GREENLAND 76°28’15.7”N 69°11’00.1”W
“The Inughuit remain strong in their commitment to preserving their cultural heritage and their deep connection to their land.”
Greenland is home to around 57,000 people, over 90% of whom are Inuit. The north- ernmost tribe of Inuit is Inughuit. They live in North West Greenland, and the popu- lation is about 800. They live so far north that polar night takes four months, and the summer sun does not set for four months. One elderly Inughuit told about his obser- vations in Siorapaluk, the northernmost indigenous village in the world. “In the 1990s, the sea was frozen over for 10 months a year, and the sea ice could be two meters thick. Now the ice topped at 30 centimetres and is strong enough to carry people for only about six months a year.” Sea ice is getting thinner and thinner each year. This loss of sea ice is a significant threat to polar bears and other arctic animals. It also threatens the Inuit’s traditional way of life. The age-old culture of on-ice subsistence hunting is itself increasingly disrupted by climate change. People no longer know when the sea ice will form or how long it will stay. It is more dangerous to go hunting out on sea ice. Hunters encounter more open water now and they can not go into the areas they used to hunt in. Their way of life may be lost forever soon. A study by a scientist at the Finnish Meteorological Institute reports that the Arctic has been warming almost four times faster than the global average in the past 40 years. In Greenland, sea ice is disappearing at a rate of about 10 percent per decade. In a few decades or less, the Arctic will likely be without sea ice in summer. The story of the northernmost hunters shows us that even far up north, where people live in one of the harshest environments, there is harmony with nature. They are a testament to the resilience of indigenous cultures and the power of spiritual connec- tion to shape a way of life that has been both profound and enduring. The Inughuit remain strong in their commitment to preserving their cultural heri- tage and their deep connection to their land. The Arctic has fascinated explorers, adventurers, traders and whalers ever since ancient times. I have been searching for my own Ultima Thule, my place in the Far North for almost 30 years. I was enchanted by the story of the “Mother of the Sea,” perhaps the most famous of all the Greenlandic myths and legends. In 1995, it inspired me to set off for the place where the story originated: Greenland. My search took me to the Inughuit of the northernmost part of Greenland. The friendliness of the people, the silence of the glaciers and the beauty of the landscape compelled me to return there again and again. Since 2016, I have been documenting the life of the Inuit hunters and their families. The Piniartoq project about Inuit subsistence hunters and climate change is a collab- oration between polar scientist Dr. Kristin Laidre, science writer Susan McGrath, and photographer Tiina Itkonen.
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MOTHER VOLUME TWO
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