Kangerlussuaq: A whole new Greenland

Quick geography lesson. Thule is almost at the top of the globe. It is 750 miles North of the arctic circle. It is latitude 76 degrees. There is only one city in the world with more people further North and that is in Svalbard. Kangerlussuaq however is right on the arctic circle around latitude 67 degrees and is inland as opposed to on the coast. There is a large sound that connects the town to the ocean.

Totally stolen from mappery.com

While in Thule, I was technically still in the US. Being on a military base is still considered the United States. They didn't stamp my passport until I boarded the plane for Kangerlussuaq. And so most of the people in Thule are Danish or American. The prices for food, goods and postage are all heavily subsidized. 

Greenland however is expensive.



Prices here are 3-4 times as much as in Seattle and there is very little selection. Greenland uses the Danish Krone as their currency which is about 5-6 Danish Krone to 1 dollar. So a 12oz coca cola is about 17 Kr or 3 USD. Also you are constantly doing math because you go to the store and a box of cereal costs 42Kr and you are like ack! And then you are like wait that is ... 7-8 dollars. And then you are like 8 dollars for Coco Pops, that is crazy! And then you buy Musli which is what Danish people eat for breakfast. It is like granola except all the oats are raw. It has about 330 calories for one serving and 9 grams of protein. It is the same price as American cereal here but it is a hearty meal.

I have learned a lot about Danish culture while being in Greenland, information I intend to use while in Copenhagen. So for breakfast people eat oatmeal or Musli. Lunch, like most of Europe is the big meal of the day. And a popular Danish lunch involves fancy open-faced sandwiches you eat with a fork and knife. (In fact people in Northern Europe eat everything with a fork and knife). The sandwiches are called Smørrebrød and they usually include a thick slice of bread, meat (roast beef, smoked salmon, herring, pate, etc) or egg, cheese, and an assortment of vegetables paired perfectly with the meat and cheese.I found this awesome website with recipes if you want to make them at home. http://www.danishsandwich.com/


 Kangerlussuaq is a former military base that has been turned into a town. The entire economy is dependent on the airport which is the second largest commercial airport in Greenland and has regular flights to and from Copenhagen. Most of the population works at the airport, the airport gift shop, the airport hotel, the airport cafeteria, etc.There is also a small but noticeable tourist industry. There are tour  buses that take people out to the ice sheet, there are sea kayaking trips, hunting, fishing, and a well traveled hiking trail that is 100 miles from Kangerlussuaq to the coastal city of Sisimuit (the second largest city in Greenland). I spoke with a local outdoors man here and he told me that the tourist season in Kangerlussuaq is 10 months of the year (All but December and January). There are actually more tourists here in the winter to go on dog sled tours, see the Northern Lights and visit the ice sheet.  In town there is an excellent gourmet restaurant, Restaurant Roklubben, probably the best in all of Greenland that serves upscale but traditional Greenlandic food such as halibut, shrimp, ptarmigan, reindeer and musk ox.

Most of Kangerlussuaq. The town has two sides divided by the airport and this photo shows the larger side of town. 

Air Greenland building in Kangerlussuaq. The government of Greenland has a monopoly on air travel and telecommunications.

We arrived in Kangerlussuaq after a short 2.5 hour flight from Thule. We were on a small dash-8 plane with 36 seats. Even though it was a short flight, there was 3 drink services of water, coffee, juice offered. A sandwich was served and before landing the flight attendant handed out hard candies to suck on. Licorice flavored hard candies to be exact. Which I have since learned that licorice is the flavor of choice in Greenland. There is licorice ice cream at the Polar Inn and licorice candies at all the shops in town. Our flight was not a commercial flight but instead an embassy flight. Most people on board were Danish contractors working at the air base in Thule. They work 10-12 hour days 6 days a week for 9 weeks and then get 4 weeks off. We were met at the airport by our contacts who transported us to the KISS building (Kangerlussuaq International Science Support). It is like a giant dorm for scientists from all over the world although most are Danish or American. The first floor has offices for personnel, a huge double kitchen and dining room, tv room, classroom, and then 4-6 laboratories. One for chemistry, one for dissection, etc. There are also a few rooms on the first floor. The second floor has all the bathrooms and showers which are dorm style, laundry, smaller kitchen, a large living room with satellite tv and most of the bedrooms. At full capacity the facility can house 64 or so scientists and when they get overflow they can house more at the Reindeer Inn next door. Most of the summer the facility is packed. But this late in the season, we all could get our own rooms and mine has a view of the mountains and river.

My home in Kangerlussuaq, the KISS building. It is renovated military barracks.

The building next door. As you can see most everything here looks like this.

