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This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland
For the last decade, Gretel Ehrlich has been obsessed by an island, a terrain, a culture, and the treacherous beauty of a world that is defined by ice. In This Cold Heaven she combines the story of her travels with history and cultural anthropology to reveal a Greenland that few of us could otherwise imagine.
Ehrlich unlocks the secrets of this severe land and those who live there; a hardy people who still travel by dogsled and kayak and prefer the mystical four months a year of endless darkness to the gentler summers without night. She discovers the twenty-three words the Inuit have for ice, befriends a polar bear hunter, and comes to agree with the great Danish-Inuit explorer Knud Rasmussen that “all true wisdom is only to be found far from the dwellings of man, in great solitudes.”
This Cold Heaven is at once a thrilling adventure story and a meditation on the clarity of life at the extreme edge of the world.
Ehrlich unlocks the secrets of this severe land and those who live there; a hardy people who still travel by dogsled and kayak and prefer the mystical four months a year of endless darkness to the gentler summers without night. She discovers the twenty-three words the Inuit have for ice, befriends a polar bear hunter, and comes to agree with the great Danish-Inuit explorer Knud Rasmussen that “all true wisdom is only to be found far from the dwellings of man, in great solitudes.”
This Cold Heaven is at once a thrilling adventure story and a meditation on the clarity of life at the extreme edge of the world.
377 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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About the author
Gretel Ehrlich
57 books350 followersGretel Ehrlich is an American travel writer, novelist, essayist, and poet born on a horse ranch near Santa Barbara, California and educated at both Bennington College in Vermont and UCLA film school. After working in film for 10 years and following the death of a loved one, she began writing full-time in 1978 while living on a Wyoming ranch where she had been filming. Her first book, The Solace of Open Spaces, is a collection of essays describing her love of the region.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 166 reviews
January 31, 2016
Description: Beginning in 1993, Ehrlich traveled to Greenland, the northernmost country in the world, in every season--the four months of perpetual dark (in which the average temperature is 25 degrees below zero), the four months of constant daylight, and the twilight seasons in between--traveling up the west coast, often by dogsled, and befriending the resilient and generous Inuits along the way. Greenland, unlike its name, is 95 percent ice--a landscape of deep rock-walled fjords, glaciers, narwhal whales swimming among icebergs the size of football fields, walruses busting through oceans of shifting ice. In the far north, the polar Inuit--the "real heroes"--still dress in bear and seal skins, and hunt walrus, polar bears, and whales with harpoons. The only constant is weather and the perilous movements of ice, the only transport is dogsled, and the closest village may be a month and a half-long dogsled journey away. The people share an austere and harsh life, lightened with humor and the fantastic stories of Sila, the god of weather, Nerrivik, the goddess of waters, of humans transforming themselves into animals, and interspecies marriages. Interwoven with Ehrlich's journey is the even more remarkable story of Knud Rasmussen, the founder of Eskimology, an Inuit-Danish explorer and ethnographer who took some of the most hazardous and brilliant expeditions ever, including a three and a half-year, 20,000-mile adventure by dogsled across the polar north to Alaska.
Opening: The glaciers are rivers, the sky is stuck solid, the water is ink, the mountains are lights that go on and off. Sometimes I lie in my sleeping bag and recite a line from a Robert Lowell poem over and over: 'Any clear thing that blinds us with surprise.'
My first dip in now and again of 2016 and for hours at a time I was transported, however every now and again was jolted out of my snow suit and high adventure to look at the writing: hate that when it happens.
3.75* and now away to the sauna with me.
I
Capital of Greenland, Nuuk: 05:01:2016 - A visit to Greenland to see how BREXIT may work
Opening: The glaciers are rivers, the sky is stuck solid, the water is ink, the mountains are lights that go on and off. Sometimes I lie in my sleeping bag and recite a line from a Robert Lowell poem over and over: 'Any clear thing that blinds us with surprise.'
My first dip in now and again of 2016 and for hours at a time I was transported, however every now and again was jolted out of my snow suit and high adventure to look at the writing: hate that when it happens.3.75* and now away to the sauna with me.
I
Capital of Greenland, Nuuk: 05:01:2016 - A visit to Greenland to see how BREXIT may work
July 30, 2012
Outstanding account of an American's experience of the environment and peoples of Greenland combined with chapters about Rasmussen's wide ranging trips to document Arctic cultures from 1910 to 1933. Great combination of reflection from personal experience and from historical and anthropological sources. Greenland, a Danish protectorate emerging into nationhood, has less than 60,000 people scattered among coastal villages in a huge territory, largely without roads. Unlike most Inuit societies of North America, there are still a significant populations here that persist in trying to live in traditional ways based on hunting and fishing. Ehrlich accompanied several hunting trips by dogsled for seals and auks and once for polar bears and observed attempts to harvest walrus and narwhale by kayak. She experienced both the endless night in winter and perpetual sun of summer, staying mostly with families of mixed Dane and Greenlander ethnicity. Rasmussen's seven trips included one that took him thousands of miles from Greenland all the way to Point Barrow, Alaska. Unlike most Arctic explorers who were egotistical and driven by hopes of glory, Rasmussen comes across as wonderful in his respect for the diverse peoples and cultures of the North. He understood that these people were gifted in living and surviving as individuals and in communal interdependent living. Ehrlich delves into spirituality of various Inuit people, for whom "everything is alive and every being knows about every other being and excel in keeping a right balance between humankind and the rest of the world."
September 20, 2018
It seems that once you have spent time in Greenland, it draws you back forever. Gretel Ehrlich spent considerable time there in the 1990s at a time when hunters were still spending months on the ice, living and hunting in traditional ways unchanged for thousands of years. Snowmobiles were just beginning to take over from dogsleds at this time though and older people feared that the younger generations would forget their history and traditions. Twenty years on, I suspect that will be coming true because so few places are untouched by the modern world nowadays.
Ehrlich relates the story of ethnographer Knud Rasmussen’s travels in the 1910s and 1920s as he records the lives, history and folk tales, full of spirits and shape shifters, of Eskimo people from Greenland to Alaska. She visits the village where Rockwell Kent lived and painted intermittently for many years, producing memorable works of art in his own instantly recognisable style, and ponders over the race for the North Pole in which many, such as Robert Peary, would not have succeeded (if indeed he did) without the help of native Greenland guides.
Ehrlich travels with hunters to the far north of Greenland. These trips carry high risks and she is reliant on the skills and knowledge of her travelling companions. She plays no other role than passenger on a sled whereas everyone else has jobs whether it is to hunt, or to skin and prepare the animals. Well, actually that is very unfair because what she does is record her experiences of a way of life that is fast disappearing. She doesn’t romanticise life though and is honest about Greenlandic society’s endemic problems such as alcoholism, domestic and child abuse.
The writing is often beautiful and always evocative. She clearly loves Greenland and everything relating to it. She understands that if food is found, usually seal meat, the dogs pulling the sled must be fed before humans who will go days sometimes without food. Greenlanders have often experienced famine and it’s not so long ago that they would resort to cannabilism when the only food available was from those who succumbed before others to starvation.
