick, in others, it cracked like crystal.
This trio of Greenlanders, and their hungry, howling sled canines, had been following a convention — ice fishing in a glacier fjord — that members of the Inuit neighborhood have been doing for eons. And this second out within the clear, white snow was a quiet respite from a world altering round them at dizzying velocity.
One of many bundled up Greenlanders — Laila Sandgreen — had simply employed 10 Filipinos to work at her cafe.
Her husband, Hans Sandgreen, a hardcore ice fishermen of few phrases, is investing in a rising fleet of pricy snowmobiles for the household vacationer enterprise, which faces increasingly competitors.
Their son, David, was accepted to a prime flight economics program in Denmark. However he just lately dropped out, saying he “missed the snow, the fishing and the looking.”
Of their city on the west coast of Greenland, the Sandgreens store at well-stocked grocery shops and have high-speed web, a pleasant home and an exquisite kitchen. However every of them nonetheless is aware of the best way to shoot a gun, steer a sled and pores and skin a seal.
“I be happy out right here,” Ms. Sandgreen stated. “I don’t have a telephone dinging in my pocket.”
Their household story is, in a method, Greenland’s story. It’s a spot making an attempt to carry on tight to its tradition whereas racing ahead into a brand new period, and Greenlanders say they don’t wish to have to decide on both/or.
Even earlier than President Trump catapulted this huge island, the world’s largest, into the information by suggesting that america take it over, change has been sweeping by way of.
New worldwide airports are opening, immigrants are streaming in and the island’s deeply buried minerals are attracting feverish curiosity. There are extra inns, extra vehicles — and extra cruise ships disgorging hundreds of vacationers to throng tidy, windy streets in the hunt for that good sealskin memento or iceberg tour.
All this modification is changing into a take a look at of how intact Greenland’s distinctive heritage will emerge, and it connects with the island’s politics, too.
A recent opinion poll discovered that 85 p.c of Greenlanders don’t wish to be a part of america. But many individuals stated in interviews that they didn’t wish to preserve counting on fishing and Denmark without end, both.
Denmark colonized the island greater than 300 years in the past and nonetheless controls the police, the courts, international affairs and protection points. More and more, Greenlanders are pushing for full independence and their very own commerce relationships.
Past that, local weather change is remaking the panorama. Each Greenlander has his or her personal story in regards to the rainier summers, the thinner ice, the glaciers melting and the permafrost getting squishier, which typically collapses a highway. The entire island is hotter and extra accessible.
Ilulissat, the place the Sandgreens stay, is an efficient place to witness all this. The city’s icebergs are attracting a surge of vacationers and out of doors labor to serve them. An area legend, backed up by Danish geologists, is that the particular iceberg that sank the Titanic might need floated south from round right here.
All this development and a spotlight brings its challenges. Small communities on the island’s fringes proceed to wither away, as individuals gravitate towards larger cities like Ilulissat the place there may be work.
Within the capital, Nuuk, which appears to be like like somewhat Danish city and which just lately opened a formidable new worldwide airport, Greenlanders are having the identical massive conversations about the best way to navigate the transitions.
“We’re actually good at adapting to new environments,” stated Qupanak Olsen, a champion of Indigenous rights who lives in Nuuk and was simply elected to Greenland’s Parliament this month.
Mrs. Olsen has stepped away from her profession as a mining engineer to change into probably the most highly effective voices on Greenlandic tradition. She travels across the island making 59-second videos celebrating Greenlandic language, Greenlandic meals, Greenlander beliefs and her personal “private decolonization course of.”
She informed a narrative about how, when she was making a video final 12 months in a distant neighborhood, a person got here as much as her to thank her for honoring Greenlandic traditions. He shortly apologized for bugging her, saying he had no training and that he was “only a hunter.”
“Simply a hunter? How are you going to say you’re simply a hunter,” she remembered pondering.
The brief change bothered her for weeks. She finally tracked down his quantity and informed him over the telephone: “By no means, ever say you’re only a hunter. You’re crucial individuals in our tradition. I’m right here right now, and my ancestors survived hundreds of years, due to you.”
For a very long time, Greenlanders acquired all the pieces they wanted from the animals they killed. A lot of the island has little vegetation. There are nearly no bushes. Whale pores and skin is a wealthy supply of vitamin C, and by consuming it, Greenlanders held off ailments like scurvy.
Fishing stays the most important trade, and lots of Greenlanders generate profits off it. Even individuals with white collar jobs, like Jens Peter Lange, a dental technician in Ilulissat, nonetheless go ice fishing within the fjords and stalk reindeer (known as caribou elsewhere in North America).
Speaking to him reveals the injuries of Danish colonialism.
“Oh, man, I used to get into so many fights once I was learning in Denmark,” he stated. “The Danish man is at all times above the Greenland man — at all times.”
He recounted a scandal from the Sixties and Seventies, uncovered solely just lately, when Danish doctors inserted IUDs into Greenlandic girls with out them figuring out they’d been fitted with contraception. He shared tales of being handed over for jobs in favor of Danes with fewer {qualifications}.
“We have to eliminate them,” he stated, swiping a thick hand by way of the air.
On Ilulissat’s snowbound hillsides, new inns are popping up and new faces showing: the Filipino cafe employees, a Czech waitress, French, Swiss and Australian local weather researchers. Ilulissat is constructing a brand new worldwide airport that can herald much more foreigners.
Mr. Lange says he likes all this. The opposite night time he grilled reindeer for his household (and some company) that he himself had shot. The subject of independence got here up across the desk
“It’s a tough one,” stated his spouse, Nielsigne Rosbach, a special-education instructor. “We don’t even have sufficient Greenlandic medical doctors. We nonetheless depend on the Danes. We’d have to start utterly from scratch.”
Listening to this, Mr. Lange grew annoyed and cited the instance of the local fish cooperative, began by fishermen sick of promoting their fish for low costs.
“Have a look at these guys,” he stated. “They don’t have training. However they figured it out.”
He leaned again in his chair, because the winds swirled exterior and the kitchen smelled of wealthy sauces and grilled meat.
“Even when we don’t know all the pieces proper now,” he stated, “we are going to study.”
Maya Tekeli contributed reporting from Ilulissat, Greenland.
