Inuit’s grave

I may have already mentioned before that when travelling I like to read books related to the country I am visiting or to travel. On my way to Great Britain, I am reading my first Bill Brysson book: “Neither here nor there”.

It is refreshing to follow the footsteps of the author travelling Europe, describing in a very funny way so many places that I know by heart (his description of Belgium is very accurate).

Describing his problems with dogs that either want to kill him or have sex (I had the same problem with girls at some point… OK… only in my dreams), he says: “It wouldn’t bother me in the least if all dogs in the world were placed in a large sack and taken to some distant island – Greenland springs attractively to mind – where they could romp around and sniff each other’s amuses to their heart’s content and would never bother or terrorize me again.”

Putting aside the fact that Greenland in full of dogs (I would recommend to Bill Brysson not to go there), it is interesting to notice that Greenland is often considered as an antechamber of hell; a no-man’s-land where no one wants to end (for example, I saw in the TV-series “The 4400” the boss threatening an employee to send her to Greenland).

Actually, who wants to live in a place where the temperature is -35 degrees in winter and only reach 10 degrees in summer?

If this does not appeal you today, imagine how it was a couple of hundred years ago.

Nevertheless, peoples were living there in very precarious conditions.

During my last night at the Arctic station, we had a very nice dinner with the local staff. Luckily, I was sitting in front of the scientific leader, a very nice lady named Outi. She told me about Inuit’s houses and graves remains that can be seen close to the village and she kindly offered to give me a tour the next day.

And the last day in Disko island came. After the packing and cleaning of the labs, I went for a short walk around the station, climbing to find the source of the small river.

  

At lunch time, Outi came to pick me and a couple of other colleagues and she drove us to my “whale watching” and “shooting” spot. Walking around, she told us about the Inuits who used to live there, living in very small “houses” by the sea where they were taking the sea in small boat to hunt seals.

It was amazing to see how smalls these houses were and imagine how hard the life may have been there where you do not even have a tree for firewood. Beside the remains of the houses, evidences of human presence are everywhere. For example, you can find animal bones (I brought back a nice seal rib).

 

But what amazed me the most was the presence of the rudimentary Inuit’s graves. Outi spots one for us and I understood why I missed them both on Disko island but also during my hiking in Illulisat.

The grave was just a pile of big rocks in the middle of the desolated rocky land. Outi was told that this was a 200 years old grave of a young children. The only way you can tell that it is a grave is the presence of human bones that you can see through the rocks.

Can you imagine how hard it was to live there 200 years ago during winters with eternal night and -35 degrees?

So… who wants to live in Greenland?

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