We finally arrived and were day-dreaming of a warm soup- which we cooked as soon as we got home. We were thrilled at the fact that the water and heating were working properly. After one liter of soup and a hot chocolate we manged to start to undress and look more like our usual selves. Life in Greenland is somewhat different from life in Switzerland. The surroundings are obviously different, but also the pace of life is much more slowed down. Working hours start at 9 or 10 o´clock. People have time, they chat with each other and laugh a lot. No one seems to be in a hurry. I find it impressive that every day life doesn´t seem to take into consideration that temperatures are freezingly cold. There is construction going on, roofs are being laid as if it was the most evident thing to do. Laundry is washed and hung up outside!? Perhaps the clothes keep longer after having been deeply frozen?

The water stems from a water tank. There are no water pipes. A lorry goes to the one water house (where the water pipeline ends), fills its tank with fresh water and then distributes it to the houses. A green light attached at the house´s walls means that the tank must be filled, a red light that it has just been filled.Life up here is hard. But the most fabulous thing to do here is to go dog-sledding. Sledges are vehicles of transportation here, contrary to Svalbard, where transportation occurs by snow scooters and dog sledges are used for tourist purposes only. Greenlandic huskies are huge and very wolf-like. Even from the outside they look much more like wolves than dogs. We were told not to pet or cuddle them as they aren´t used to that. We were also told that they wouldn´t let us drive the sledges even if we had already done so in Svalbard. We soon understood why. I was put on a sledge owned by Niels (another Niels!). His 12 dogs were pulling it. The Greenlandic way of attaching dogs to the sledge differs from the Svalbardian way: they are attached standing in a row, i.e. one dog standing beside the other. In Svalbard the dogs are running behind each other. So we had 12 “engines”. Those dogs are so powerful, they look more like a power engine or a bulldozer than anything else. They are very well trained. No fussing, no barking or biting. ”Iu-iu” (pronounced “you”) is left, ”ili,ili” is right. So Niels communicated with them by shouting these orders. There was a word for “stop” (no brakes on the sledge!) and one for “faster”. Compared to the dog sledding we had done so far in Svalbard this trip was much more adventurous. We quickly understood why we weren´t allowed to drive the sledges .It is as if you compared a walk on a motorway to mountain-climbing: one thing is easy, the other takes some skills and practice. It all started very smoothly. I was sitting on a sledge with my legs sticking out on both sides of the sledge, Niels, the Inuit driver, was sitting between my legs. We were both dressed very wearmly: he was wearing trousers made of polar bear skin and a very warm anorak on top. I was wearing long, warm underwear, one insulating sweater ,three polar fleece pullovers, two polar fleece jackets, a coat with down feathers, two fleece leggings, down trousers, gore-tex trousers and seal-skin trousers which I had borrowed here, plus four pairs of socks and very thick boots. Then of course my balaklava (bank robbery mask) and the “Russian cap” (rabbit skin). I have to admit that dressed like that I just managed not to freeze…

Well, we took off and the beginning was very easy going .I wondered what all that fuss was about. But soon the trip started to be exciting indeed. First we climbed quite a tall hill ( the dogs are like engines…), then the huskies raced down the hill in a crazy speed. Communication with Niels consisted of three words in English only: Freezing? Photograph? Okay? And of course body language. He made signs not to try to take pictures ,but to grip to the rope attached to the sledge. What a wise idea. We raced over frozen lakes (don´t ask me how the dogs managed to skate over it…), even rocks seemed to be no obstacles. And all at an unbelievable speed. It was a lot of fun. The dogs were stirred very skilfully. Only once we had a rather unplanned descent. We had just climbed one of those steep hills again. I don´t know what went wrong after that but all of the sudden we ended between two huge rocks. The dogs decided to pass on one of those rocks. The other rock was very close by to the rock we were passing. As I was sitting with both legs sticking out on the two sides of the sledge my right foot was about to hit the rock. I couldn´t move that leg because Niels was sitting between my legs. I was already imagining my bones crack when Niels all of the sudden took my right foot and swung it over his right shoulder. That made me twist around, so I ended lying on my belly and hugging the sledge- a rather unusual position for dog- seldding. In the meantime we had reached the top of the rock and started to fly ( it was like a ski-jump) - the sledge literally took off- after several meters we landed on the snow again, Niels pulled at my right foot and turned me back into a sitting position. He turned around, smiled and asked “okay?”- and off we went.

It was a lot of fun, but rather acrobatic at times. After about 1 ½ hours we arrived at the Isfjord and watched the sun which was just illuminating the huge icebergs. I can´t describe the beauty of it. It was as if we were on another planet, perhaps the moon, with ice, ice and ice, the red sun, the dogs who were calmly eating some snow, and the smiling Inuit. Fabulous. We had some tea and biscuits. We took some pictures and managed after a while to slow down our heart rates. We also observed two Inuits who had previously passed us with a 20-dog-sledge fishing for seals on the pack ice. Niels explained that it was a very dangerous fishing, as the ice isn´t very thick (otherwise they can´t dig holes for fishing into the ice) and the risk to break through the ice with lethal consequences for men and dogs is high. What an amazing people. I do admire how they manage to survive in that nature. If our dog-sledding trip was a “tourist-trip” I prefer not to imagine how they usually drive their sledges when they are without tourists…

The way back was about as adventurous as before. When we were about to go down another steep hill, Niels stopped the sledge and attached the dogs on the back of the sledge, so they would brake instead of accelerating the sledge. He told us that they usually tie up to six seals on one sledge, with many more dogs pulling it than for a two-person-trip. We arrived thrilled, excited and exhausted at the same time. What an exceptional experience! We kindly declined the offer for a two-day trip with a sleep-over in a hut “with even a stove”. We were so exhausted after three hours, 2 days: no way…After our usual soup and hot chocolate we started to recover again. Just in time to find out that we were without running water again. By now experienced Greenlandic inhabitants we made the usual phone call assuming (correctly) that some one would come and fix the problem. At least for the time being. And the heating still worked,so who cares?Every where else I would have been angry thinking that these flats aren´t exactly cheap after all and I´d expect the water to work. But here I really can´t blame them. Everybody is being helpful but circumstances are so extreme that one simply can´t expect perfection. It is so much more important to have a competent dog-sledge driver than running water. Or to be warm than to be clean. It´s the Arctic after all. And looking out of the window, looking at these magic and magnificent icebergs I wonder what our every day problems are all about. We have everything, our lives are so insignificant compared to this powerful nature. It´s really humbling.

These icebergs are so old. Water, a tiny molecule with such effects, the water we lack at this very moment is present in the snow, the clouds, the frozen lakes and rivers and the icebergs. It keeps regenerating itself as the circle of nature keeps showing us over and over again. The iceberg will eventually melt and evaporate, become a cloud, snow down to earth, be pressed together in a glacier, break off at the edge and end up being an iceberg. In a way that´s what life is all about: birth, adult life, death, decomposition and hence creating the essence for new life again. The population here lives this circle much more naturally than we do- and under what circumstances! I wish we would learn from them. They seem to be more mature and wiser than most “civilized” people I know back home.

Kalaallit Nunaat, qujanaq- thank you, Greenland, for that experience!