See Greenland by dog sled: a holiday close to nature
With climate change transforming their frozen homeland, the Inuit of Greenland are giving up on hunting to chase tourist dollars instead. Words and pictures by Daniel Allen
As the ethereal curtains of the aurora borealis begin their nightly waltz across the winter sky, Olinguaq Sandgreen and his dog team pull up at the edge of the sea ice. The long sled journey from the town of Ilulissat has left the hardy Inuit and his passenger thoroughly chilled, despite being clad in full sets of seal skins. Plumes of canine breath crystallise onto the powdered snow as the dogs yap and strain at their traces.
Tonight, an empty fisherman's hut will provide the men with warmth and food while the dogs burrow deep into the drift outside. Yet this is no fishing expedition. Sandgreen's companion is a tourist, drawn to the stark winter beauty of Greenland and a desire to witness an endangered way of life.
"I used to be a full-time hunter and fisherman," says Sandgreen, as he cuts up chunks of foul-smelling seal meat for his ravenous pack. "But now I can make more money from taking people on sledding trips. The sea ice here is also increasingly unstable. It freezes later and breaks up earlier. It is very dangerous."
The Greenlandic Inuit have been tied to the sea ice for centuries. Living in harmony with nature and surviving on what they could hunt, Inuit men would use their knowledge of the ice to catch seals, whales, walruses, polar bears and fish. With the effects of climate change increasingly pervasive, however, much of this seasonal ice is now weak or completely absent. As the Inuit are forced to take more risks, accidents become increasingly common.
