Greenland

Like few other places in the world, the land of Greenland shows itself to anyone who takes the time to look.  It speaks to anyone who will listen.  It is a robust, unaltered, exceedingly visible and available compilation of all that it is and has been, an ever evolving, fluid, rich, upwelling of life.  I am not a geologist or a vulcanologist or a marine biologist or a scientist or historian of any kind, but it is obvious to me that Greenland tells the story of Earth.  The many layers and folds of rock are the Earth’s version of a written history, all the way back to some of the oldest rock in the world found in the southwest corner of Greenland—3.8 billion years old, only 800 million years shy of Earth’s birth.


Much younger is the Greenland ice field, the glacial ice that covers around 80% of the many islands that make up Greenland.  A single ice sheet covered most of Greenland around 2.6 million years ago.  Now, the oldest known ice is about 1 million years old.  At its deepest, this glacier is about two miles thick.  Its weight is so heavy that it has depressed the center of Greenland to nearly 1,000 feet below sea level and created a rift as deep as, and even longer than, the Grand Canyon.  There are at least two large lakes and multiple streams beneath the ice sheet.

Greenland is the largest island in the world, and the territory includes around 100 other smaller islands.  Those islands are gradually being exposed as the ice sheet melts.  It has been reported that the ice sheet is losing approximately 110 million Olympic size swimming pools worth of water every year.  If the entire glacier were eventually to melt, Earth’s sea level would rise 24 feet.  Think of that.  Global warming of between 3.1℉ and 4.1℉ would likely make this melting inevitable.

And there are the people.  Most of the residents are Inuit, of at least six different cultures.  They crossed from North America around 5,000 years ago, followed by several subsequent immigrations.  The final immigration happened about the same time as the first Norse settlers arrived, around 985 AD.  The Inuit are resilient people, able to adapt to living in parts of Greenland where the Sun doesn’t rise from November to mid-January, temperatures are below zero degrees Fahrenheit for months at a time, and fruits and vegetables are not a thing.  Their self-reliance and ability to thrive in relative isolation are remarkable.  The Greenlandic people are kind, generous, and at home in their skin, at least that describes the ones I met.  I would have to do a lot more study before I could even begin to write about the human history and possible futures of the country and its people.  There’s a lot there.

Check out my photos taken over two trips to magical Eastern Greenland.  Greenland is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, so the photos are labeled as “Denmark.”  There is little of Greenland Nature that is not exquisitely beautiful.  I did my best.