Greenland is a beautiful nightmare

https://matduggan.com/greenland-is-a-beautiful-nightmare/

by zdw • 10 months ago

625 326 10 months ago

topkai22• 10 months ago

I flew over Greenland coming back from Europe recently. From the air, the fjords and glacial snowscapes there and in northern Canada are profoundly beautiful and completely devoid of signs of humans in a way you don’t see even in some of the remotest parts of the US.

Definitely worth opening the shade for if you have the opportunity

jamesblonde• 10 months ago

The best flights are to/from Seattle. Copenhagen/Seattle goes over the far north of Greenland.

tobinfekkes• 10 months ago

Same here. My favorite pictures from flights are from the London/Seattle route over Greenland.

SilverElfin3• 10 months ago

I’ve flown that way but got absolutely blinded by whatever is outside - it was very hard to tell any details on the land below.

ck22• 10 months ago

fun-fact: CIA is currently mucking around in Greenland trying to get rid of people against annexation

this is not going to end well

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0j9l08902eo

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit...

idiotsecant2• 10 months ago

I don't think that's an accurate characterization of either of those articles. It sounds like they're trying to find groups who want to be independent, probably with the goal of artificially propping them up. It's still gross, but not as gross as hunting dissidents.

morkalork• 10 months ago

find groups who want to be independent, probably with the goal of artificially propping them up

The same thing is happening in Alberta. It is unsettling and disturbing

ck22• 10 months ago

There are less than 60,000 people in Greenland

Not 6 million, only 60K

It's like a small city population spread out much further

Much easier to disappear opposition than try to recruit people pro-oppression

This is not going to end well because it's not about the mineral rights

It's about the northwest passage, which will then be another cold war with Canada

I hope all these countries understand the vast majority of US population is not okay with this

danielscrubs3• 10 months ago

Exactly my thoughts.

I think US ownership (not necessarily of land) is inevitable, but it is going to take a couple of decades of these kind of polarising pieces.

tokai2• 10 months ago

Why is that inevitable?

impossiblefork4• 10 months ago

I think US ownership (not necessarily of land)

What would that even mean? Especially the use the word 'ownership'?

I think there's zero chance of US long-term influence on Greenland. They simply have no reason to prefer foreign domination, when they can simply be sovereign. I would place independence + EU membership as more probably than any association with the US, and I think them staying within Denmark is much more likely than them becoming independent.

sorokod• 10 months ago

inevitable... because of Manifest Destiny?

Like so (source Wikipedia)

"... there were three basic tenets behind the concept:

The assumption of the unique moral virtue of the United States.

The assertion of its mission to redeem the world by the spread of republican government and more generally the "American way of life".

The faith in the nation's divinely ordained destiny to succeed in this mission." ?

jacquesm5• 10 months ago

I don't think that's any more inevitable than US ownership of Scotland or Finland.

threemux5• 10 months ago

I think it even makes sense if it were pursued in a different way. Greenland is looking for full independence but can't really hack it financially without aid. I think the COFA (Compact of Free Association) model that we have with Palau and Marshall Islands would work well.

We get expanded military rights and potentially some mineral/drilling rights, while Greenland gets protection, lots of money, access to USPS domestic rates, and probably increased tourism in addition to the independence they desire. Their citizens could also live and work in the US indefinitely.

epolanski4• 10 months ago

What do you mean inevitable? The people there want nothing to do being somebody's colony.

pcrh4• 10 months ago

US ownership would be pointless. The US already has relatively free access to its ally Greenland for military purposes. See for example the US base in Pituffik (formerly Thule). Proposing to annex your allies is a bit rude, to say the least...

If a country other than Denmark was to claim Greenland, either Iceland or Canada would make more sense.

pjc50• 10 months ago

It's going to get forgotten instantly when Trump leaves office, either democratically or feet first.

lifestyleguru• 10 months ago

Oh god, this CIA meddling in never ends well for anyone. I mean afterwards Americans will make a Hollywood movie claiming that situation was complicated and their intentions were good, but it will end up with some sort of hell.

gruez2• 10 months ago

fun-fact: CIA is currently mucking around in Greenland trying to get rid of people against annexation

That's a very misleading phrasing for what's essentially an influence operation. Your wording of "get rid of people ..." implies there's some assassinations/violence going on, but there's nothing to suggest that's happening. If Republicans/Democrats or even Russia was running an influence operation in the US, nobody would characterize that as "getting rid" of opponents or whatever.

krapp• 10 months ago

Every "influence operation" of this type by the CIA inevitably involves assassinations and violence. That's what the CIA does.

sema4hacker2• 10 months ago

In spite of wanna-be-kings like Putin and Trump, the obvious historical trend is for larger empires and countries to break up into smaller independent ones.

anotherhue• 10 months ago

I note there was no mention of a McDonald's. I for one look forward to the McWhale.

tiagod• 10 months ago

Not even Iceland has McDonald's

sayrer• 10 months ago

They used to! Anyway, Iceland is really easy to travel to. Everyone speaks perfect English, and the coffee is good. I know a little bit of Icelandic because they think I am Icelandic for some reason (I can read the signs at least, so maybe I don't look lost). There's a street with hot dog stands and stuff right in the middle of the capitol, which they seem to like. There are good hamburger places too, but they are expensive.