The actions of Greenpeace in banning the sale of sealskins is set against the need to survive. As one hunter says, ’we eat the inside and wear the outside’. Nannuk, polar bear pants; polar bear kamikpak, boots made of polar bear skin lined with Arctic hare; and aiqqat, sealskin mittens with a dog-hair ruff at the wrists. All make the difference between life and death on the ice cap. As Ehrlich says, “Predator and prey. In the Arctic, you never knew which side of that coin you’d find yourself on, and you lived by your wits, as did the bear and the seal, the dog and the fox, the raven, dovekies and hare.”
I made up my own pronunciations of place names because funnily enough Greenlandic isn’t one of my languages!
“The Northern dialect of Greenlandic replaces s’s with an unaspirated h, and the words have a soft sound. That night the men’s slow-beat, velvety largo quenched in me an unnamable thirst. I lay on my sleeping bag like an island in the steam of their voices, happy not to know what they were talking about.”
Although my attention wandered in the last 30 pages or so, because maybe we’d been on one too many hunting trips, this is easily 5 stars for me. The quality of the writing, the depth of historical research, and the passion with which it is written, made this a pleasure to read from start to (almost the) finish.
Ehrlich relates the story of ethnographer Knud Rasmussen’s travels in the 1910s and 1920s as he records the lives, history and folk tales, full of spirits and shape shifters, of Eskimo people from Greenland to Alaska. She visits the village where Rockwell Kent lived and painted intermittently for many years, producing memorable works of art in his own instantly recognisable style, and ponders over the race for the North Pole in which many, such as Robert Peary, would not have succeeded (if indeed he did) without the help of native Greenland guides.
Ehrlich travels with hunters to the far north of Greenland. These trips carry high risks and she is reliant on the skills and knowledge of her travelling companions. She plays no other role than passenger on a sled whereas everyone else has jobs whether it is to hunt, or to skin and prepare the animals. Well, actually that is very unfair because what she does is record her experiences of a way of life that is fast disappearing. She doesn’t romanticise life though and is honest about Greenlandic society’s endemic problems such as alcoholism, domestic and child abuse.
The writing is often beautiful and always evocative. She clearly loves Greenland and everything relating to it. She understands that if food is found, usually seal meat, the dogs pulling the sled must be fed before humans who will go days sometimes without food. Greenlanders have often experienced famine and it’s not so long ago that they would resort to cannabilism when the only food available was from those who succumbed before others to starvation.
The actions of Greenpeace in banning the sale of sealskins is set against the need to survive. As one hunter says, ’we eat the inside and wear the outside’. Nannuk, polar bear pants; polar bear kamikpak, boots made of polar bear skin lined with Arctic hare; and aiqqat, sealskin mittens with a dog-hair ruff at the wrists. All make the difference between life and death on the ice cap. As Ehrlich says, “Predator and prey. In the Arctic, you never knew which side of that coin you’d find yourself on, and you lived by your wits, as did the bear and the seal, the dog and the fox, the raven, dovekies and hare.”
I made up my own pronunciations of place names because funnily enough Greenlandic isn’t one of my languages!
“The Northern dialect of Greenlandic replaces s’s with an unaspirated h, and the words have a soft sound. That night the men’s slow-beat, velvety largo quenched in me an unnamable thirst. I lay on my sleeping bag like an island in the steam of their voices, happy not to know what they were talking about.”
Although my attention wandered in the last 30 pages or so, because maybe we’d been on one too many hunting trips, this is easily 5 stars for me. The quality of the writing, the depth of historical research, and the passion with which it is written, made this a pleasure to read from start to (almost the) finish.
June 4, 2019
I never want to go to Greenland. English winters are quite dark and cold enough for me, and I don’t know if I could stomach seal meat at all, let alone for most meals and often raw. But that’s okay: I don’t need to book a flight to Qaanaaq, because through reading this I’ve already been in Greenland in every season. I’ve huddled onto a sled pulled by 20 dogs; I’ve gone hunting for polar bears; I’ve had a terrifying crash through thin ice. I’ve met Danes and Greenlanders of all ages and heard their legends and learned of their struggles to adapt to modern life. It’s a place that lends itself to silence and solitude, but also requires loyal partnerships between people and between people and dogs. I thoroughly enjoyed my armchair trek across this frigid island nation in the company of Gretel Ehrlich, who traveled here repeatedly between 1995 and 2001 and intersperses her journeys with those of her historical model, Inuit–Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen, whose seven Arctic expeditions took in the west coast of Greenland and the far north of the North American continent.
Once a year or so I encounter a book that’s so flawlessly written you could pick out just about any sentence and marvel at its construction. (A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor is another one that springs to mind.) That’s certainly the case here. Ehrlich is always describing the same sorts of scenery, and yet every time she finds a fresh way to write about ice and sun glare and frigid temperatures. For the most part she absents herself, becoming just a photographic lens for transmitting the people and places she encounters. But we also get personal glimpses of the privations this kind of travel involves: missing the last plane of the season, not changing clothes for weeks, going hungry if a hunt fails, and the shock of blood on the snow when she steps off a sled to relieve herself and realizes her period has arrived. I’ll be looking into her other books for sure.
Favorite lines:
Further reading on Greenland: A Wilder Time: Notes from a Geologist at the Edge of the Greenland Ice by William E. Glassley (see my Foreword review) and The Prophets of Eternal Fjord by Kim Leine, an epic novel about an unconventional priest, set in late-eighteenth-century Denmark and Greenland. Also Sinéad Morrissey’s multi-part poem “Whitelessness.” You can read the first stanza of it here.
Once a year or so I encounter a book that’s so flawlessly written you could pick out just about any sentence and marvel at its construction. (A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor is another one that springs to mind.) That’s certainly the case here. Ehrlich is always describing the same sorts of scenery, and yet every time she finds a fresh way to write about ice and sun glare and frigid temperatures. For the most part she absents herself, becoming just a photographic lens for transmitting the people and places she encounters. But we also get personal glimpses of the privations this kind of travel involves: missing the last plane of the season, not changing clothes for weeks, going hungry if a hunt fails, and the shock of blood on the snow when she steps off a sled to relieve herself and realizes her period has arrived. I’ll be looking into her other books for sure.
Favorite lines:
“The ice cap itself was a siren singing me back to Greenland, its walls of blue sapphire and sheer immensity always beguiling. Part jewel, part eye, part lighthouse, part recumbent monolith, the ice is a bright spot on the upper tier of the globe where the world’s purse strings have been pulled tight, nudging the tops of three continents together. Summers, it burns in the sun, and in the dark it hoards moonlight.”
“So much in the Arctic attempts to obstruct vision: fog, snow, darkness, ice. But each element has its built-in clarity, an opaque shine.”
“We, who were tiny dots riding a wooden splinter across infinity.”
