Icebergs as large as villages float by with an air of serene majesty. Scoresbysund lies in ahead, untouched. The 350 km deep fjord system is only accessible by boat three months a year. Which is now.

An insolent lump of ice scrapes against the bright green oxidized copper fixed to the bow of the schooner Opal. The sea is dead quiet. The black water appears stiff, but not frozen. As we sail deeper into the mouth of the Scoresbysund, the amount of ice chunks that break the black color of the water as white speckles grows. Captain Heimir Harðarson give us the command to pull in the already reefed sails and pursues his course on noiseless electricity. The ice propagates quickly: like curious, white, sea creatures coming to inquire from all around. Chunks become ice blocks, ice plates, and then a majestic blue iceberg looms at the horizon. The ice is everywhere now. Slush scrapes playfully but slowly against the copper and disappears under the bow. Carefully we approach Solglacier, a twelve-kilometer long ice mass moving at the slow rate of ten meters per day, which is considered a fast moving glacier. The unstoppable pushing mass creates a continuous deafening spectacle.

Shreds of mist drape against the black perpendicular basalt walls, which look down upon us like two thousand meters high gatekeepers on both sides of the ice mass. Over there, a blue icy avalanche breaks loose with a sound comparable to a jet fighter breaking through the wall of sound while the turbine of a 747 is warming up thirty meters further. Blue ice is old ice. On the right, a thousand lumps fall towards the water. Freed from the glacier to which they have belonged for thousands or maybe even tens of thousands of years. Opal quietly maneuvers along, deeper and deeper into Scoresbysund.

ISOLATION
To better illustrate how isolated this area is; from October to June the sea is frozen, making it impossible to travel here by ship. The closest village on Greenland, with a staggering ninety inhabitants, is situated eight hundred kilometers south of Greenland. In between, there is nothing. The closest inhabited world is Húsavík in Iceland, five hundred kilometers sailing on the northern Arctic Sea and the home base of the Opal.

The name Ittoqqortoormiit means roughly a settlement with large houses and the colorful houses that suddenly break off of the untouched nature is a striking sight. Red, green, yellow and blue. Yellow with green knots or blue with red. It feels a bit like a Greenlandic Cinque Terre, at least seen from the sea.

 The many crosses on the grave site that overlook the village testify to a hard life and are a strong contrast to the, nowadays, classic blue trampolines that can be seen behind each and every house. Curious children peek out the windows and wave. Visits here are not too common. In the middle of the village, two boys play at the playground under a grandmother’s watchful gaze. One of few cars in the village is passing by. On the pickup truck three small children are clinging on, their earbuds are as big as their broad smiles, on an adventure in the ordinary life. In the small shop, food is crowded with everything you can think of on the shelves. There are all kinds of supplies here to meet the needs of the villagers, from food to weapons and doll’s prams. During the short summer period it is possible to get here by boat and just when the ice is released and before it settles again, a cargo ship with supplies that will last all year arrives. For nine months a year, Ittoqqortoormiit is completely cut off from the outside world with the exception of helicopter traffic from Denmark once a month.

NICE FATTY MEAT
The family of Ingrid Anike heartily welcomes us. They are serving stewed muskox, nice fatty meat that resembles beef. Hunting is important here. The mouth of Scoresbysund presents an open water space between the ice in the winter, free of ice due to currents and winds, and therefore THE place for life. Birds, seals, arctic hares and foxes, muskox and the mighty polar bear reside here. Everything is prey for the Inuit. “For the Inuit everything has an Anirniq, a soul”, Ingrid explains. “Together they form Anirniit, the kingdom of spirits. The Inuit don’t honor anything, but fear all the more. This is not that surprising when the weather conditions are as deadly as they are here. As long as the Anirniit are satisfied there is prosperity. But if the spirits turn against you, oh boy…” An Inuit killed by a polar bear? This is the revenge of Nanoek, the master of the polar bears. The boy who drowned in the sea a few hours before we arrived? Swallowed by Sedna, the mistress of the sea. My personal favorite is Mahaha, a demon who terrorizes the entire Arctic area and tickles its victims to death. People who freeze to death are often found with a smile on their face, that’s why.

The result is that when we have no wind in the sails, the silence remains undisturbed, which is huge in these parts. We only hear the rippling water and at times a small chunk of ice against the bow. Opal also serves for whale spotting in Iceland. Thanks to the silent movement, animals come closer to Opal than to any other ships.

DISCO SKIES
The night falls; clear as crystal. The amounts of visible stars in the polar night give me an almost melancholic feel. A glass of Icelandic brennivín, cooled by century old ice, which we have specifically chopped off a blue ice-lump for this purpose, enhances this feeling. I’m staring at the star-speckled sky when suddenly in a vague plop a small green explosion stands out in the dark night. The spooky green light moves quickly in the night, blurs and clears. On my left, another explosion occurs, then right, then left again. Pink and orange gusts of fog are moving high up in the sky, sometimes as bright as spotlights, sometimes fiery. It’s disco time in the Greenlandic polar night. This northern light is sun wind, containing a lot of energy. The energy is released when it collides with oxygen and nitrogen atoms in our atmosphere. It is then beamed at a height of 80 to 1000 kilometers in the sky in the form of the colorful polar lights. I have seen northern lights before, but never like these. Never have I seen them so clear, so many, so often, and so long. It is also the first time that I hear them. The night lasts very long that day, as it is nearly impossible to withdraw from such a spectacle. Who knows when you will see something as beautiful again. In this case it was the day after, and then the day after that. Igaluk, the Inuit god of the moon keeps playing games with his brother, the god of the sun.