Greenland is another level.

ysangkok• 10 months ago

Why would you want McDonald's when you have pølsevogn?

https://www.facebook.com/p/Kunuks-P%C3%B8lsevogn-61575713986...

vintermann2• 10 months ago

This makes sense. Denmark is to pigs what New Zealand is to sheep.

tptacek7• 10 months ago

It's funny to me that in portraying Indiana as a "blank state" he's highlighting one of the most beautiful parts of the state (the route through the Dunes along the Michigan lakefront; if you've seen "Road To Perdition", you know what that area looks like). It's not important to the article, a complete tangent, but I can't not call that out.

curl-up4• 10 months ago

Having been to Greenland recently, I found his description of it similarly flawed.

joecool1029• 10 months ago

In what way/ways?

ARandomerDude• 10 months ago

I’ve never been to Greenland or (to my knowledge) met anyone who has. What is/was your experience like?

bradgessler3• 10 months ago

Unfortunately the dunes and lake are not visible from that stretch of I-94.

Southern Indiana is another beautiful part of the state. It's mostly rolling hills with lush green forests and farms.

tptacek7• 10 months ago

You don't have to drive it on I-94; in fact, for many years it was faster not to, because of insane bottom of the lake traffic. You can take the Dunes Highway instead (and then keep off 94 up the Michigan shore; there's good stuff up there).

BeFlatXIII• 10 months ago

I-64 is an underlooked gem. I used to drive there all the time.

internet2000• 10 months ago

Yeah I didn't open this link to see Indiana catching stray bullets. Does a disservice to this article.

bell-cot• 10 months ago

I prefer to see that part as an up-front, honest disclosure of his biases and negativity.

schmookeeg• 10 months ago

The charms of Indiana have been consistently lost on me over the years; it enhanced the article for me, and I read nearly his entire blog after his Greenland rantlet. I learned a few things.

Different strokes I suppose :)

Arainach3• 10 months ago

Then again, that stretch also has Gary.

Having grown up in that area of the Midwest, I largely agree with the author's categorization, except that "people on their way to somewhere better who got tired and decided this was good enough" describes a LOT of the midwest, not just Indiana. Significant chunks of Michigan, Ohio, and Missouri, most of Iowa/Kansas/Nebraska, etc.

If you read the history of westward expansion, "got tired and decided this was good enough" is literally true for how much of the area got initially settled (by white people)

Waterluvian• 10 months ago

I took a moment to realize there’s a place called Gary, Indiana. And that there isn’t just some guy who is so infamous that he’s just known as Gary.

hinkley5• 10 months ago

Illinois has a few rust belt towns as well. Decatur is the asshole of Illinois, with a water supply to match. Though for variety, it smells like old gym socks instead. Corn processing plants are almost as bad as paper mills, and when I lived there it had two, ADM and the very aptly named Staley.

klardotsh• 10 months ago

Yep. Even worse, the problem is recursive: a town I lived in for a while growing up, Vandalia, Ohio (a suburb of Dayton, itself not exactly a booming metropolis in this millennium, but I digress) was settled by westward migrants aiming for Vandalia, Illinois - a town in the absolute middle of nowhere that just so happened to be the end of the National Road, presumably because the road builders got bored and/or ran out of money. Anyway, the travelers got bored and/or ran out of money on their way to Illinois, gave up, said "good enough", and named their new Ohio settlement after the place they failed to reach.

The Midwest is many things, but for quite a lot of it, "where anyone really wanted to get stuck" is not one of them.

tptacek7• 10 months ago

Gary is basically part of the Chicago metro area; it's not characteristic of the run of the state you go through between Michigan and Illinois. You don't see it until after you commit to getting onto the Skyway.

kyledrake4• 10 months ago

It's really easy to write off a giant part of the country that millions of people live in as tired (and the implication underneath is usually "backward"), it's also dehumanizing them and makes assumptions about their quality of life when it might actually be a lot better than the people making these assumptions.

Spend some time not just driving through them, and one may be surprised to find plenty of diverse and interesting people that live full lives with rich family and social bonds, reasonably priced housing, ample winter outdoor activities (a lot of people actually want snow because it's beautiful and you can do fun things with it) and plenty of nearby nature and recreation opportunities, which I would contrast less unfavorably than the zeitgeist against the crowded, expensive vagrant culture that tends to dominate the more popular places on earth.

