{"id":15947,"date":"2026-02-17T07:05:21","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T07:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/15947\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T07:05:21","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T07:05:21","slug":"a-greenland-sled-dog-champion-fears-for-his-culture-as-climate-change-melts-the-ice-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/15947\/","title":{"rendered":"A Greenland sled dog champion fears for his culture as climate change melts the ice"},"content":{"rendered":"

ILULISSAT, Greenland (AP) \u2014 Growing up in a village in northern Greenland, J\u00f8rgen Kristensen\u2019s closest friends were his stepfather\u2019s sled dogs. Most of his classmates were dark-haired Inuit; he was different. When he was bullied at school for his fair hair \u2014 an inheritance from the mainland Danish father he never knew<\/a> \u2014 the dogs came to him.<\/p>\n

He first went out to fish on the ice with them alone when he was 9 years old. They nurtured the beginning of a life-long love affair and Kristensen\u2019s career as a five-time Greenlandic dog sled champion.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just a small child. But many years later, I started thinking about why I love dogs so much,\u201d Kristensen, 62, told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dogs were a great support,\u201d he said. \u201cThey lifted me up when I was sad.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more than a thousand years, dogs have pulled sleds across the Arctic for Inuit seal hunters and fishermen. But this winter, in the town of Ilulissat, around 300km (186 miles) north of the Arctic Circle, that\u2019s not possible.<\/p>\n

Instead of gliding over snow and ice, Kristensen\u2019s sled bounces over earth and rock. Gesturing to the hills, he said it\u2019s the first time he can remember when there has been no snow \u2014 or ice in the bay \u2014 in January.<\/p>\n

The rising temperatures in Ilulissat are causing the permafrost to melt, buildings to sink and pipes to crack but they also have consequences that ripple across the rest of the world.<\/p>\n

The nearby Sermeq Kujalleq glacier is one of the fastest-moving and most active on the planet, sending more icebergs into the sea than any other glacier outside Antarctica, according to the United Nations cultural organization UNESCO. As the climate has warmed, the glacier has retreated and carved off chunks of ice faster than ever before \u2014 significantly contributing to sea levels that are rising from Europe to the Pacific Islands, according to NASA.<\/p>\n

The melting ice could reveal untapped deposits of critical minerals<\/a>. Many Greenlanders believe<\/a> that\u2019s why U.S. President Donald Trump turned their island into a geopolitical hotspot<\/a> with his demands to own it and previous suggestions that the U.S. could take it by force.<\/a><\/p>\n

In the 1980s, winter temperatures in Ilulissat regularly hovered around -25 Celsius (-13 Fahrenheit) in winter, Kristensen said.<\/p>\n

But nowadays, he said, there are many days when the temperature is above freezing \u2014 sometimes it can be as warm as 10 Celsius (50 Fahrenheit.)<\/p>\n

Kristensen said he now has to collect snow for the dogs to drink during a journey because there isn\u2019t any along the route.<\/p>\n

Although Greenlanders have always adapted \u2014 and could make dog sleds with wheels in future \u2014 the loss of the ice is affecting them deeply, said Kristensen, who now runs his own company showing tourists his Arctic homeland.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we lose the dog sledding, we have large parts of our culture that we\u2019re losing. That scares me,\u201d he told AP, pressing his lips together and becoming tearful.<\/p>\n

The sea ice is disappearing<\/p>\n

In winter, hunters should be able to take their dogs far out on the sea ice, Kristensen told AP. The ice sheets act like \u201cbig bridges,\u201d connecting Greenlanders to hunting grounds but also to other Inuit communities across the Arctic in Canada, the United States and Russia.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the sea ice used to come, we felt completely open along the entire coast and we could decide where to go,\u201d Kristensen said.<\/p>\n

