Three packet figures, hoarse against the spaciousness of miles of snow, slipped toward the hole they cut into the ice.
Their Sanja was parked nearby, and the woolen dogs that pulled him over were crushed on frozen soil, barking for food.
The man and the dog had to move carefully here. In some places the ice was three meters thick, in others it cracked like a crystal.
This trio Greenlander and their hungry, howling dogs, followed the tradition – ice fishing in the glacier – which members of the Inuit community worked for Eone. And this moment in pure, white snow was a calm break from the world changing around them at a dizzying speed.
One of the built -in Greenland – Laila Sandgreen – just hired 10 Philippines to work in her cafe.
Her husband Hans Sandgreen, fishermen with a few words hard ice, invests in a growing fleet of expensive motor sleds for a family tourist business, which is facing more and more competition.
Their son David was accepted in the top flight economy program in Denmark. But he recently gave up saying that he “missed snow, fishing and hunting.”
In its city on the west coast of Greenland, Sandgreens store in well -stocked stores and has a fast internet, beautiful house and beautiful kitchen. But each of them still knows how to shoot a gun, operate a sled and a stamp skin.
“I feel free here,” Mrs. Sandgreen said. “I don’t have a phone that beats in my pocket.”
Their family story is in some ways Greenland’s story. This is a place that he tries to hold his culture firmly while racing forward to the new era, and Greenland say they do not want to choose either/or.
Even before President Trump catapulted this huge island, the largest in the world, suggesting that the United States took over, the change went through.
New international airports are opening, immigrants flow, and the island deeply buried minerals attract feverish interests. There are more hotels, more cars – and more cruise ships, chasing thousands of tourists to implant neat, windy streets in search of the perfect tour of the selection skin or a tour of the iceberg.
All this change becomes a test that an intact unique Greenland heritage will appear, and is associated with the island’s politics.
AND Recent survey They found that 85 percent of Greenland did not want to join the United States. Still, many in the interviews said they did not want to rely on fishing and Denmark forever.
The Denmark Island colonized more than 300 years ago and still controls the police, courts, external affairs and defense issues. Moreover, Greenlands are committed to complete independence and their own trade relations.
On top of that, climate change is remodeled by the landscape. Each Greenland has its own story about the sums of Rainier, thin ice, icebergs that melt and permaphrost that becomes a click, which sometimes overthrows the road. The whole island is warmer and more affordable.
Ilulissat, where the sands live, is a good place to testify to all this. The city iceberg attracts a rush of tourists and out of work to serve them. Local legend, Supported Danish geologistsis that the specific iceberg that sank the Titanic may have hovered to the south from here.
All that growth and attention bring his challenges. Small communities on the edges of the island are still removed, as people gravitate to larger cities like Illulissat where there is work.
In the capital, Nuuk, which looks like a little Danish city and has recently opened an impressive new international airport, Greenlanders has the same great conversations about how to move through transitions.
“We are really good at adapting to new environments,” said Qupanak Olsen, the champion of indigenous rights that lives in Nuuk and was only Chosen to Parliament Greenland This month.
Mrs. Olsen stepped off her career as a mining engineer to become one of the most powerful votes on the greenhouse culture. Travels around the island 59 -second videos Greenland’s language celebration, Greenland food, beliefs of Greenlander and your own “process of personal declonization”.
She told the story of how, when she was shooting a video in a remote community last year, a man approached her to thank her for her honor of Greenland traditions. He quickly apologized for bothering her, saying he had no education and that he was “just a hunter”.
“Only hunter? How can you say that you are only The hunter, “she remembered thinking.
A short exchange bothered her for weeks. In the end, she found his number and told him over the phone: “Never, you never, you say you are just a hunter. You are the most important people in our culture. I am here today, and my ancestors have survived for thousands of years, for you.”
For a long time, Greenlanders got everything they needed from the animals they killed. Most of the islands have little vegetation. There are almost no trees. Whale skin is a rich source of Vitamin C, and eating it, Greenlanders distracted diseases like scurvy.
Fishing is still the largest industry, and many Greenlands make money from it. Even people with white -collar business, such as Jens Peter Lange, a dental technician in Illulissat, are still going on ice fishing in fjords and stems (called Caribou somewhere else in North America).
The conversation with him reveals the wounds of Danish colonialism.
“Oh, man, I used to deal with the fight as much as I studied in Denmark,” he said. “The Danish man is always above Greenland – always.”
He told the 1960s and 1970s scandal exposed only recently, when Danish doctors have inserted iUd in Greenland girls without knowing they were equipped with a control of birth. He shared stories that it was transferred to a job in favor of Danes with fewer qualifications.
“We have to get rid of them,” he said, pushing a thick hand through the air.
On Illulissat’s snow slopes, new hotels appear and new faces appear: the Philippine cafe workers, Czech waiter, French, Swiss and Australian climate researchers. Ilulissat builds a new international airport that will bring even more strangers.
Mr. Lange says he likes it all. The other night, Jelena was grilled for his family (and several guests), which he himself shot. The topic of independence appeared around the table
“It’s hard,” said his wife Nielsigne Rosbach, a special education teacher. “We don’t even have enough Greenland doctors. We still rely on the dance. We would have to start completely from scratch.”
Hearing that, Mr. Lange became frustrated and cited an example A local fish cooperativeThey started from fishermen who are sick of selling their fish for low prices.
“Look at those guys,” he said. “They have no education. But they realized that.”
He leaned back into the chair, while the winds were spinning outside and the kitchen smelled of rich sauces and grilled meat.
“Even if we don’t know everything right now,” he said, “we will learn.”
Maya tekeli Contributing to reporting from Illulissat, Greenland.