1123581321• 10 months ago

Gary is also interesting, though. It used to be interesting for good economic and cultural reasons, then bad reasons. Now it's experiencing some revitalization in the manner of Detroit or Rockford, which might actually make it more boring, though better to live in.

I thought the Indiana aside was odd as an objective assessment, but it worked well as a flavorful bit of travel writing to help me understand the perspective of the visitor to Greenland.

sandworm1014• 10 months ago

Good enough, but also the abject fear of seeing the rocky mountains rear up from the plains. For someone walking beside a wagon in late summer, a horizon of tree and snow-covered mountains topped with jagged peaks would seem like the end of the earth.

uwagar• 10 months ago

and gary was where michael jackson was born.

petre4• 10 months ago

I regulary watch a youtuber from OH and think it's actually nice compared to NY (crowds, cars, construction sites) and SF (intoxicated homeless people). Yup, the weather sucks for half of the year, there are abandoned Rust Belt industrial buildings all over the place, it's kind of flat, but apart from that, it still looks kinda nice. Also great beer joints, places to bike around.

https://youtu.be/eClMVj9GLAA?si=IxXxgdWfCsGge9yT

m463• 10 months ago

After living in a good number of places...

I think the people who have found their "good enough" place to live have more down-to-earth personalities.

And people living in "the best place to live" places or "all the people who do X should live here" places have different personalities (not always good).

tedggh• 10 months ago

The Indiana Dunes is indeed one of the most beautiful unexpected places I have encountered traveling in the US. And Wagner’s have to be the absolute best ribs in the world.

kubectl_h• 10 months ago

This is good to know, I have passed through Indiana a number of times on I-70 and I've found it to be particularly flat and boring. I know there are pretty places everywhere but that stretch has felt like exactly what he was saying, a place you have to get through to go somewhere else.

jccalhoun2• 10 months ago

Whenever I see people say Indiana is flat and boring I know they haven't been south of I-70.

ccleve4• 10 months ago

Irked me too. I'm running for state representative in House District 9, which covers much of that area. The district is drop dead gorgeous and it's growing rapidly. There's a lot here.

tptacek7• 10 months ago

Whoah, neat, congratulations or whatever you say to that. Good luck! Were you already involved in local politics in the area?

forgotoldacc• 10 months ago

Pretty much everyone on earth is proud of their home area. I've never really been to a place where people didn't describe their home as one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Earth has a lot of nice places. The flatness of Indiana can be calming and beautiful. But if you're driving on main roads, it's not very exciting, and it's not the kind of exciting people will fly across the world to see. And that was the point in the article.

losvedir• 10 months ago

Heh, as someone who lives there (Northwest Indiana) that was a rough read.

Then again, our state motto did used to be "Crossroads of America", so I guess that's kind of fair. These days it's the more aspirational "More to Discover".

AaronAPU• 10 months ago

I live somewhere that you’ll find almost nothing but insults about online. Meanwhile it remains a great place to live because those people don’t come here. Consider it a blessing.

jb19915• 10 months ago

And the southern part of the state is actually one of the most famous places in the United States for painters to retreat in the autumn as there are no trees as beautiful as you will find there.

Calling some states good states and others not is just a silly thing to do anyway.

jccalhoun2• 10 months ago

I bugged me too. I'm from Southern Indiana and when I hear people say "Indiana is flat" or "Indiana is boring to look at" all I hear them say is "I've only been to the Northern part of Indiana."

There is a lot to shit on Indiana for but its natural beauty isn't one of them.

mothballed2• 10 months ago

It's likely people from west of the Mississippi.

Indiana and other midwestern states have some awesome nature, but it's basically taken for granted by people from there because you grow up having your family show you all those places. Imagine if aliens showed up to a megacity, and declared there was no food anywhere -- a local would show them places called "restaurants" that actually have more varied and competitive tasty foods than about any farmland areas you'd find, but the aliens would think there's food only in the farmlands and declare the city worthless for finding something to eat.

If you drive out west, you don't even have to look for them; astounding nature is evereywhere.

End result is people from midwestern states appreciate the beauty of their state, but people who haven't lived there for years generally don't. Even after leaving the midwest, I have a high appreciation for the natural landscape, but that's only because I know where to go when I get there.

kasey_junk2• 10 months ago

It’s also problematic because that part of Indiana was geo engineered into a blank slate. It used to be a wetlands that rivaled the Everglades but was drained and filled in a massive (and controversial) public works effort.

kyleee3• 10 months ago

Got any links describing this?

osigurdson2• 10 months ago

I've never been to Indiana but I don't like when people say things like this about other places. Yeah, these people are "too tired" to go anywhere else - right. I hope the author enjoyed channeling Hemingway for a bit but seriously what does he know about why people live there?

Broken_Hippo2• 10 months ago

Would you rather hear about being too poor to go anywhere else? I'm from Indiana, lived there until I was 35 and family still lives there.