This January, there was no ice at all.<\/p>\n

Driving a dog sled on ice is like being \u201ccompletely without boundaries \u2014 like on the world\u2019s longest and widest highway,\u201d he said. Not having that is \u201ca very great loss.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several years ago, Greenland\u2019s government had to provide financial support to many families in the far north of the island after the sea ice did not freeze hard enough for hunting, said Sara Olsvig, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, which represents Inuit people from across Arctic nations.<\/p>\n

The warming weather also makes life more dangerous for fishermen who have swapped their dog sleds for boats, because there is more rain instead of snow, said Morgan Angaju Josefsen R\u00f8jkj\u00e6r, Kristensen\u2019s business partner.<\/p>\n

When snow falls and is compressed, air is trapped between the flakes, giving the ice its brilliant white color. But when rain freezes, the ice that forms contains little air and looks more like glass.<\/p>\n

A fisherman can see the white ice and try to avoid it, but the ice formed from rain takes on the color of the sea \u2013 and that\u2019s dangerous because \u201cit can sink you or throw you off your boat,\u201d said R\u00f8jkj\u00e6r.<\/p>\n

Climate change, Olsvig said, \u201cis affecting us deeply,\u201d and is amplified in the Arctic, which is \u201cwarming three to four times faster than the global average.\u201d<\/p>\n

The glaciers are melting<\/p>\n

Over the course of his lifetime, the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier has retreated by about 40 kilometers (25 miles) said Karl Sandgreen, 46, the head of Ilulissat\u2019s Icefjord Center which is dedicated to documenting the glacier and its icebergs.<\/p>\n

Looking out of the window at hills which would normally be covered with snow, Sandgreen described mountain rock revealed by melting ice and a previously ice-covered valley inside the fjord where \u201cthere\u2019s nothing now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pollution is also speeding up the ice melt, Sandgreen said, describing how Sermeq Kujalleq is melting from the top down, unlike glaciers in Antarctica which largely melt from the bottom up as sea temperatures rise.<\/p>\n

This is exacerbated by two things: black carbon<\/a>, or soot spewed from ship engines, and debris from volcanic eruptions. They blanket the snow and ice with dark material and reduce reflection of sunlight, instead absorbing more heat and speeding up melting. Black carbon has increased in recent decades with more ship traffic in the Arctic, and nearby Iceland has periodic volcanic eruptions.<\/p>\n

Many Greenlanders told AP they believe the melting ice is the reason Trump \u2014 a leader who has called climate change \u201cthe greatest con job ever\u201d<\/a> \u2014 wants to own the island.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis agenda is to get the minerals,<\/a> \u201d Sandgreen said.<\/p>\n

Since Trump returned to office, fewer climate scientists from the U.S. have visited Ilulissat, Sandgreen said. The U.S president needs to \u201clisten to the scientists,\u201d who are documenting the impact of global warming, he said.<\/p>\n

Teaching children about climate change<\/p>\n

Kristensen said he tries to explain the consequences of global warming to the tourists who he takes out on dog sled rides or on visits to the icebergs. He said he tells them how Greenland\u2019s glaciers are as important as the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.<\/p>\n

International summits, such as the United Nations climate talks<\/a> in November in the Amazon gateway city of Belem, play a role, but it\u2019s just as important to \u201cteach children all over the world\u201d about the importance of ice and oceans, alongside subjects like math, Kristensen said<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t start with the children, we can\u2019t really do anything to help nature. We can only destroy it,\u201d Kristensen said.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

The Associated Press\u2019 climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP\u2019s standards<\/a> for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ILULISSAT, Greenland (AP) \u2014 Growing up in a village in northern Greenland, J\u00f8rgen Kristensen\u2019s closest friends were his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6238,184,57,11251,11651,11654,11653,11650,11652],"class_list":{"0":"post-15947","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-greenland","8":"tag-dog-sled","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-greenland","11":"tag-ilulissat","12":"tag-jorgen-kristensen","13":"tag-karl-sandgreen","14":"tag-kristensen","15":"tag-melting-ice","16":"tag-sermeq-kujalleq"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}