Further reading on Greenland: A Wilder Time: Notes from a Geologist at the Edge of the Greenland Ice by William E. Glassley (see my Foreword review) and The Prophets of Eternal Fjord by Kim Leine, an epic novel about an unconventional priest, set in late-eighteenth-century Denmark and Greenland. Also Sinéad Morrissey’s multi-part poem “Whitelessness.” You can read the first stanza of it here.
December 29, 2024
The ticker below tells me I began this book six months ago. That's true. I read about sixty pages and set it aside, not because it was bad, but because I was tempted by other stories. I never removed it from my "currently reading" shelf though, and a long plane ride and guilt (maybe) let me polish this off before the end of the year.
The author unabashedly loves Greenland, finding excitement in things that would bore, numb or even nauseate me. There's the cold, for starters; temperatures reaching 60 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit). Then there's the months of total darkness. There's constant danger, of living on ice, or not ice.
Dinner is problematic. Food must be hunted. Constantly. And no vegans there. Eating raw seal, and its fat, keeps scurvy at bay. A killed polar bear should be immediately eviscerated so that the excised liver can be eaten raw for its physical and spiritual benefits.
Starvation is always lurking. So infanticide and elder-cide are practiced and accepted as ways of reducing the number of mouths to feed. There are, too, reluctant cannibals.
There is no land ownership. Take what you need. Even children and spouses are shared.
All this the author reveled in. She even found something like romance there, although - as she wrote it anyhow - the affair was unconsummated. Still, the fella she fell for could wax philosophically:
- "The tradition of sharing is what is left of ceremonial life here. When a whale is caught everyone who was on the hunt shares the meat. Widows are given food, the less able hunters always get a share, equipment and dogs are traded around, huts are used by everyone. No one owns land here."
- "Balance and justice. Those are European ideas. Here, the weather directs us. Up here, joy and sorrow, death and birth, are not measured out in teaspoons. Cannibalism, infanticide, jealousy, revenge, evil spirits, and a great joie de vivre--this is the cup from which all northern Greenlanders drink."
It's just not my joie de vivre.
The author embeds her own Greenland travels with tales of earlier explorers. As always, these peeks backwards reveal heroes and villains. Knud Rasmussen was one of the heroes. Robert Peary, at least by one anecdote, was a bad guy, who in 1897 kidnapped a native father and son (Minik) and sailed them to New York:
Soon after arriving the father died, leaving Minik an orphan in a strange land. The boy was put in the care of someone at the American Museum of Natural History. It was there that Minik found his father's skeleton on display. The shock was almost more than he could bear. Minik survived twelve more years in New England. He asked to be taken home in 1909, but Peary refused. By the time the young man returned home, he was destitute and cultureless, struggling to relearn his language and hunting skills.
The author unabashedly loves Greenland, finding excitement in things that would bore, numb or even nauseate me. There's the cold, for starters; temperatures reaching 60 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit). Then there's the months of total darkness. There's constant danger, of living on ice, or not ice.
Dinner is problematic. Food must be hunted. Constantly. And no vegans there. Eating raw seal, and its fat, keeps scurvy at bay. A killed polar bear should be immediately eviscerated so that the excised liver can be eaten raw for its physical and spiritual benefits.
Starvation is always lurking. So infanticide and elder-cide are practiced and accepted as ways of reducing the number of mouths to feed. There are, too, reluctant cannibals.
There is no land ownership. Take what you need. Even children and spouses are shared.
All this the author reveled in. She even found something like romance there, although - as she wrote it anyhow - the affair was unconsummated. Still, the fella she fell for could wax philosophically:
- "The tradition of sharing is what is left of ceremonial life here. When a whale is caught everyone who was on the hunt shares the meat. Widows are given food, the less able hunters always get a share, equipment and dogs are traded around, huts are used by everyone. No one owns land here."
- "Balance and justice. Those are European ideas. Here, the weather directs us. Up here, joy and sorrow, death and birth, are not measured out in teaspoons. Cannibalism, infanticide, jealousy, revenge, evil spirits, and a great joie de vivre--this is the cup from which all northern Greenlanders drink."
It's just not my joie de vivre.
The author embeds her own Greenland travels with tales of earlier explorers. As always, these peeks backwards reveal heroes and villains. Knud Rasmussen was one of the heroes. Robert Peary, at least by one anecdote, was a bad guy, who in 1897 kidnapped a native father and son (Minik) and sailed them to New York:
Soon after arriving the father died, leaving Minik an orphan in a strange land. The boy was put in the care of someone at the American Museum of Natural History. It was there that Minik found his father's skeleton on display. The shock was almost more than he could bear. Minik survived twelve more years in New England. He asked to be taken home in 1909, but Peary refused. By the time the young man returned home, he was destitute and cultureless, struggling to relearn his language and hunting skills.
January 4, 2022
I’m so sad that I couldn’t love this. Years ago when I first read Gretel Ehrlich’s The Solace of Open Spaces I was so blown away - her poetic writing and that singular ability to pull the strangest but most moving thoughts out of weird abstract musings that suddenly make sense and express something you’ve wished you could put into words. Her other work hasn’t really had the same magical effect on me but I keep trying.
I thought this one might be more of what I loved in that book but this was my least favorite of hers. I read the first half and then spent two hours skimming the second half. I just couldn’t anymore. And yet somehow even in skimming I seemed to pick out all the horrible things I didn’t want to read anymore - dogs dying, dogs being shot (why? Just because they ran off apparently, and I’m not even a dog person and this was bumming me out), dogs killing polar bear cubs, lots of killing and skinning seals, people cannibalizing their children during bad seasons or travels gone awry, abused children - the misery in this thing never ends.
And I know that’s how life is in economies like this that rely on hunting and life can be brutal out of necessity but it was too much of it to enjoy reading by any stretch. A therapist I had once talked about the things we watch or read because sometimes we need to feel soft inside - I think she referenced a baking show. So this is definitely the opposite of that.
And when it’s not sometimes it’s just boring. I lost all interest in the 1917 Rasmussen expedition. I see what this place meant to her and why but I didn’t want to be along for this ride.I did like some of the shaman stories and lore and creepy old stories she recounts. (“And when the long Darkness spreads itself over the country, many hidden things are revealed, and men’s thoughts travel along devious paths.”)
On the bright side: there were a few lovely, give-me-chills lines that only Gretel Ehrlich is capable of:
“For seven years I used the island as a looking glass: part window, part mirror.”
“Time proceeds without measurement; there is no original sin, only a confluence of waters mixing, separating, and mixing again […] Perhaps it is possible to remember where we have not yet been.”
“That would take a lifetime and I had already used up most of the one life I had.”
“Once I had everything. Now it’s lost. Then the losing of it was lost.”
Also the reference of someone leaping around like a Baryshnikov in socks and sandals.