"Too tired" is an apt descriptor, though. "Too Poor" or not having opportunities is generally good too, but you likely wouldn't see all of that while driving through. Most people just live there because they were born there and their lives are there. "why would you move here??" isn't an unusual question.

8bitsrule• 10 months ago

Immediately reminded me of my first (and only) impression of driving that route.

And of that old one-hit-wonder, R. Dean Taylor lyric "Indiana wants me ... Lord I can't go back there"...

sleddoggs• 10 months ago

Nice try, Matt. I think everyone knows you just want Greenland all to yourself.

pixelpoet2• 10 months ago

Poor doggywogs :(

Edit: Wow, HN didn't like that. Nevermind, screw the dogs I guess, just toss the frozen ones over the cliff.

Slava_Propanei• 10 months ago

If you hang out with sled dogs, you will discover they are the happiest dogs. They go nuts when they get to run or eat, and just chill in their dog houses otherwise.

mkl4• 10 months ago

You may want to reconsider your choice of word: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wog

pixelpoet2• 10 months ago

It's a common word in (UK, apparently) English, cf. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/doggy_woggy

I've literally never once heard someone use the ethnic slur "wog", and I grew up in 90s South Africa :)

ryangibb• 10 months ago

The second I stepped outside I was set upon by a flood of mosquitos like I have never experienced before. I have been to the jungles of Vietnam, the swamps of Florida and the Canadian countryside. This was beyond anything I've ever experienced.
There are bugs in my mouth, ears, eyes and nose almost immediately. The photo below is not me being dramatic, it is actually what is required to keep them off of me.
In fact what you need to purchase in order to walk around this area at all are basically bug nets for your face. They're effectively plastic mesh bags that you put on.

This is pretty standard for Scotland in the summer too.

FridayoLeary• 10 months ago

The midges are horrific. It's amazing how something so tiny can make your life so miserable. I don't know how people in the olden days survived. I wonder what kind of social and political effects the midges had. I can imagine Scots with all their gifts of the mind and body fleeing and surrendering to the English just to get away from them.

WalterBright11• 10 months ago

I don't know how people in the olden days survived.

Maybe they found a material they could smear on their body.

For a similar example, I have a friend who spends a lot of time hiking and camping. He tells me that the first day, he needs to apply sunscreen. The next day onward, he doesn't need to anymore, as his body oil and sweat seems to do the job.

It makes sense that our skin has not evolved to be cleaned every day.

internet_points2• 10 months ago

That first google map has "Myggedalen" (Mosquito Valley) listed as a Panoramic View. At least they're honest :-)

pcrh4• 10 months ago

Myggedalen looks like "midge dale".

sema4hacker2• 10 months ago

In the 70's we visited relatives in northern Minnesota and took a .22 rifle to a dump, I think to shoot rats. So many mosquitos would immediately land on us and the rifle that you couldn't see the sight on the end of the barrel. We got out of there quick.

nalathna• 10 months ago

I struggle with the juxtaposition that there are horrible swarms of mosquitoes while there appears to still be snow everywhere. I've experienced those two things separately many times but never together.

bikelang• 10 months ago

Having grown up in northern Indiana and having spent my honeymoon ski touring in Greenland - I must say I don’t find the two to be very comparable. The skiing was significantly better in Greenland and the people much friendlier to boot.

marssaxman• 10 months ago

Charming, and well written! I'd love to go backpacking there some day - perhaps the Arctic Circle Trail.

rwmj• 10 months ago

I also thought it was charming and well written, and now have no intention of ever going there!

Simon_O_Rourke• 10 months ago

Beautiful, but definitely not worth invading or sending our troops to take over, if you don't awfully mind Mr. President.

dsign• 10 months ago

Well, US has the base near Guantanamo; I haven't been to that side but I have been to Guantanamo proper... trust me, that place is hot and has mosquitoes and two decades ago the naval base was almost as infamous as North Korea. And then there's the newly opened "alligator Alcatraz"... I think Mr. President have gotten some ideas for Greenland :-)

WalterBright11• 10 months ago

Somebody is likely to take it at some point, for strategic military and resource purposes.

Symbiote• 10 months ago

Denmark took it centuries ago, and that's how it should stay unless or until the Greenlandic people decide otherwise.

spacechild14• 10 months ago

What kind of argument is that!?

tokai2• 10 months ago

«This would end up being a theme, where buildings representing Denmark were made out of lots of wood, almost to ensure that you understood they weren't from here.»

Wooden buildings is much more of a Swedish or Norwegian thing than Danish. Wood is just a good material for building in the arctic.

