Kulusuk Part 1

Kulusuk means black guillemot's breast  in both Tunumiit Oraasiat and Kalaallisut. The name refers to the appearance of the mountain near the settlement, and applies to the mountain, the settlement and the island on which they are located. In summer there is one dirt road which goes from the airport into the centre of the settlement, and in winter there are no roads at all - the only transport is by snowmobile or dog sled. When I arrived at the airport I managed to hitch a ride to the other end of the road with a local. The road had been ploughed out of the snow which had not yet melted, so in several places we seemed to be driving through a snow tunnel as the snow banks were a few metres deep. When we reached the end of the road, I was pointed in the vague direction of the hostel and left to climb up a hill, sinking up to my knees in the snow and trying to figure out which one of the houses was the hostel. 

None had a sign indicating that it was the hostel, so I went for the building which had several identical kayaks stored outside. This turned out to be a good guess. I met Jóhanna, an Icelandic anthropologist who runs the hostel in the summer to support herself while she does research in Kulusuk for her MA. In the winter she goes to university in Berlin. 'I've put a mattress out upstairs for you,' she said, 'but you can move it if you want - find the good karma!' I thanked her, and took my bag upstairs. The hostel had two rooms - a kitchen, eating and sitting area downstairs, and a sleeping area upstairs. The location Jóhanna had selected for my mattress was enclosed on three sides by two walls and the pile of spare mattresses, so I decided to leave it there. 

The toilet (like all rural Greenlandic toilets) was a large bucket with a strong black plastic bag in it, in a cubicle in the porch. The bag is taken away three times a week by a man on a 'chocolate tractor' (or in winter, a chocolate snowmobile). 

As I arrived in the early evening, by the time I had got to the hostel and got my stuff set up it was time to eat dinner. Jóhanna cooked us soup with mussels harvested from the shore that day. I'd never eaten mussels before, and they turned out to taste as unappealing as they look. 

In the morning Jóhanna made scones for breakfast, and left me with the hostel to myself as she was giving a tour of Kulusuk to a group of 16 Czechs who had flown over from Reykjavík for a day. The hostel had some books on Greenland out in the sitting area, so I decided to read until the supermarket opened at 10. First I read The First Steps, a graphic novel of the first settlement of Greenland (by the Independence I culture) based on what we know from archaeology. Then I read a collection of Inuit folk tales and mythology called A Kayak full of Ghosts. 

After that I wandered around until I found the supermarket. Everything that can't be fished, hunted or gathered from the sea or shoreline must be imported into Kulusuk, and the sea ice had not yet broken up enough to allow the ships from Denmark to come to the island for the first time since last year, so there was almost no fresh food and everything fresh was extremely expensive. I bought a packet of biscuits and some dried pasta and sauce powder to make lunch, and then continued walking around the settlement and the coast. 

The next day Jóhanna invited me to come on the tour, as she had a much smaller group. We walked around the settlement and visited the museum and the church. We also saw a traditional drum dance performance by one of the only people in Greenland who is still able to perform it, and finished the tour with a dog sled ride on the sea ice back to our starting point. 

In the afternoon, one of Jóhanna's friends asked if I would like to come on his boat when he went out to hunt seals. I will put the seal hunt in its own post for the benefit of people who don't want to read about seals being shot.