We woke up to beautiful, almost blinding sunshine, instead of fog. After breakfast, we landed on a pontoon dock, and walked right to the center of town of Uumannaq, dominated by two huge mountains and with icebergs all over the small bay. First we visited the musuem, which was fairly small, two rooms, featuring quite a collection of traditional clothing, tools both pre-and-post colonization, and lots of historic phots. Life here was still fairly traditional at least until the 1940s, based on the photos. We visited a turf house in the center of town, the “blubber house” where vast quantities of whale blubber would have been stored, now turned into an art gallery and museum of skulls, skeletons, and taxidermy. There was a small bench made of some whale vertebra and walrus tusks, as well as toys, games, and many tools. We went into the stone Lutheran church, which was cut from the grey and white marble that had been mined nearby for decades, though the mine is now closed. Here agin we saw a menorah on the altar, which seemed puzzling because Greenland has almost no Jewish population. Later I looked this up (there is only one permanent resident in all of Greenland who is Jewish), and learned that what I thought was a menorah was a traditional Scandinavian Lutheran church feature. It evokes the light of heaven, and is based on the description of the seven-branched lamp described in Exodus, in the Temple of Jerusalem. We also stopped briefly into the main grocery store, which had quite a wide selection of food including a large section of various gummies (given the proximity to Scandinavia I guess) and all sorts of snacks and even things like cup o’soup, as well as frozen chicken hot wings and many kinds of yogurt. We then walked up several ills to the Dog Town area, again almost outside of town. There was a dog trainer who had some adult dogs and some pups that we could see a bit closer than the ones wandering through that area of town. It was nap time, so the pups and adults were mostly sleeping, and all these were of various shades of tan rather than the creamy off-site color we saw in Sisimuit. Back to the center of town, where there were two clearly Instagram photo spots, one a giant red and white sleigh, the other a 15-foot tall Santa post box, where apparently people from all over the world write letters to Santa here, which are often answered by local children. Reuben asked us to get photos of ourselves on both to he could add his AI polar bear, so we did that, and walked leisurely back to town to catch a Zodiac back to the ship.
After lunch, we went with Dan to Qilakitsoq, an area outside of town on an inlet which is an historic and current burial ground. We needed to be very careful to follow Dan and not step on any graves, which here are formed of piles of rocks. We walked amongst the now-familiar tundra vegetation of willows and crowberries, and saw several 500-6– year-old turf houses, one with three separate units (each with its own entrance) probably for an extended family, and one larger one that came later and was communal. Dan told us that the native Greenlanders were very conflict-averse, as the health and welfare of the community depended on everyone doing their jobs. Rather than fight with weapons over a dispute, such as angry words or competing for female attentions, men would have something like a humor face-off in which the community would decide the winner by clapping or shouting, to avoid people attacking each other with weapons which might mean losing a valued hunter from the community. If a man died, his wife might marry another relative (even in the other man already had a wife) so that she and her children could still be provided for and contribute in their own way. They did not have an official marriage ceremony, but more a community confirmation of the relationship. There was sometimes gender-fluidity, where if a man had four daughters, two of them might be designated to be hunters like boys would be, and take on that role instead of the childcare, cooking, sewing of hides, and rendering of hunted animals and birds that were the women’s typical role. He explained that everyone had a role, even children, and if roles were missing it could be devastating for the community. Near this area were found in the 1970s eight mummies, six women and two children, perfectly preserved by the cold, dry air, the subject of a major National Geographic article. They were buried with a umber of articles of clothing, tools, and amulets, and Hildreth were placed on top of the women, whose bodies were also stacked. Scientists were even able to distinguish the characteristic tattooing on their faces, which significance various life events such as the onset of menses, marriage, childbirth, and widowhood. A group doing the strenuous hike went all the way up to where the mummies had been required, but we stayed in the lower gravesite area. It had been a quiet and introspective experience, being in a graveyard. We hiked back to the beach where we took the Zodiacs back to the ship.
Before dinner at the recap we heard about plans for the next day, and for dinner the next evening which would have a Filipino theme - almost all the waters, culinary, housekeeping, and maintenance staff are Filipino - as well as something of a talent show by the crew and staff, which we are looking forward to. On the summary for this day, the notes said “sunrise: none, sunset: none,” meaning that the sun never went below the horizon, only dipping to the bottom of the parabola of its course, thrust the land of the midnight sun. BY the time we went to bed, around 11:00pm, it was still quite bright outside.
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