Our first night in Kangerlussuaq we had reservations for the Restaurant Roklubben (aka the Row club) with
two of our Danish friends from Thule headed back to Copenhagen. The Row Club is a 5 star gem hidden away in this tiny drab little town. It is pretty much reservation only, as they only do one dinner service per night. It is out of town, up a large hill around the bend perched on a lake. A shuttle ferries people from all the hotels and the airport in town up to the restaurant at 6:45pm. The restaurant from the outside is nothing impressive. It has the same narrow floor plan and aluminum siding as most buildings in Kangerlussuaq but the interior is bright and windows cover two sides of the restaurant offering exquisite secluded private lake views.  The menu features only local Greenlandic cuisine served in the style of a 5 star restaurant. For appetizers they items like Greenlandic shrimp cocktail, smoked halibut, and musk ox carpaccio. Our group had an order of the shrimp cocktail and smoked Halibut. Smoked halibut is a real treat. All the subtle flavors of halibut, the light texture and then the smokiness that comes from eating like smoked salmon. For my main course I decided to go big or go home and ordered the "wild plate". The wild plate has medallions of both Reindeer and Musk Ox served with 3 different sauces and potatoes. I had never eaten Reindeer or Musk Ox and was keen to try both. Reindeer is delicious. It tastes a little bit like lamb but is better. It is probably one of the best meats I have ever eaten. Musk ox is... different. I doesn't really taste like anything I have eaten before. I have thought long and hard about the best way to describe it  and I would say it has a gamey taste with lean dense texture. The flavor is strong if not overpowering but the for me the unpleasant part was the texture. It has a very dense texture somewhat akin to duck. The sauces were amazing. They served a Waldorf salad as a sauce, rhubarb, and veal sauce. The rhubarb paired perfectly with the Reindeer and the veal sauce was excellent with the musk ox. If the view and the food wasn't enough, the chef infuses local Greenlandic beer with crowberries and serves it on draft. The normally light beer is nearly black. The berries are flavorful but not sweet so it doesn't really taste like a fruit beer but it was amazing. I didn't try it but the chef also offers 6 infused Schnapps flavors all made with local berries. Schnapps is the liquor of choice in Denmark. For two "blackberry" beers and a main course, my meal came to about $80 USD. Not only is all the cuisine local, but I spoke to a recreational hunter who lives here and the chef buys all the meat from local hunters. He was saying that the ptarmigan, which is a bird, the chef pays 10 USD per bird if you shoot it in the head or neck. They don't have a lot of meat, one breast is smaller than a deck of cards so he doesn't want the bullet ruining the precious meat.

Our first full day in Kangerlussuaq, we headed out to the ice sheet to scope out the field site sampled last year. The drive is about 12 miles on a very bumpy dirt road. Unlike in Thule where the trucks are newer and well maintained by the military, here our truck is small and the engine really struggles to get up over the hills. It is probably only driven back and forth on this beat up dirt road. The landscape here is very different. The topography is all glacial carved slopes of metamorphic rocks. The rocks are mostly Gneisses which have beautiful foliation. Gneisses are layered rocks that form under high pressure so they have a beautiful banded look.

An example of a Gneiss

 There is a lot of vegetation over the rocks. Blueberries, cranberries, and arctic willow. This time of year it is all yellow and red in color. A wonderful fall landscape but still no trees.

Aerial view of the landscape

On the way to the field site you pass what looks like a small desert of wind blown sand. The ground and slopes are covered in a layer of glacial loess. These silt-sized grains blow and accumulate. Past the mini "desert" there are more hills with glacial lakes. After several miles there is a gate with a key to minimize the amount of traffic out to the ice sheet. Basically you need permission to go beyond. Right at the gate there was a large Inuit hunting camp set up along the river. With drying racks for fish and fur. Our field site is located not far from a popular tourist hiking area complete with picnic tables and porta potties. It is such a departure from Thule where the wilderness seems so remote and inaccessible. Climbing down a slope to the river you get a view of the ice sheet. Packed sand littered with large boulders and rocks line the edges.

Our main field site accessible by foot in Kangerlussuaq. Right at the edge of the ice sheet.

While scouting out the area from last year, I heard a loud groaning sound. Moments later huge chunks of ice careened off the slide of the ice sheet and crashed down below. The carving of the ice sheet is a spectacle and no doubt one of the highlights of the picnic spots up on the ridge above. In Greenland the awe and power of nature is never lost on you.

I saw this glacier carve. See the pile of ice at the bottom, I saw and heard that come off the edge.

Our main mission in Kangerlussuaq is to understand the chemistry and microbiology of sub-glacial outflows. This is water that melts, passes over the underlying bedrock, under the glacier until it finds an outlet. Going through bedrock means the water contains a lot of ions and is very nutrient rich. We are trying to understand exactly what nutrients are in the water and what sorts of bacterial communities can be supported. In the picture below you can see a cave-like opening to the left where the glacial outflow occurs.

Sub glacial outflow site. You can see scientists at work in the back left corner.

Another view of the ice sheet from the ground

My next post will probably be the last I send from Kangerlussuaq unless something super exciting happens in the next day or so. It will mostly focus on our 3 hour helicopter sampling trip, which was an exciting and productive scientific day with some unexpected twists. Of course it will also include a fair number of photos. After that I will be heading to Copenhagen which will be less adventure and more food.