SilverElfin3• 10 months ago

Why is it a good material? I would think steel or reinforced concrete would be better, with cheap corrugated metal paneling. And either way you need reinforced concrete foundations right?

benrutter• 10 months ago

Certainly for Sweden and Norway, wood is very plentiful, and a good insulator. I don't know if steel would technically be better, but historically at least it would have been harder to get hold of.

coryrc2• 10 months ago

Wood is a much better insulator than those two materials. At cold temps even the fasteners holding on cladding over foam sheets is a significant source of lost heat, so if screwed into wood instead of steel framing, you conduct much less heat.

Metacelsus• 10 months ago

hence, "Norwegian wood"?

b3lm0nt• 10 months ago

Enjoyed this. Reminds me of the great Idle Words (Maciej Ceglowski’s blog) travel posts.

Shuffleboard At McMurdo: https://idlewords.com/2016/05/shuffleboard_at_mcmurdo.htm

internet_points2• 10 months ago

came to say the same thing :-) I love those posts; this one was right up there with Maciej's

wood_spirit• 10 months ago

There is a YouTuber making a really remote cabin in I think northern Canada called Off Grid Engineering and he has a similar narrative style. Nice :). Recommended

planet36• 10 months ago

"The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him; but when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long, it takes away your appetite."

Moby-Dick

Herman Melville

iagooar3• 10 months ago

I've had whale when I went to Norway.

Was it good? It was OK. Would I have it again? Probably not.

Still a nice experience. Also trying cured reindeer, moose and seal slices was pretty unique.

repple• 10 months ago

Whale meat is so iron rich. Basically eating liver.

Now reindeer steak — that’s excellent!

bookofjoe9• 10 months ago

I recall having whale on a regular basis when I was college in Japan in 1968-69. I liked it, though its grey appearance wasn't appealing. I was always struck by how much it resembled meat in both texture and taste.

Simulacra• 10 months ago

I'm not sure what this person expected, they seem to have gone in this with Rose tinted glasses only to come away with it feeling like "Greenland, why?" It's like they set out to prove a point and were disappointed.

ulrischa• 10 months ago

Is this a US propaganda article to make greenland join the USA?

iagooar3• 10 months ago

I have been to northern Norway and Iceland a few times.

It all started when I was running my previous SaaS at the peak of its growth. I needed a break, and wanted to go far away, while still being close enough if sh*t hit the fan. My co-founder had recently talked to some friends who had been to Tromsø, Norway. The place looked perfect, so I booked a 5-day solo trip there.

Places that are so distant, with such harsh conditions and few people living there always give me a feeling I do not experience anywhere else in the world. I feel small, irrelevant, in the face of brutal, powerful nature.

And believe me, it is a feeling that is overwhelming. But never have I perceived it as something negative. The opposite was true. Feeling small made me feel calm, embracing that that was the right spot for me as part of God's creation. Suddenly, all those dark clouds that followed me everywhere I went back home were... Gone.

If you ever have the opportunity to go to one of these places - go. It might change you in profound ways.

bruce511• 10 months ago

Thanks for this. I'm going to Nesseby Norway next summer for 3 days over the solstice.

There doesn't look like much to do there, which I guess is kinda the point. I'm looking forward to it.

timonoko• 10 months ago

Plenty to do, you can for example fish and eat it too:

Paddeling from Nesseby to Russia https://youtu.be/nW5sFJKs8K4?si=xbmMz11CRIrC7obk

marcosscriven• 10 months ago

I had a similar feeling in the Faroe Islands. Even in mid summer the weather was rather inclement.

But the landscape was breathtaking, and the locals friendly in a low key way.

I’d love to go back.

Sammi4• 10 months ago

More wind means less mosquitos. One step forward and one step back.

Also don't fly with sas to the faroes. They turn back and try again the next day like in the article. Fly atlantic airways, they have equipment to fly through the fog or they will refuel in iceland and try again same day.

sandworm1014• 10 months ago

And when you want to experiance true issolation in the face of nature, Alaska and Westerm Canada are waiting. Try a drive north through BC in winter. Fish on an Alaskan river only accessible by floatplane. Wake up to watch the northern lights only to realize you are looking south. Or pan for gold only to look up and see a grizzly cub walking cassually past.

Norway: 15 people per sq km.

Alberta: 6.7

British columbia: 5.5

Alaska: 0.5

Yukon territory: 0.1

Northwest Territories: 0.03

iagooar3• 10 months ago

Finnmark in Northern Norway is more like 1.5-2, Troms is 3-6. But I agree, Alaska and Western Canada are places to go some day.

Funnily, as a student I had this offer to go to work as a waiter on Alaska. For different reasons that didn't materialize, but definitely this makes me want to go see it even more.

Not so much for the possible bear encounters. I do not think I am ready yet for that.

dbetteridge2• 10 months ago

Another option is

Western Australia: 0.2 if you get outside the capital city.

You'll see stars you didn't know existed and the distances are something else.