I thought this one might be more of what I loved in that book but this was my least favorite of hers. I read the first half and then spent two hours skimming the second half. I just couldn’t anymore. And yet somehow even in skimming I seemed to pick out all the horrible things I didn’t want to read anymore - dogs dying, dogs being shot (why? Just because they ran off apparently, and I’m not even a dog person and this was bumming me out), dogs killing polar bear cubs, lots of killing and skinning seals, people cannibalizing their children during bad seasons or travels gone awry, abused children - the misery in this thing never ends.
And I know that’s how life is in economies like this that rely on hunting and life can be brutal out of necessity but it was too much of it to enjoy reading by any stretch. A therapist I had once talked about the things we watch or read because sometimes we need to feel soft inside - I think she referenced a baking show. So this is definitely the opposite of that.
And when it’s not sometimes it’s just boring. I lost all interest in the 1917 Rasmussen expedition. I see what this place meant to her and why but I didn’t want to be along for this ride.I did like some of the shaman stories and lore and creepy old stories she recounts. (“And when the long Darkness spreads itself over the country, many hidden things are revealed, and men’s thoughts travel along devious paths.”)
On the bright side: there were a few lovely, give-me-chills lines that only Gretel Ehrlich is capable of:
“For seven years I used the island as a looking glass: part window, part mirror.”
“Time proceeds without measurement; there is no original sin, only a confluence of waters mixing, separating, and mixing again […] Perhaps it is possible to remember where we have not yet been.”
“That would take a lifetime and I had already used up most of the one life I had.”
“Once I had everything. Now it’s lost. Then the losing of it was lost.”
Also the reference of someone leaping around like a Baryshnikov in socks and sandals.
March 30, 2016
My first reaction is an emotional one, a feeling of sadness at the loss of the traditional Eskimo culture, although I appreciate that there is an effort to keep the old ways alive and to teach these ways to the young generations. The author does not ignore the difficult aspects of the traditional life of subsistence hunters, which if the hunting is not good can mean starvation. Starvation can lead to the deaths of those who contribute the least and need the most, the children and old people, eating the dogs and even eating the people who have died. I don't know the extent to which the violence, domestic abuse and sexual abuse, which the author tells us are all too common today in the Inuit villages, existed in the time before the culture started to change due to alcohol and the introduction to modern life. The traditional life wasn't an easy life, that is without question, but it had beauty, organization, purpose and history. Now much of that is lost through a kind of purposelessness. As the author's friend, Hans Holm, states,
"It is easier to be a loser now because they have exchanged some of the old ways for the Internet, the snow scooter, and, of course, the booze. So if you aren't technically trained or have only enough money for beer, then you have an excuse to fail. That was not possible before. Failure meant certain death. Now, too many people are not living in the old ways, making it with just a knife and a string and only eating seal."
On the other side of the emotional spectrum, I find myself wishing to go to Greenland, to see and experience it, to ride a dogsled as the author did. I don't know about eating raw seal (apart from the kashrut issue), I would imagine that takes some serious getting used to. I could see myself having some problems; I'm too cold, there are seal guts and dog shit everywhere (actually the pictures of northern Greenland Inuit villages are very attractive), THAT'S the toilet?! I can't understand a word anyone is saying!! Nevertheless, my brain and heart are responding in a positive way to the idea of going to the northern Eskimo villages of Greenland. The author's descriptions created a longing in me for this. And looking at pictures on line made it even more so.
There is so much to this book; politics, questions about the future for the Eskimo people, global warming's effect on the Arctic, the animal populations, global pollution. The writing is poetically beautiful, but it also historically, sociologically and politically interesting.
Recommended.
"It is easier to be a loser now because they have exchanged some of the old ways for the Internet, the snow scooter, and, of course, the booze. So if you aren't technically trained or have only enough money for beer, then you have an excuse to fail. That was not possible before. Failure meant certain death. Now, too many people are not living in the old ways, making it with just a knife and a string and only eating seal."
On the other side of the emotional spectrum, I find myself wishing to go to Greenland, to see and experience it, to ride a dogsled as the author did. I don't know about eating raw seal (apart from the kashrut issue), I would imagine that takes some serious getting used to. I could see myself having some problems; I'm too cold, there are seal guts and dog shit everywhere (actually the pictures of northern Greenland Inuit villages are very attractive), THAT'S the toilet?! I can't understand a word anyone is saying!! Nevertheless, my brain and heart are responding in a positive way to the idea of going to the northern Eskimo villages of Greenland. The author's descriptions created a longing in me for this. And looking at pictures on line made it even more so.
There is so much to this book; politics, questions about the future for the Eskimo people, global warming's effect on the Arctic, the animal populations, global pollution. The writing is poetically beautiful, but it also historically, sociologically and politically interesting.
Recommended.
December 28, 2020
Beautifully written, poetic prose from an author who is completely in love with Greenland and the arctic
April 6, 2011
Oh, Greenland. Someday I will get there and savour all the sights for myself. But for now I'll need to just live vicariously through books and authors detailing their adventures to the cold wonderland that is the Arctic.
Gretel Ehrlich details the cold winterland of Greenland, the hunters and ethnologists that trek over the country in hunt for food, solace and the secrets it hides. Part self-discovery, part romance, but biography, ethnological study, geographical study and all around wonderful story.
I wish I could say more, but this book just makes me want to go to Greenland all the more.
Gretel Ehrlich details the cold winterland of Greenland, the hunters and ethnologists that trek over the country in hunt for food, solace and the secrets it hides. Part self-discovery, part romance, but biography, ethnological study, geographical study and all around wonderful story.
I wish I could say more, but this book just makes me want to go to Greenland all the more.
April 1, 2017
"This Cold Heaven" is more than anything an ode, a paean to Greenland by one woman. I think in some ways she loves that icebound land as much as Lawrence of Arabia was reported to love the desert, and perhaps for somewhat similar reasons. Her book was full of poetic descriptions of towering icebergs, driving snowstorms, crisp nearly eternal nights, and sheets of mirror-like ice. Admiring the vast ice sheet covering the island, which she described as "a siren singing me back to Greenland, its walls of sapphire blue and sheer immensity always beguiling," she really put me there on that island.
An American writer, she was drawn to Greenland again and again over the better part of a decade and in this book she chronicles her experiences there as well as much information on Greenland, chiefly about the Inuit people of that land, though to a lesser extent about some of its fauna, flora, geology, and climate. She recounts her travels - mainly by dogsled, but also by boat and helicopter - throughout this largest island in the world, a land under which 95% of it is still locked in ice, a land in which some say the Ice Age never ended at all.
The stars of the book are the Inuit, both as a people and as individuals. Clearly a people she greatly admires both as a culture and as individuals, the reader will learn much about them, descendents of Asians who crossed the Bering Land Bridge from Siberia perhaps 30,000 years, settling Greenland some 5,000 years ago. Their culture - stretching some 6,000 miles from Greenland through Alaska - is a surprisingly unified one, largely speaking the same language and telling the same stories. Indeed not only have they been very unified across distances on land but also across distances in time; many Inuit in Greenland are still essentially using stone and bone age technology (though one increasingly threatened by the arrival of modern technology and the Danish welfare state), even creating string figure art of woolly mammoths, a unique societal memory of a species extinct for many thousands of years.
