{"id":44145,"date":"2026-03-20T02:38:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T02:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/44145\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T02:38:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T02:38:07","slug":"a-journey-to-greenland-alongside-the-last-guardians-of-the-pole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/44145\/","title":{"rendered":"A Journey to Greenland Alongside the Last Guardians of the Pole"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n    Ordinarily, the inhabitants of Kullorsuaq see no one in winter. Last April, for the first time, Le Commandant Charcot icebreaker made a stop there. This was an incredible opportunity to immerse oneself in the daily life of the Inuit people, torn between tradition and modernity, climate change and fears of annexation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">Suddenly, as if from time immemorial, dozens of sleds, a fleet racing across the ice floe, approach the ship, in a cacophony of distant barks. On this April 8, under the midday sun, as the pastel blue of the sky seems to dissolve into the white desert, the 200 passengers gather on the bridge of the icebreaker Le Commandant Charcot, and emotion and jubilation bring tears to their eyes, freezing in the -25 \u00b0C temperature.<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">The moment is mesmerizing, historic, for never before has a ship reached such a high point in winter, far beyond the Arctic Circle. After four days of sailing in the Baffin Sea and covering some 700 miles, we are now within sight of Kullorsuaq, a village of 450 inhabitants in northwest Greenland, in the Upernavik district, which includes nine other villages, all very distant neighbors.<\/p>\n<p>                                            <a class=\"fig-a11y-skip\" href=\"#fig-a11y-skip-main-inarticle\" is=\"fig-a11y-skip\" data-trigger-mode=\"visible-once\"><br \/>\n    Passer la publicit\u00e9<br \/>\n<\/a>            <\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">In the distance, about 5 km away, its thumb-shaped rocky spur emerges, giving it its name. And what we couldn\u2019t have foreseen upon arriving here is that the Inuit would be holding their thumbs down below, at every mention of the one they call Trumpy up here, whose annexation ambitions would fuel many a conversation\u2026<\/p>\n<p>                                            Witnesses to a world in limbo<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">This exceptional journey was a dream of 30 years for the French explorer Nicolas Dubreuil, a gentle, shaggy-haired giant with a forthright manner. As an experienced expedition leader, he mobilized these 10 villages, more than 1,000 dogs, 55 hunters and the entire community. In this last stronghold of bear and seal hunters, where he lived for two decades, the customs and traditions, aside from cell phones, are a perfect replica of the film The Last Kings of Thule (1969) by ethno-geographer Jean Malaurie, who dedicated a large part of his life to defending the Inuit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">\u201cI want the passengers to leave here having seen what they read in the books of Paul-\u00c9mile Victor or Jean Malaurie. I want them to discover the soul of this magnificent, mistreated and underestimated people. It was the locals, the last guardians of the Pole, who asked me to organize this gathering. They want to share, to exchange ideas. Some hunters traveled over 300 km by dogsled to participate in this unique event.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">Ole, Otto, Lars, Adam, Paulus and their friends are all here, coming to greet their hosts on board. To show the world their Indigenous skills, their absolute mastery of survival, with the ever-present fear of one day disappearing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">\u201cWhile America insults us, seeing you here is a balm for our hearts,\u201d says Ole Eliassen solemnly, one of the region\u2019s most experienced hunters, who sometimes acts in films. On board the Le Commandant Charcot, the passengers, some of whom were familiar with polar regions, were warned by Nicolas Dubreuil: \u201cYou are going to be shaken up; when you get cold, you will warm up by running behind the sled, and don\u2019t be shocked if one of the hunters stops to kill a seal; here, hunting, like fishing, is essential to feed the community.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>                                            <a class=\"fig-a11y-skip\" href=\"#fig-a11y-skip-main-inarticle_mtf\" is=\"fig-a11y-skip\" data-trigger-mode=\"visible-once\"><br \/>\n    Passer la publicit\u00e9<br \/>\n<\/a>            <\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">Before arriving in Kullorsuaq and its promise of a harsher life, everyone was able to fully enjoy the comforts. While Le Commandant Charcot shuddered, like a plane in severe turbulence, with a deep, cavernous rumble of ice cracking beneath the bow, we experienced a succession of dreamlike visions and mirages: the Northern Lights on the very first night not far from the capital city Nuuk; icebergs seemingly floating in the sky, in which the Inuit children imagined familiar shapes; endless textures of white for which our language has no name, hallucinogenic meringue-like domes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">A pinnacle of pristine, untouched beauty, Disko Bay and its labyrinth of tabular icebergs, encircled by a turquoise band resembling a lagoon. Along the way, there were all these metamorphoses of the ice, like the frost flowers, carpets of crystals that form when the air temperature is much lower than that of the ocean, and which the Inuit watch with their hearts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">There was the Sikuliaq, the young sea ice, still forming. We slalomed between hummocks, an impressive chaos of ice, and ice floes clumped together in irregular masses. The further north we went, the more the wild embraced us. Thus, we saw our first polar bear, galloping, colossal, even from the top of a cruise ship, then a pair of walruses, almost imperturbable despite the ship\u2019s approaching shadow.