Northwest territories is beautiful though.

liquid_thyme• 10 months ago

Driving through is fine, but realistically, if you need basic amenities (healthcare, groceries, etc), you will be living in or around a population center, so those numbers won't hold up.

jacquesm5• 10 months ago

Seconded. I've been 'up North' in Canada and it is something that I won't even bother to try to put into words. All I know is that it left me changed, in a very good way.

tomcam6• 10 months ago

The people of Alberta remind me of what I imagine the American pioneers to have been: distinctly down to earth, extremely resourceful, generous, and not to be fucked with.

llamasushi2• 10 months ago

Went hitchhiking in Alaska while running my startup to "get a break". Absolute disaster. Couldn't properly connect to internet, dropped a bunch of meetings, etc.

Still worth it. My fault for not planning in advance.

tlavoie• 10 months ago

It's not the cub I'd be worried about, but where's it's mom?

I have yet to go north much, though our son and his girlfriend worked in Eagle Plains for a bit. One fun snippet from their trip back, having a raven as an escort for the highway drive: https://youtu.be/9KdMJhSaeJc

wnscooke• 10 months ago

In my younger days I hitch-hiked from Fort St John to Inuvik, via Whitehorse. It got into my blood and bones. I'd love to return... maybe one day.

QuantumNomad_• 10 months ago

Feeling small made me feel calm

Completely agree. I’ve been on many hikes and in particular there was one time where I was walking up a mountain, at winter, with skis on, that I felt like wow if everyone got to experience this particular feeling of just you and the mountains and not a single soul around, there would be less conflict in the world. If we all got to go on these long solitary trips in the mountains alone. All kinds of grievances and conflicts and whatever you might feel about people that you dislike, it all suddenly feels so insignificant and pointless to even expend any energy on.

elendee• 10 months ago

federally subsidized solo mountain hiking for the un-initiated. I will pay the tax

grilledchickenw4• 10 months ago

You just described wonderfully why I'm drawn to remote places. It started with a trip to the interior of Iceland, then Tromsø, and more recently Svalbard and the Faroes.

I tried to capture the beautiful sense of isolation in Svalbard here, maybe it inspires others to make a trip to somewhere remote. https://photoblog.nk412.com/Svalbard2024/n-ssC8fP/Svalminiph...

geoduck14• 10 months ago

Thanks for the pics! The prevalence of rifles is... thought provoking. The pic of the guy on a bike with a rifle is so metal

My overall impression of the area is "gloomy" all pics are overcast. It feels sad. It is beautiful, but I long for the sun

brotherjerky• 10 months ago

Poked around your site and enjoyed it, please post more

hetspookjee• 10 months ago

I could’ve scrolled far longer. Really liked the pictures and brief texts

hermitcrab• 10 months ago

Great photos. Crazy to just see a picture of a rifle leaning up against a window, unattended.

technocrat8080• 10 months ago

My god, how can I take photos like that? Do you describe your setup and process somewhere?

alluro2• 10 months ago

Beautiful photography, and I enjoyed your commentary. Thank you for posting.

tomcam6• 10 months ago

I feel small, irrelevant, in the face of brutal, powerful nature.

I married a Chinese woman so I know that same feeling!

I kid.

Mostly.

btilly• 10 months ago

I see your Chinese and raise you Russian.

0ckpuppet2• 10 months ago

Could the catharsis come from replacing emotional bad weather with actually bad and dangerous weather/nature?

al_borland• 10 months ago

I was just daydreaming about visiting Svalbard when I opened up HN and stumbled on this comment.

sangeeth96• 10 months ago

I'm not a fan of bugs but it's only when I consume these travelogues I'm reminded that I should be grateful things are nowhere as apocalyptic over where I live in south India.

epolanski4• 10 months ago

Even professional travel personalities seemed to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. "There's the grocery store again!"

Hah, that's exactly the feeling I got when my favorite travel YouTuber went there.

Other than what in this post you also had boat excursions which were nice.

JohnLocke43• 10 months ago

I happen to be one of the Danes who partially grew up in Greenland that he talks about in the article. I even recognize the places from the article.

Some of my cordial childhood memories are from there and it is a place I will forever love. One of the most visceral memories I have is looking across the ice fjord listening to the thunderous breaking of the ice bergs - you can hear the sounds on videos, but combined with the enormity of what is in front of you and actually being able to feel the sound in your body it can only be experienced by being there.

I can see that the author was initially worried that Greenland would be devoid of anything to do, which is of course not true, as is written in the article. Especially the people are one of a kind in what I can only describe as directness or pragmatism.

One time a local from the place I lived was driving his car as it broke down and - rather than having it regularly towed to the mechanic - actually decided to tow it with a group of sled dogs. We just watched him sticking his head out the window shouting commands to the dogs while driving by. The dogs there can distinguish left and right, so it was surprisingly trivial to get the car to the mechanic. The Greenlanders see nothing extraordinary about this.

In other words, it is really valuable to have local connections if you want a great vacation in Greenland. I can also recommend the small, mini village settlements that are spread across the coast of the grand county. Some of them have hotels also.

