Small Glaser and Tender, Nuuk Ski Runs, Nuuk from the Ship, The Lego Apartments.

We arrived in Nuuk, Greenland this morning, knowing that we would be getting off the ship. It was cloudy, 36 degrees and forecast for light rain or snow. Yes we got off. We tendered into the dock. Only one tender could dock at a time. With 3100 people, guess what that was like. Because of the suite, we had get off anytime tickets and we gave 4 to good friends of ours and we all got off quickly. Of course this meant that we had to wait on people that did not plan ahead, to start our tour.
There is not a whole lot to see in Nuuk, but our guide was so entertaining that the 2 hours passed very quickly. We drove around down town first as she explained the different buildings, some new and some old. There were some apartments that were built in the 70’s that were just ugly, and then some of the new ones were quite attractive. The buildings are all made of poured concrete with wood on the outside as a covering. They like to paint their buildings bright colors so the wood works well. In the old days the color of the building meant something. Yellow was a hospital, doctor, nurse or someone that worked in the medical field. All school houses were painted red and so were the teachers and others homes that worked for the schools. The police, lawyers, judges etc., were paint green. The government buildings and homes were painted blue. I don’t know what the color of the homes of the working bees were painted.
Nuuk has a 9 hole golf course. The grass was imported from Sweden, as there is no natural grass in Greenland. I think this would be a good place for me to play. Just think of the roll you would get on the rock. They have also a ski lift and some runs. Again on solid rock, watch out if you fall. They ski from before Christmas until late May or early June. They also do a lot of cross country skiing and have several trails, some lighted and others you wear a miner’s lamp. They have a very nice indoor swimming facility that we stopped at. They have an airport, and for the pilots out there, you want to stay on the center line here. One side of the narrow runway drops off “\”. They fly Dash 7s in and out of here. Nuuk boast the largest mailbox in the world. It is used for delivering Santa mail.
Nuuk is Greenland’s capital and largest city, at about 16,000 people. Our guide was asked about unemployment. She said in the summer it runs about 200 and in the winter about 1,000. She said that there are always about 200 people that do not want to work. Sound familiar? The formal history of Greenland generally dates from 1728, when a Lutheran missionary Hans Egede, came from Denmark to join12 Greenlandic families in this place, which was then called Godthab. He built a trading post, a Lutheran mission, and opened the doors to slow, but steady integration between Inuit and European people.

The popular native foods are musk ox, reindeer, salmon, shrimp, dried fish and mattack (whale skin with blubber). We ate on the boat. Everything is expensive as it has to be imported from somewhere. They export fish, cold water shrimp, and seal skins.
The Inuit people can converse with the Inuit in Alaska, Canada, but cannot read writings from Canada as they use figures instead of letters for their letters. The Inuit in Russia have lost their native language so cannot communicate with any of the other countries tribes.
The Inuit had what they called a fun adult game. It was blow out the candle. You blew it out and then grabbed your partner for the night. Our guide’s grandfather was a mailman. He traveled to the villages south of Nuuk by kayak, carrying the mail to them. It took him a week to go down and week to come back home. When he stopped at a village he was invited to somebody’s home to spend the night. She said her father had lots of brothers and sisters in the south. She explained that they understood about the gene pool and this was their way of not interbreeding, and spreading the gene pool around.
We saw several medium sized icebergs floating down the fiord today. None as big as the one we saw last night, but interesting.
Only 15 % of Greenland is NOT frozen the year around. It is the world’s largest island. The center of the island is permanently covered with a blanket of ice that is two miles thick in places. If this frozen mass was to melt, the world’s oceans would rise almost 20 feet, and most coastal cities would look like Venice. There are about 50,000 people in Greenland. Most live in closely knit villages and towns, where warfare is unknown, and mutual help is taken for granted. Cities are a new concept for them.
We are on our way to Nanortalik, Greenland, with the hope of seeing the Aurora Borealis tonight and more icebergs tomorrow. Tomorrow is a sea day.