<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">Finally, later on, we were told, as if from a shamanic tale, about narwhal tracks, relayed over the loudspeaker by the enthusiastic Captain \u00c9tienne Garcia, still amazed despite his unparalleled expertise in navigating polar waters. \u201cYou have to look for the large air bubbles in the very thin gray ice that formed last night. That\u2019s where the narwhals come to breathe,\u201d he explained, while all the passengers pulled out their binoculars in the hope of seeing the mythical aquatic unicorns.<\/p>\n<p>                                            Lessons in adaptation<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">After four days of this enchanting regimen, the contemplative session in the plush cabins, between glasses of champagne and meals at the Ducasse restaurant, comes to an end. Upon arrival in Kullorsuaq, the ship will remain this luxurious cocoon, from which it is sometimes difficult to extricate oneself, but the call of the outside world will always be the strongest. Each day brings a new experience.<\/p>\n<p>                                            <a class=\"fig-a11y-skip\" href=\"#fig-a11y-skip-main-inarticle_btf\" is=\"fig-a11y-skip\" data-trigger-mode=\"visible-once\"><br \/>\n    Passer la publicit\u00e9<br \/>\n<\/a>            <\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">Five immersive camps await the budding explorers. The most challenging: Nunanutaat, a twenty-four-hour trek in -25 \u00b0C temperatures by dogsled, in these new, uncharted lands, which emerged as a result of climate change, sleeping in traditional tents and eating mattak, made from whale skin and blubber. A frozen odyssey to which one can acclimatize not far from the ship.<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">This is where two hunters, Otto Danielsen and Lars Jensen, wearing bearskin trousers, have set up their headquarters, where they share their ancestral techniques, laughing and using hand gestures \u2014 most Inuit guides don\u2019t speak English. In the open water left in the boat\u2019s wake, Lars climbs into his kayak \u2014 a feat in itself given how unstable the narrow craft is \u2014 then puts his ear to the wood of his harpoon to listen for the animals\u2019 breathing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">\u201cThe kayak is so quiet you can even hear the baby seals in their mothers\u2019 wombs!\u201d Lars then treats us to a brief primer on hunting seals or walruses, and even bears, since they can be hunted from the kayak. \u201cAt the tip of my harpoon, I attached a rope to a seal intestine buoy, the avataq. This slows the animal, which is very heavy, preventing me from capsizing. And once it\u2019s exhausted, it comes back to the surface, and I kill it with the harpoon or a rifle. It\u2019s very dangerous: when walruses attack, they destroy everything; there have been deaths\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>                                            The art of hunting<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">Listening to Lars, who is endlessly enthusiastic, one gets the sense that Inuit ingenuity seems to know no bounds. He goes on to explain that the paddle is used for communication: its shape has been designed to bounce sound up to 5 km in the summer when icebergs no longer break the silence with their creaking.<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">Next to the kayak camp, Ole is busy setting up the traditional tent that will welcome the cruise passengers for the night in the coming days. Two sleds, placed end to end, serve as both frame and bed base, covered with hand-sewn hides. Inside are caribou hides, and heating is provided by a lamp normally used in greenhouses. \u201cAnd if you get cold, an Inuit friend will come and snuggle up to you,\u201d Nicolas Dubreuil assures us with a laugh.<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">After a night as peaceful as day \u2014 the sun barely setting at these latitudes and this time of year \u2014 the notion of luxury took a turn. \u201cI slept as well as in my cabin! It was like rediscovering what real life is, the life lived by our own ancestors, who were happy with little,\u201d said a passenger as he emerged from the tent. The tent is guarded overnight because \u201cthere are many bears in the area, even if they are rarely seen,\u201d explains Nicolas Dubreuil, who warns: \u201cThis 800-kilo apex predator can reach speeds of 50 km\/h. But rest assured: if you see it, it has already seen you a long time ago. It means it wasn\u2019t very hungry\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">At Camp Siku (sea ice, in Inuktitut), an hour\u2019s dogsled ride from the ship, Adam Eskildsen is simulating a seal hunt. His rifle camouflaged behind a white screen (taalitaq) so the animal no longer perceives a human silhouette but a neutral mass, the hunter crawls until he can take the most accurate shot possible. When the temperature is extreme, the seal is then butchered on the spot to prevent it from freezing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">Despite the internet\u2019s reach into the most remote fjords of this