I became nostalgic so I wrote a little blog post with some pictures for you people: https://lucasblog.dk/post/Greenland

vintagedave• 10 months ago

Thanks for sharing. Can you tell us where the “if you know where this is” photo is, please?

And how would you make local connections before visiting?

JohnLocke43• 10 months ago

I feel like telling you where the picture is taken would spoil a potentially fun experience, so I will not disclose that :)

Anyway, making connections is hard, though not impossible. I would recommend the local pubs (which are surprisingly busy given how small settlements are) and finding friends through e.g. work settings.

mkl4• 10 months ago

Thanks! A typo: "Wood is by far a ubiquitous material" → "Wood is far from a ubiquitous material".

JohnLocke43• 10 months ago

Fixed!

skybrian• 10 months ago

Can you explain the cars described in the article?

lucb1e2• 10 months ago

the enormity of what is in front of you and actually being able to feel the sound in your body it can only be experienced by being there.

I have a video of the coolest moment of my life and it looks like maybe the magnitude of a firefly on film. An asteroid impact was predicted and I heard of it in time, so I went to observe it. No sound (or body feel) in my case, but knowing how crazy big and distant the fireball that you're observing is, lighting up the sky from the far side of France...

People whom I showed didn't really have a big reaction. I didn't really understand that, but by now I have enough distance to the event to look back at the video more objectively and realize that, indeed, it's cool but it's just another video. This, too, seems like it can only be experienced in real life

Eleven have been predicted ever (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_prediction#Lis...), none yet in 2025. If you see the notice and you're within, say, 750 km, share the news with a friend and go see it! Of course, it objectively really is just what it is: bigger version of a shooting star. Idk if everyone would have my reaction, but I did ^^

Thank you for sharing iceberg cracking. I love 'cold vacations' anyway (two months in Finland were some of the best months), so this is a new entry on my bucket list :)

petre4• 10 months ago

What does one feed sled dogs in Greenland?

skrebbel• 10 months ago

Fish, as described in the article. And when they freeze to death to toss them down a cliff.

paulcole• 10 months ago

There is nothing distinct about Indiana, it's just a place full of people who got too tired on their way to somewhere better and decided "this is good enough".

This is how Norte Dame was (allegedly) founded. Priests set out from the East Coast, planning to found the greatest Catholic University in the world in California. They get to Indiana and encounter a terrible snowstorm. They hunker down and decide they’ll get moving again when the weather improved. It never did.

goodmattg• 10 months ago

Perfect weekend read - kudos on a nice piece of writing

nullbyte808• 10 months ago

Funniest shit I've read in awhile on here!

jeffnappi• 10 months ago

This video about Camp Century in Greenland is fascinating: https://youtu.be/OndXawgRAeo

cozzyd• 10 months ago

I've spent quite a bit of time in kangerlussuaq while on route or on my way back from summit station. Would love to explore more of the country, but even just kangerlussuaq is quite beautiful. I've seen pictures from the east Coast from some pilots based out of Akureyri who were assisting some geologists at Summit one year and it looks absolutely gorgeous.

Greenlandic hot dogs are delicious too, similar to Iceland.

worik3• 10 months ago

What a wasted trip!

How rude, especially about Indiana.

They never found out where the people were going in their BMWs

The only descriptions of the locals were entirely without sympathy.

If this is how Icelanders [edit: Greenlanders, duh!]are treated by Danes, I suggest selling out to Trump!

mkl4• 10 months ago

The author is American, and no Icelanders were mentioned.

worik3• 10 months ago

The author is American

I assume you mean USAian. Fits my prejudices, which is unfortunate

An arrogant prick, anyway

tick_tock_tick• 10 months ago

Damn dude did Indiana steal your car or something? That's a lot of hate.

mckn1ght• 10 months ago

So if you've ever wonder "what is a glacier", let me tell you. Greenland has a lot of ice and it pushes out from the land that is covers into the sea. When that happens, a lot of it breaks off.

This is quite inaccurate and incomplete and the cynicism that follows and pervades the article is offputting.

Let me tell you that glaciers are quite fascinating and come in a variety of constructions and have all sorts of interesting and beautiful features like caves and moulins.

Watching one calve off something the size of a 5 story building into the sea just a couple hundred yards from my camp was a thrilling experience, the last time I went backcountry kayaking. And listening to another rumbling in the distance every 30 minutes or so at another camp the following night put me to sleep like a distant thunderstorm.

I think this article just goes to show that you can find beauty and wonder anywhere if you’re open to seeing it. Even the mosquitoes in interior Alaska don’t bother me because it is simply the world I live in.