The Inuit we find are often a people of vivid contrasts and to us perhaps strange habits. Though they enjoy the summer time, which in their part of the world is short though one of unending daylight, they most enjoy the completely dark winters, something perhaps counterintuitive to those not native there; it is only in the dark time of the year that fjords and bays are ice, allowing long sled trips for hunting and for visiting friends. Clocks and calendars are nearly meaningless to the Inuit; Ehrlich often found it to be the case either in the unending night of winter (we also learn by the way that the Inuit word for "winter" also means "a year") or in the unending day of summer people would be awake at any hour, whether to fix dinner, socialize, or begin a hunt. One on occasion when a visitor remarked that a dogsled expedition should be gotten off to an early start, Ehrlich recounted how one of the Inuit laughed, stating that their day had more hours.
Inuit food may appear equally strange to the typical American or European; they eat a virtually all- meat diet, the climate and terrain of Greenland completely unsuited to agriculture. Seal, walrus, polar bear, whale, dovekie, auk, and fish are the mainstays of Inuit diet, many times boiled or dried, sometimes eaten raw. One of the more interesting foods they eat is kivioq, a delicacy made from dead auks sewn into a seal gut and left to rot for two months. Though upsetting many Western environmentalists, Ehrlich does an excellent job of showing how the Inuit hunt for survival, not for profit or ritual. Many times she went on dogsled expeditions during which if a hunt for seal was unsuccessful dogs and later people would starve. Clearly the Inuit of Greenland hunt for food and for furs to make warm clothing, doing so with the greatest respect for the animals. Any money they made from their hunts went to buy necessities, such as fuel oil or pencils for children in school.
Ehrlich makes much of the strange dichotomy of seeming cruelty and community. On the one hand during times of hardship, after their much beloved (and utterly important) dogs were eaten (as well as their sleds; we find that in the past that sleds were sometimes constructed of edible materials, with skins soaked in water and frozen into place for runners and even solid frozen chunks of salmon or seal flesh for other parts) the Inuit would turn to cannibalism, even eating their own children. The very old were often expected to die if they became a burden to their community, and orphans, particularly if outsiders, could often be quite harshly treated. Inuit parents she noted often laughed at their children's misfortunes as they learned to handle a sled or hunt, all in an effort to teach them survival skills, however cruel that might appear to an outsider. On the other hand though, the Inuit could be thought of the ideal Communists to some degree; no one owned land. When meat was available, it was freely shared to all who needed. Dogs were always fed first (though this was not entirely altruistic, as aside from kayaks in water this was their chief means of locomotion) and even widows in villages would share in the bounty of a great hunt. Ehrlich spends a good deal of the book recounting the adventures and travels of the ethnographer Knud Rasmussen (a Danish researcher who launched seven expeditions between 1910 and 1933 to study the Inuit people all over Greenland and west to Siberia) and his friend Peter Freuchen, clear outsiders who were warmly welcomed into village after village, whose lived were saved by Inuit, people who brought them into their homes, shared their food, their stories, their way of life.
A wonderful book.
An American writer, she was drawn to Greenland again and again over the better part of a decade and in this book she chronicles her experiences there as well as much information on Greenland, chiefly about the Inuit people of that land, though to a lesser extent about some of its fauna, flora, geology, and climate. She recounts her travels - mainly by dogsled, but also by boat and helicopter - throughout this largest island in the world, a land under which 95% of it is still locked in ice, a land in which some say the Ice Age never ended at all.
The stars of the book are the Inuit, both as a people and as individuals. Clearly a people she greatly admires both as a culture and as individuals, the reader will learn much about them, descendents of Asians who crossed the Bering Land Bridge from Siberia perhaps 30,000 years, settling Greenland some 5,000 years ago. Their culture - stretching some 6,000 miles from Greenland through Alaska - is a surprisingly unified one, largely speaking the same language and telling the same stories. Indeed not only have they been very unified across distances on land but also across distances in time; many Inuit in Greenland are still essentially using stone and bone age technology (though one increasingly threatened by the arrival of modern technology and the Danish welfare state), even creating string figure art of woolly mammoths, a unique societal memory of a species extinct for many thousands of years.
The Inuit we find are often a people of vivid contrasts and to us perhaps strange habits. Though they enjoy the summer time, which in their part of the world is short though one of unending daylight, they most enjoy the completely dark winters, something perhaps counterintuitive to those not native there; it is only in the dark time of the year that fjords and bays are ice, allowing long sled trips for hunting and for visiting friends. Clocks and calendars are nearly meaningless to the Inuit; Ehrlich often found it to be the case either in the unending night of winter (we also learn by the way that the Inuit word for "winter" also means "a year") or in the unending day of summer people would be awake at any hour, whether to fix dinner, socialize, or begin a hunt. One on occasion when a visitor remarked that a dogsled expedition should be gotten off to an early start, Ehrlich recounted how one of the Inuit laughed, stating that their day had more hours.
Inuit food may appear equally strange to the typical American or European; they eat a virtually all- meat diet, the climate and terrain of Greenland completely unsuited to agriculture. Seal, walrus, polar bear, whale, dovekie, auk, and fish are the mainstays of Inuit diet, many times boiled or dried, sometimes eaten raw. One of the more interesting foods they eat is kivioq, a delicacy made from dead auks sewn into a seal gut and left to rot for two months. Though upsetting many Western environmentalists, Ehrlich does an excellent job of showing how the Inuit hunt for survival, not for profit or ritual. Many times she went on dogsled expeditions during which if a hunt for seal was unsuccessful dogs and later people would starve. Clearly the Inuit of Greenland hunt for food and for furs to make warm clothing, doing so with the greatest respect for the animals. Any money they made from their hunts went to buy necessities, such as fuel oil or pencils for children in school.
Ehrlich makes much of the strange dichotomy of seeming cruelty and community. On the one hand during times of hardship, after their much beloved (and utterly important) dogs were eaten (as well as their sleds; we find that in the past that sleds were sometimes constructed of edible materials, with skins soaked in water and frozen into place for runners and even solid frozen chunks of salmon or seal flesh for other parts) the Inuit would turn to cannibalism, even eating their own children. The very old were often expected to die if they became a burden to their community, and orphans, particularly if outsiders, could often be quite harshly treated. Inuit parents she noted often laughed at their children's misfortunes as they learned to handle a sled or hunt, all in an effort to teach them survival skills, however cruel that might appear to an outsider. On the other hand though, the Inuit could be thought of the ideal Communists to some degree; no one owned land. When meat was available, it was freely shared to all who needed. Dogs were always fed first (though this was not entirely altruistic, as aside from kayaks in water this was their chief means of locomotion) and even widows in villages would share in the bounty of a great hunt. Ehrlich spends a good deal of the book recounting the adventures and travels of the ethnographer Knud Rasmussen (a Danish researcher who launched seven expeditions between 1910 and 1933 to study the Inuit people all over Greenland and west to Siberia) and his friend Peter Freuchen, clear outsiders who were warmly welcomed into village after village, whose lived were saved by Inuit, people who brought them into their homes, shared their food, their stories, their way of life.