vast, icy land of 2.2 million square kilometers and 56,000 inhabitants, where everything is immaqaa, \u201conly the ice decides,\u201d the reality of daily life remains unchanged. In Kullorsuaq, as in the surrounding isolated villages, the miracle of adaptation is repeated every day. When the thermometer dips to nearly -50\u00b0C and the pantry is empty, the men head out to hunt seals and bears by dogsled \u2014 snowmobiles being forbidden for reasons of cultural preservation. Ole Olsvig, whom Nicolas Dubreuil has known since childhood, embodies this tenuous link between tradition and modernity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">The son of a hunter from Naajaat, a village of 36 inhabitants, he is one of those young people who went to study in the United States, and one of the few to return and settle here. A coder and creator of the Iluaqut website, which helps Inuit people fill out administrative forms in Danish \u2014 the language imposed by the government \u2014, Ole dreams of digitizing the Greenlandic language before it disappears. During talks on board, he recounts the cultural shifts and shocks his country has experienced. Until the early 2000s, his parents and grandparents still used candles for light in the heart of the polar night.<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">\u201cSome places had generators that ran on diesel or kerosene, but it wasn\u2019t always easy to get a reliable fuel supply. And then, in five or ten years, computers and smartphones appeared. It all happened very quickly, and it was destabilizing.\u201d Their elders analyzed the ice by looking at it; they use weather apps.<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">\u201cEmpirical knowledge is disappearing; we have to relearn everything, otherwise our sense of community, which is our strength, will be lost. How can we embrace progress without losing our identity? We don\u2019t want to be American, or Danish. We are Greenlanders.\u201d Ole knows this, as do most of his compatriots: geopolitical pressure has spread here, driven by commercial interests. Near Kullorsuaq, two-billion-year-old rocks, rich in minerals, are the object of intense covetousness.<\/p>\n<p>                                            Shared emotion<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">As we board a sled to travel to Kullorsuaq for kaffemik, a gathering over coffee and cakes, a symbol of Greenlandic hospitality, Abel Enok Hansen, a fisherman native to the village, tells us how the ice, thinning by a few centimeters each year, complicates bear hunting in winter. He speaks of the imposed quotas (85 across the entire Upernavik district) that everyone here considers unfair. \u201cThe meat can feed the whole village for a week,\u201d the fisherman explains. \u201cIt\u2019s the cornerstone of our livelihood, unlike in other countries.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">Below the colorful houses, the fish cannery provides a livelihood for part of the village. While there is no running water in the houses, the four reservoirs bearing the inscription Imeq Mamaq, meaning \u201cthe water is good,\u201d supply the inhabitants. To the sound of howling chained dogs, young people buy junk food at the convenience store, check the fluctuating internet connection on their smartphones, and joke around. A palpable joie de vivre\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">Serving us coffee in her overheated living room, Mina Petersen, our host for kaffemik, who, like all the women of Kullorsuaq, manages the household and sews hides, recounts the sporadic resupply by cargo ship \u2014 at best, two ships a month between July and October \u2014 and, above all, the anguish of these teenagers torn between two completely opposing worlds.<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">The young woman reminds us that for a long time, the village held the grim record of having the highest youth suicide rate in the world, her own son having taken his own life two months before our arrival. That evening, we run into Mina again at the edge of a snow-covered soccer field for a match against Nussuaq, enthusiastic about her team\u2019s skillful dribbling. Despite everything, she wouldn\u2019t live anywhere else for the world, like most of her fellow citizens.<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">Tomorrow, the Kammassuaq (friendship) sled race will bring us together one last time before we say goodbye to Ole, Otto, Paulus, Lars, to Adam and his friends, our friends, deeply moved as we are by this journey of a lifetime. \u201cArise, people of Greenland, awaken! Do not give up on your future! The West is evil, and we need you! Materialism is leading us to our downfall,\u201d wrote Jean Malaurie in Letter to an Inuit in 2022.<\/p>\n<p class=\"fig-paragraph\">In these troubled times, no words have been so prophetic. As the ship casts off, Ole Eliassen, a French flag pinned to his sled, waves to us. Then he disappears\u2026 And all of us on board hope that we are not the last witnesses to his story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ordinarily, the inhabitants of Kullorsuaq see no one in winter. Last April, for the first time, Le Commandant&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[25104,57,2156,25105],"class_list":{"0":"post-44145","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-greenland","8":"tag-grand-reportage","9":"tag-greenland","10":"tag-groenland","11":"tag-reportage"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116259186712397128","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44145","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=44145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}