Monday, 15 June 2015

Nuuk Day 1

My first full day in Nuuk was a Sunday, meaning that most of the day was spent walking up and down every street in the city, looking for anything at all that was open - but in particular I was looking for the boat tours which are more or less the only tourist activity in Nuuk. And as the WiFi where I was staying cost 150 DKK (15 GBP) per day, I was hunting for hotspots. At about half 12 I found the National Museum of Greenland, but as it was not going to open for another half an hour I continued down the road and discovered a portacabin belonging to a tour company. Unlike every other shop and tourist office in the city, it was open. 

The weather on Monday was forecast to be too windy to go out in the boat, which only left me Tuesday free before I left for Kulusuk. While booking the tour, the shop owner asked for my email address in case there were any problems. After explaining that I had no internet access and giving my mobile number as a substitute, he gave me the code to the shop's WiFi and told me I could use it whenever I wanted. 

I returned to the museum, which had now opened. One exhibition showed a timeline of Inuit artifacts and replicas of living spaces; from their first settlement in Greenland in the 1000s, through the impact of Danish colonisation and up to the present day. The second exhibition contained information on the other cultures which have been found on Greenland: the Arctic Small Tool tradition (including the Independence I & II, Saqqaq and Greenlandic & Late Dorset cultures) and the Norsemen.

Although the lighting in the museum made it difficult to photograph the artefacts without flash, I did take pictures of many of the noticeboards as an easy way to record the information, and I can put them up here (or paraphrase) if anyone is interested. 


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