Fine PEDERSEN - Professor since 24 years in Greenland

Upernavik - Latitude 72 46 NR - Longitude 056.009 W

1.300 inhabitants

Interviewed in June 2009

Fifteen years ago, we could use the pack ice in winter as a highway, both towards the north and towards the south. Nowadays, we can’t go anywhere – the ice is very thin, or there is no ice at all. It’s becoming dangerous to use a dog sled. Until 1993, snowmobiles were forbidden on the pack-ice, and people only travelled using teams of dogs. There were thus more dogs than people in Upernavik. I myself had dogs, but as for many other people, the last few years I could no longer go with them on the ice. They served no purpose for me. I had to feed them to do nothing.

This year, in spite of a good winter, we have had two months of pack ice, but ice which is very thin, around ten to fifteen centimetres thick, and very dangerous to walk on. In a normal year, the ice is twenty centimetres thick. The pack ice around Upernavik has always been thinner than elsewhere because of the melting ice which comes from the enormous glacier, fifty kilometres away. When I arrived in Upernavik, twenty years ago, you could travel on the ice as from the end of November. The problem for the Inuits is that the current situation completely paralyses them. The pack ice can be too thin to travel on with the dog sleds, but nonetheless too thick to be able to pass with motor boats. One of the consequences of this thinning of the ice is the arrival of a large number of polar bears in our region. In 2007, the hunters killed around thirty, close to the town.

The whales are also much more numerous than in the past. They follow the shoals of “amacets” (small fish) who have also increased in number. What is the reason for that?

We have also noted the appearance of new kinds of birds, such as the Cormorant. The winters are much less severe. You don’t see anymore temperatures of minus forty, which used to be the case – the coldest it gets is barely minus twenty. The storms and strong winds which affected our coast in autumn have disappeared. There are hardly any during the whole year, and those which there are seem to have moved south to the region of Nuuk, more than one thousand kilometres away.

In the past, the pack ice brought cold and dry air, with a clear, bright sky. Nowadays, with all the areas of open water, the sky is much more overcast, with a mass of humid air.

From an economic point of view, we have experienced a change in our hunting activities, which are now focused on fishing, and specifically fishing for halibut.

Seal hunting is still practised. However, if you look carefully at the boats which are heading for the glacier, you will notice that there are very few young people. The majority of them have little interest in hunting. They prefer by far the hamburgers from the shop!

The situation is nonetheless different in the small villages, where the activities have remained more traditional. With less professional opportunities than in town, hunting and fishing are often the only means of survival. Certain villages near to the large towns are definitely neglected, even abandoned.