A wonderful book.
November 26, 2020
This gives a richly detailed account of travels in Greenland and living with Inuit people. Ehrlich lives in Wyoming, but travels regularly to Greenland during the 1990s, spending many months there. She follows in the footsteps of Rasmussen, a Danish-Greenlandic explorer and writer, who travelled widely in Greenland during the early 21st century, and recorded stories and religious beliefs of isolated Inuit cultures. She also writes about Rockwell Kent, a friend of Rasmussen's, an American painter who lived in Greenland and drew and painted there. The overlapping of historical and modern details adds to the depth and richness of this book, and creates a portrait of Inuit culture, and the ingenuity and imagination required to live in such a harsh landscape. She writes about subsistence hunting as a culture and way of life, and the care, intelligence and sense of balance needed to survive as a subsistence hunter. As one of the hunters says, "Balance and justice. Those are European ideas. Here, the weather directs us. Up here, joy and sorrow, death and birth, are not measured out in teaspoons. Cannibalism, infanticide, jealousy, revenge, evil spirits, and a great joie de vivre -- this is the cup from which all northern Greenlanders drink." Ehrlich also writes about living in the strange light conditions of northern Greenland -- how the limitless light in summer makes people forget all sense of time, and it's almost impossible for people to sleep, and life becomes vivid and ecstatic, while the winter dark provides time to hunt, time to socialise, and yet can create despair and fear. She talks to many different kinds of people within Greenland, as well as subsistence hunters -- school teachers, dentists, social workers, historians, mothers, children -- and gives us a picture of a society ravaged by imperialism and climate change, but full of unique culture and ways of thinking. This book is a fascinating portrait of living with the climate of Greenland, and of life there in the 1990s. My only criticisms is that Ehrlich's writing becomes repetitive from time to time, and I think this book could probably be around 100 pages shorter. However, I found it completely gripping, and wish I owned my own copy, rather than borrowing it from the library.
June 1, 2016
After spending seven seasons in Greenland, Gretel Erhlich imparts her experience and the history of this icy island in This Cold Heaven. I am torn with this review. Ehrlich is definitely a gifted writer:
We flew up the sleeve of the 106-mile long Kangerlussuaq Fjord. The water was black and the mountains were brown, ending in broken snow-covered peaks. Streams threaded through the creases in three-billion-year-old rock, the result of roiling magma that cooled into gray.
I would be carried away by her beautiful prose, thinking "Yes! I could see myself in Greenland!" only to remind myself that 1) it is nothing but snow and ice, 2) the temperature is 25 below zero, and 3) there is no sun at all for nine months of year. And despite all the lovely verse, Erhlich doesn't really share any charming or funny stories of her time there. Nearly half the book is about the early 20th century explorer Knud Rasmussen, taken from his journals and stories about this Greenlandic legend from natives. I don't mind learning about Rasmussen, but the level of her exposition should have been left to...well, a book about Knud Rasmussen.
I learned a few things about Greenland that I didn't know. It's population reflects the Danish settlement and it's Inuit natives. Dogsled is a major mode of transportation, and the dogs are indigenous to Greenland, other breeds being banned from its shores. Greenlanders eat a lot of seal meat. The most humorous part of the book is the story of naming Greenland itself - the early Viking explorer Eric the Red named this island of ice and snow Greenland in the hopes of encouraging settlers. Imagine the horror in 985, when the first colonists arrived (after a dangerous and harrowing journey) to discover the fraud that had been perpetrated against them.
I'm glad I read this book because it's always good to learn something new. Unfortunately, I didn't particularly enjoy this book. Maybe you need to be an anthropologist, or snow and ice lover, to truly appreciate it.
We flew up the sleeve of the 106-mile long Kangerlussuaq Fjord. The water was black and the mountains were brown, ending in broken snow-covered peaks. Streams threaded through the creases in three-billion-year-old rock, the result of roiling magma that cooled into gray.
I would be carried away by her beautiful prose, thinking "Yes! I could see myself in Greenland!" only to remind myself that 1) it is nothing but snow and ice, 2) the temperature is 25 below zero, and 3) there is no sun at all for nine months of year. And despite all the lovely verse, Erhlich doesn't really share any charming or funny stories of her time there. Nearly half the book is about the early 20th century explorer Knud Rasmussen, taken from his journals and stories about this Greenlandic legend from natives. I don't mind learning about Rasmussen, but the level of her exposition should have been left to...well, a book about Knud Rasmussen.
I learned a few things about Greenland that I didn't know. It's population reflects the Danish settlement and it's Inuit natives. Dogsled is a major mode of transportation, and the dogs are indigenous to Greenland, other breeds being banned from its shores. Greenlanders eat a lot of seal meat. The most humorous part of the book is the story of naming Greenland itself - the early Viking explorer Eric the Red named this island of ice and snow Greenland in the hopes of encouraging settlers. Imagine the horror in 985, when the first colonists arrived (after a dangerous and harrowing journey) to discover the fraud that had been perpetrated against them.
I'm glad I read this book because it's always good to learn something new. Unfortunately, I didn't particularly enjoy this book. Maybe you need to be an anthropologist, or snow and ice lover, to truly appreciate it.
April 1, 2015
Too bad a book that could have been so interesting was so disorganized and quickly became repetitive and tedious. I read about 200 pages and after a week decided the book would be much of the same and abandoned it.
Ehrlich is clearly a gifted with the ability of describing nature and loved Greenland and its peoples. People who are absolutely fascinating. They survive by eating anything that moves and not wasting a bit of those creatures. Their culture is based on what western civilization may refer to myth, superstition or intuitive knowledge. And their society is based on survival. For example, sharing is essential. Ownership causes discord. They share everything from food to wives.
Her narrative is interspersed with the writings of earlier explorers, predominantly those of Knut Rasmussen, a Dane, who traversed the ice mass in the 1920s. Though I have not read any of his works, I would suggest seeking them out. This could have been a powerful update on the possible effects of climate change and encroachment by western civilization. But instead she was seemed more interested in experiencing the past.
Ehrlich is clearly a gifted with the ability of describing nature and loved Greenland and its peoples. People who are absolutely fascinating. They survive by eating anything that moves and not wasting a bit of those creatures. Their culture is based on what western civilization may refer to myth, superstition or intuitive knowledge. And their society is based on survival. For example, sharing is essential. Ownership causes discord. They share everything from food to wives.
Her narrative is interspersed with the writings of earlier explorers, predominantly those of Knut Rasmussen, a Dane, who traversed the ice mass in the 1920s. Though I have not read any of his works, I would suggest seeking them out. This could have been a powerful update on the possible effects of climate change and encroachment by western civilization. But instead she was seemed more interested in experiencing the past.