LAC-Tech2• 10 months ago

I never understood why Denmark still bothers with Greenland. It seems to cost them a lot of money while at the same time they demand more and more autonomy. Danish isn't even an official language anymore. What does Denmark gain out of the block grant they give to Greenland?

nsnxnn• 10 months ago

Prime access to the most significant sea in the 21st century as well as lots of resources

By most estimates, in the mid 2050s the north artic will be mostly ice free, enabling direct and short travel between the states, Europe and the east

inglor_cz2• 10 months ago

Three centuries together is a long time. Many familial, workplace and friendly bonds tie the countries to one another. Also, as long as the territory is vaguely yours, even in a confederation, it is at least neutral or mildly positive towards you. Not hostile.

If everything was about net money transfers, then the US could get rid of at least 15 constituent states, but half of those would be immediately courted by China, eh?

Espressosaurus• 10 months ago

It's tiny and inhospitable, but it's beautiful like the inhospitable beauty of the high desert--but with snow. The pop of color of the houses against the the bedrock they're built on, the orange spray of lichen on the granite, the site of brightly colored red sails on tourist boats radiant as the sun punches through the fog, the incredible glaciers and density of snow and ice as it exits the mouth of the fjord, the site of an iceberg tipping over as it melts...

It's not somewhere you go if you want to enjoy architectural masterpieces, but the harsh beauty of a place like that can't be understated.

dreamcompiler• 10 months ago

As inhospitable goes, I wonder how Greenland compares to Antarctica.

sph• 10 months ago

If Greenland is Mars, Antarctica is Pluto.

When I was sweating in the European summer a few weeks ago, I used to check the weather down in the South Pole… -50C on a good day, -80C with windchill. There is a reason one has a few small human colonies and the other only penguins.

noduerme2• 10 months ago

This was some great travel writing. You don't hear good metaphors thrown around these days so much; LLMs suck at metaphors. Some choice bits:

>like being stuck behind a school bus in your own driveway.
>like some sort of prehistoric parking lot
>like nature's sculpture garden
>like being grounded by an airline
>like a very expensive, very slow merry-go-round
>like being trapped in a meteorological mood swing

These are each couched really nicely as references to everyday life, not over the top Hunter S Thompson style parallels, but at the same time very visual and conjuring experiences everyone can relate to. Good writing.

I'm really disturbed by the throwing of frozen sled dogs off a cliff. Frozen wasteland or not, they should do something to enforce laws against cruelty to animals.

LarsKrimi2• 10 months ago

Frozen wasteland or not, they should do something to enforce laws against cruelty to animals.

There are animal welfare laws, as well as a special unit responsible for specifically sleddogs. People are told to call snitch lines if they see animal cruelty

What is animal cruelty? The sleddogs talked about in the post were dead, you don't know how they died. In the wild or on trips sled drivers will often kill sleddogs themselves if they notice one slowing the pack down. It's a different world

Or is it just the part about throwing them off a cliff you don't like?

noduerme2• 10 months ago

It's the part about chaining them to rocks and letting them freeze to death which I don't like. Someone who takes decent care of their animals would not allow that situation to occur in the first place. How they dispose of the dogs after allowing them to die at home is not really the issue. We aren't talking about the middle of a sled ride, or a death by hazard or necessity. The definition of cruelty, if you don't understand that, is that this creature is under your control, serving you, and the minimum you can do is to respect it. If you don't, then you disrespect life. And if you disrespect life then you disrespect your own.

Yes, we kill animals for food or for fur. But disrespecting them is a completely different, very ugly and disgusting thing. Because we are like them.

One mark of a psychopath, btw, is cruelty to animals..And the reason is not simply a lack of empathy. It's a desire to do to other humans what you can do to animals. What you're missing is the fact that this can be done to you. You can be skinned alive, for example, or vivisected. You could be left to die somewhere frozen. No one would even care for your corpse. They'd just chuck you off a cliff.

For normal human beings, hearing things like that make them empathize with themselves. Therefore they don't want to inflict torment on anything else.

You're new here and maybe you're a psychopath. But I'm wasting my time trying to explain something anyway. What defines "cruelty" is not about life and death. It's about respect for the living and the dead, and essentially respect for yourself as a fellow animal.

keeptrying• 10 months ago

I felt the same when I went to Amstwerdam from SF

andhuman• 10 months ago

The bit about the dog was a good memento mori. You work hard almost your entire life… and then your body gets tossed over the wall.

kasajian• 10 months ago

The article wasn't proof-read. Too many basic English errors are too distracting and makes it hard to read.

lucb1e2• 10 months ago

Did anyone ever find out where those people were driving with such urgency, if indeed the town is like 6km start to finish? Felt a bit unresolved in the post

Is it just daily life, going 2km from work to home in a wind-protected vehicle (since the car won't be warm yet when your destination is on average like 4 minutes away; it can't be the heat aspect) as opposed to walking or, idk, ice skating or whatever it is you can do there (I presume not cycling or scootering due to slipperiness)?

Greenland is a beautiful nightmare

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