GREENLAND: ILULISSAT

June 14, 2019

I love the name of the first place we visited in Greenland: Ilulisssat (ill-LOO-li-sat). It rolls off the tongue, much more so than the original name of the village: Jakobshavn (Jacob's Haven), which was the name given to it by the Danes who settled it in 1741. The name Ilulissat is the local word for "iceberg," a very appropriate name as will be shown in future posts.

Ilulissat is the most popular tourist destination in Greenland, and tourism is its principal industry. It sits right next to a UNESCO World Heritage site, the Ilulissat Icefjord, and it has developed a nice infrastructure for tourism.

The first thing that stood out to me about Ilulissat is that there are no straight streets other than one that goes through the center of town. I was sure our driver was lost when we were taken from the airport to our hotel because it seemed we were trapped in an endless weaving around and through town.

We stayed the first night in the Hotel Icefiord, and then moved the second night to a slightly nicer hotel, the Hotel Arctic, because of some complications we had when rearranging the trip because of a cancelled flight. Our view from the Hotel Icefiord was definitely better than our view from the Hotel Arctic:  

A seal skin tacked to the desk in the check-in area is not a customary sight where we are from, but we saw a lot more animal skins during the next few days:

Our room was clean but spare, and the most important item was hanging from a hook in the bathroom:

The second thing I noticed was the ubiquitous icebergs. From our hotel room window, we could see a dozen or so medium-sized icebergs and lots of baby icebergs floating in the bay, complete with sapphire-colored edges that are hard to see in this photo:

These cropped shots are a little blurry, but they show the blue color of the ice better:

Not a bad view from the dining hall either:

This second shot of the same spot shows Bob enjoying the midnight sun through the same window later that night:

The third thing I noticed was the bold colors of the houses and other structures. You would think that in a place that gets this much cold weather, everything would be a gray and weather-beaten. Not so! I've never seen a more colorful city. Here is the  view from our hotel room:

. . . another view form a small plane a few days later:

. . . and a third view, a magnificent photo taken by John, a member of our group, that looks like a Grandma Moses painting:

Even close up, every house looked like it had a new coat of paint on it.

After settling in, we met in the hotel restaurant for lunch, and it didn't take long to realize that eating in Greenland was going to be a different culinary experience. Each of us was given a round wooden cutting board with a nice arrangement of pickled carrots and beets and four kinds of smoked meat: muskox, halibut, fin whale, and cod. We were also served two kinds of bread: a spectacular heavily seeded brown bread and a country-style white bread. 

Not exactly something you'd get at your favorite steakhouse, that's for sure.

We also quickly learned that a city in Greenland is not like a city in the United States. In the afternoon, Lisa, a Danish woman in her 20s who spends much of the year in Greenland, picked us up for a "city tour" of Ilulissat. Lisa was a great tour guide--very knowledgeable, but also energetic and funny. We learned that the town was established as a Danish trading post in 1741 and was named Jakobshavn to honor the company's owner, Jacob Severin. In 2008, Greenland voted for self-rule, and I'm guessing the name was changed to Ilulissat, which means "icebergs" in Greenlandic, in 2009 when the official language of the country changed from Danish to Greenlandic.

We headed towards the water, noting an interesting plant lining the pathway. It looked like a furry dandelion head. I guess even the weeds need a heavier coat in Greenland:

It's rugged, rocky terrain:

We stopped at the Knud Rasmussen Museum to learn about the explorer who studied the local Inuit culture in the early 20th century. Born in Ililussat to a Danish father and Danish-Inuit mother, he is known as "the father of Eskimology" and was the first man to cross the Northwest Passage via dog sled.

Knud and Lisa:

We took a look at a structure built into the side of the hill. I can't remember if this was someone's home, a storage facility, or something else.

Right next to it is an arch made of two whale bones.  Supposedly it is good luck to walk through the arch, or at least that's what they tell tourists.

Of course, we all had to try it:

The dominant structure on the shoreline is the Zion Church. When it was built in 1782, it was the largest man-made structure in Greenland! As Ililussat is located 220 miles north of the Arctic Circle, it is also one of the northernmost churches in the world.

In the late 19th century, part of the church became a hospital. In 1929, the building was moved a little bit inland (they must have been tired of repairing damage caused by Arctic storms) and expanded. Today it is an active church with a congregation of Church of Greenland Lutherans. It was locked, but I peaked in the window and could see a copy of Thorvaldsen's Christus statue at the front of the chapel.

I love how it faces the sea, as if watching over the village fisherman as they do their dangerous work:

Above the front door is a window shaped like a ship's wheel:

Below the church near the shore is a rack of what looks like canoes from a distance, but which appear to be blades of some sort on closer examination. Perhaps for sleds?

There are lots of things to remind visitors that this is a seafaring town:

And no matter which part of the ocean we were near, there were always, always icebergs:

As we walked through town, we noticed lots and lots and LOTS of dogs chained to the rocks, and we discovered that dogs aren't household pets in Greenland. They were usually chained like these three in the photo below (marked with two black arrows and one white arrow)--far enough apart that they couldn't get to each other. The number of dogs in Ilulissat is almost the same as the number of people.

Lisa told us that Greenland sled dogs are a distinct breed and are the only breed allowed on the island:

No outside dogs are allowed to come into Greenland.

If one of these dogs is taken out of the country, it can't be brought back in:

These are working dogs, not pets, and live and work in packs. They have remarkable stamina and are very strong. In the winter, you either get around by a dog-pulled sled or by a snowmobile, and since dog food is usually easier to come by than gasoline and dogs don't usually break down, well, you can guess what the most common form of winter transportation is.

Mother dogs and pups up to a certain age are allowed to roam free. All other dogs must be chained up. Never ever approach one to pet it. It might eat your hand for dinner.

We could see what a hard living it is here. This isn't a place where you hop in the car and run to the store for some exotic ingredient for a recipe you're trying out for dinner. I think most residents must plan during the short summer how they will stay alive during the endless winter.

I'm not sure who this guy is . . .

. . . but I think he has his eye on that disappearing Ilulissat Glacier in the distance:

Our next stop was the docks, home to the commercial fishing industry of Ilulissat. Fish and fish products comprise 91% of Greenland's exports.

The dock area freezes over in the winter, and smaller boats are taken out of the water and then replaced when the ice melts. Some larger boats are left in the water. Lisa told us that sometimes they have to use dynamite to blast their way out of the ice in the summer:

Even in mid-June, there were still chunks of glacier in the water that the ships had to navigate around:

The placement of the door and lack of windows on this structure say something about the winter, don't they?

When we got back to the hotel, we rested for an hour or so before a dinner of musk ox steak with sides of mashed turnips and parsnips in a crowberry sauce (typical Greenlandic diet).  Dessert was a decadent chocolate mousse cake with a scoop of vanilla ice cream (most likely not typical Greenlandic fare).

We felt educated, rested, well fed, and ready for a late-night trip out to the icebergs.