December 12, 2017
This book gave me an outstanding view of Greenland and the traditional way of life of the Greenlanders as well as how their lives are changing with the arrival of modernity. I wasn't a fan of the writing, feeling that the author got lost in her thoughts while writing as she would while travelling on a sled, and there were a few repetition as if it wasn't edited. I liked however that she inserted in her narration a good chunk of Knud Rasmussen's adventures, an explorer of the early 20th century who travelled around the Arctic to meet the Inuits and Eskimos living there and collect their stories.
July 25, 2017
'Obsessed' seems right. To the untrained eye, Greenland might be classified like a non-entity - a space rather than a place, and a forbiddingly cold and blank one at that. But Ehrlich's travelogue/ethnologue gives a taste of the appeal of the place, from her own lengthy stays there, and from the history of inhabitation and exploration of the far Arctic north. At times her style seems meditative, but at other times quite repetitive, and it is a slow if interesting read, infused with a great passion for an unusual locale.
dnf
October 2, 2024I need a book set mostly outdoors for Popsugar, and something to read as palate cleanser before bed while reading A Brief History of Seven Killings, set in the violence of Jamaica gang wars in 1970s. This just grabbed me and said READ ME!
November 29, 2020
Gretel Ehrlich fell in love with the people, landscape, and lifeways of Greenland. I had an opportunity to compare notes with her in person many years after she made a series of trips to the high Greenlandic Arctic, which was many years after I spent several weeks on the Arctic Circle there doing research on falcons, and also had visited the Canadian high Arctic where the natives had foresaken dog-teams in favor of snowmobiles. So, I could relate to the landscapes and their allure, and to, for instance, the sight of a basking seal getting shot and the taste of seal stew.
Ehrlich offers the people there as living traditional lives, but she knows that when she was visiting in the 1990s the tilt to modernity was overtaking the traditions. Most interesting to me are her descriptions of traditional spiritual beliefs, which strike me as a demon-haunted existence in a place where life and death are always so close and starvation always so near-at-hand that living and dying are practically overlapping propositions.
Equally compelling, and what made this book work well for me are the super-human explorations of ethnographic teams which, in one case, traveled by dog-team from Greenland to Alaska, an expedition taking several years in a region where night lasts for about four months. Between those stories we travel with the author, among the people she meets.
Perhaps most admirable, and yet the one thing about this book that did not sit comfortably with me, was the description of hunters with high-power rifles and scopes as "traditional," and the (almost) completely non-judgmental view of killing polar bears whenever someone needs a new pair of winter pants. In her defense, this writing was done just before the existential threats to the Arctic's ice systems, polar bears, and all its wildlife were understood and appreciated as well as they are now.
Overall a very worthwhile and read--one of those books where you keep stopping your spouse and calling your friends to read passages aloud.
Ehrlich offers the people there as living traditional lives, but she knows that when she was visiting in the 1990s the tilt to modernity was overtaking the traditions. Most interesting to me are her descriptions of traditional spiritual beliefs, which strike me as a demon-haunted existence in a place where life and death are always so close and starvation always so near-at-hand that living and dying are practically overlapping propositions.
Equally compelling, and what made this book work well for me are the super-human explorations of ethnographic teams which, in one case, traveled by dog-team from Greenland to Alaska, an expedition taking several years in a region where night lasts for about four months. Between those stories we travel with the author, among the people she meets.
Perhaps most admirable, and yet the one thing about this book that did not sit comfortably with me, was the description of hunters with high-power rifles and scopes as "traditional," and the (almost) completely non-judgmental view of killing polar bears whenever someone needs a new pair of winter pants. In her defense, this writing was done just before the existential threats to the Arctic's ice systems, polar bears, and all its wildlife were understood and appreciated as well as they are now.
Overall a very worthwhile and read--one of those books where you keep stopping your spouse and calling your friends to read passages aloud.
February 4, 2021
I really wanted to like this book. I’m quite interested in learning more about Greenland and I generally quite enjoy “love letters to (insert place)” that combine travelogue with history. This book, though, was quite a disappointment and I’m frankly a little shocked to see how positively it’s been reviewed.
Firstly, it’s not an especially informative book. I can’t say I learned very much from it. If you’re looking to learn about Greenland, its history, it people or its politics, you will be disappointed. Even seemingly worthwhile and obviously interesting topics, like the relationship with Denmark, what’s going on in the capital city (where the majority of Greenlanders actually live) or even the difference between “Eskimo” and “Inuit” as terms are not touched on at all(and indeed, the two terms are used interchangeably throughout. Is the term “Eskimo” actually offensive to anyone? Considering the author spent 10 years visiting and uses both terms, you’d think she would have had something to say on the subject) There are some full chapters interspersed through the first half or so that recount the details of Knud Rasmussen’s trips, so if you’re interested in hearing about his trips in moderately granular detail, I guess you’ll enjoy that.
My bigger critique though, is that the book isn’t especially enjoyable to read. The narrative isn’t especially interesting (as in: nothing really happens) and there are a number of lengthy descriptions of tagging along dogsledding trips. So if you really enjoy reading descriptions of ice, maybe you’ll enjoy that. And more to that point: the author is either oddly absent from her own narrative (I.e. what was she actually DOING in Greenland? Was she researching this book? On sabbatical? On vacation? We never hear about such earthly concerns). Or when she is present, she either seems kind of aloof and pretentious, or else an unreliable narrator (for example, she claims she was “arrested” twice when transiting through the Thule military base, and on another occasion was surrounded by soldiers pointing their automatic guns at her. Was she actually “arrested”? Or was it rather they took her aside to ask about her lack of documentation and find out what she’s doing on a military base? Did they actually “point” their weapons at her? Or did they simply have firearms on their person and face her to talk to her.) Furthermore, on the one occasion it’s hinted at that Greenland is a place with contemporary politics, she blithely waves away a local politician’s attempt to attract investment saying something to the effect of “Greenland doesn’t need more money.” Very insightful analysis from the visiting American anthropologist.
This spills into another problem I had: the prose. For the first third of the book, the author includes what amount to flowery prose exercises. In fact, A LOT of this book feels like the author is trying to channel a Cormac McCarthy-like description of a bleak landscape. For instance: “Sun’s intoxicant filled me like helium. It had no odour, nor could I touch the exact place where it leaked in. It’s glaze was limped, translucent, pure porcelain. If I shoved my hands into sunlight - not a landscape I could relish, but an eye-aching gascape - gold leaf with no velocity covered my hands.” (P.110).
Um, cool. If you liked that, then there’s a lot more where that came from.
In sum, how much you like this book will depend on how much you like it’s mash up of three things: prose exercises, lengthy descriptions of hunting trips, and summaries of Knud Rasmussen’s voyages.
Firstly, it’s not an especially informative book. I can’t say I learned very much from it. If you’re looking to learn about Greenland, its history, it people or its politics, you will be disappointed. Even seemingly worthwhile and obviously interesting topics, like the relationship with Denmark, what’s going on in the capital city (where the majority of Greenlanders actually live) or even the difference between “Eskimo” and “Inuit” as terms are not touched on at all(and indeed, the two terms are used interchangeably throughout. Is the term “Eskimo” actually offensive to anyone? Considering the author spent 10 years visiting and uses both terms, you’d think she would have had something to say on the subject) There are some full chapters interspersed through the first half or so that recount the details of Knud Rasmussen’s trips, so if you’re interested in hearing about his trips in moderately granular detail, I guess you’ll enjoy that.
My bigger critique though, is that the book isn’t especially enjoyable to read. The narrative isn’t especially interesting (as in: nothing really happens) and there are a number of lengthy descriptions of tagging along dogsledding trips. So if you really enjoy reading descriptions of ice, maybe you’ll enjoy that. And more to that point: the author is either oddly absent from her own narrative (I.e. what was she actually DOING in Greenland? Was she researching this book? On sabbatical? On vacation? We never hear about such earthly concerns). Or when she is present, she either seems kind of aloof and pretentious, or else an unreliable narrator (for example, she claims she was “arrested” twice when transiting through the Thule military base, and on another occasion was surrounded by soldiers pointing their automatic guns at her. Was she actually “arrested”? Or was it rather they took her aside to ask about her lack of documentation and find out what she’s doing on a military base? Did they actually “point” their weapons at her? Or did they simply have firearms on their person and face her to talk to her.) Furthermore, on the one occasion it’s hinted at that Greenland is a place with contemporary politics, she blithely waves away a local politician’s attempt to attract investment saying something to the effect of “Greenland doesn’t need more money.” Very insightful analysis from the visiting American anthropologist.
This spills into another problem I had: the prose. For the first third of the book, the author includes what amount to flowery prose exercises. In fact, A LOT of this book feels like the author is trying to channel a Cormac McCarthy-like description of a bleak landscape. For instance: “Sun’s intoxicant filled me like helium. It had no odour, nor could I touch the exact place where it leaked in. It’s glaze was limped, translucent, pure porcelain. If I shoved my hands into sunlight - not a landscape I could relish, but an eye-aching gascape - gold leaf with no velocity covered my hands.” (P.110).
Um, cool. If you liked that, then there’s a lot more where that came from.
In sum, how much you like this book will depend on how much you like it’s mash up of three things: prose exercises, lengthy descriptions of hunting trips, and summaries of Knud Rasmussen’s voyages.
January 27, 2011
This is a quite descriptive and interesting book about living with local people during seven seasons visiting Greenland. Gretel fully participated in a life quite unfamiliar to most of the world; her descriptions are, um, excessively poetic--to the point of not adding to the description by being incomprehensible at times. Nonetheless, I very much enjoyed her details of living and traveling in Greenland, especially when she visited places I have also visited: Qaanaaq, Kangerlussuaq, Iqaluit, and the beautiful green valley where the mummies were found. She did the full emersion thing, though, which I may have enjoyed as a younger person, but no longer. Travel by dogsled and camping on the ice are not for the faint of heart. She even stayed with people I met: Jens and his wife in Qaanaaq (well, it's a very small place--easy to meet the same people). I was there before Gretel: Jens did not have his hotel yet, but was talking about it. She rightly illustrates the pain of those loosing their native skills and way of life to modern incursions; it is so sad that we have pretty much destroyed an entire culture without a second thought. The tone of the book is more toward the joy of living, however, not the sadness of that loss.
August 7, 2013
This started out as a 5-star read, mostly for the culture shock, my main reason for reading travel books. It is so “other”, so alien to me and my life, that at first my head was responding “bravo!” to all her experiences and observations. But somewhere around half-way it became more of the same-old, same-old, many words with nothing new, novelty worn off.
I agree with other reviewers that this book needs serious editing, not only for the typos, but for the content. There was lack of continuity and several unanswered questions. Often the descriptions of the scenery were over-the-top frilly, like how many times can you describe icebergs and remain interesting? It reminds me of a personal diary that means much to the writer because all is known to her and not all needs to be written down. But for me it was just good. Memorable yes, but should have been cut to half.
I agree with other reviewers that this book needs serious editing, not only for the typos, but for the content. There was lack of continuity and several unanswered questions. Often the descriptions of the scenery were over-the-top frilly, like how many times can you describe icebergs and remain interesting? It reminds me of a personal diary that means much to the writer because all is known to her and not all needs to be written down. But for me it was just good. Memorable yes, but should have been cut to half.
July 30, 2018
The writer is a poet amongst other talents and the book flows with her descriptions of snow, ice, darkness, solitude and isolation that she gathers over her years in Greenland. A lot of her book is about the early 20th century explorer Knud Rasmussen. There are a few stories of her experiences with the hardy souls living in Greenland. The three streams made me wonder whether one or two could have been left to another book.
February 2, 2023
Pros: I’m really fascinated by places that experience polar night and polar day like Greenland. Ehrlich does a great job exploring what it’s like to live there. She devotes half of the book to learning about the native Inuit culture during her visits in the late 1990s and the other half to telling the story of Knud Rasmussen’s 1921-1924 expedition to travel from Greenland over the ice via sled dog to Nome, Alaska. I learned a lot from both, especially about the culture, traditions, and history of the Inuit people. Here’s an interesting fact: the European Arctic explorers often contracted scurvy because of the lack of fruits and vegetables, but the Inuit do not get scurvy because the seal meat they eat has all the Vitamin C they need. She clearly has a deep love and respect for these people and their way of life that I appreciated and enjoyed hearing about.
Cons: This is supposed to be a travel memoir, but she doesn’t really explain her purpose for going to Greenland in the first place. Was she there because she had a book deal? She had nothing better to do? She sort of vaguely mentions something about it being good for her heart but doesn’t really explain why she was there for years off-and-on. There’s not a clear sense of time either. At one point she’s talking about when she first arrived then quickly jumps to a year later. It’s also rather repetitive: sled dog trip after sled dog trip after sled dog trip. It’s very descriptive, maybe overly so, in a distracting way. But I guess you have to be creative when you’re describing ice sheets and icebergs for the hundredth time.
I probably wouldn’t read this again unless maybe if I was preparing to go to Greenland.
Cons: This is supposed to be a travel memoir, but she doesn’t really explain her purpose for going to Greenland in the first place. Was she there because she had a book deal? She had nothing better to do? She sort of vaguely mentions something about it being good for her heart but doesn’t really explain why she was there for years off-and-on. There’s not a clear sense of time either. At one point she’s talking about when she first arrived then quickly jumps to a year later. It’s also rather repetitive: sled dog trip after sled dog trip after sled dog trip. It’s very descriptive, maybe overly so, in a distracting way. But I guess you have to be creative when you’re describing ice sheets and icebergs for the hundredth time.
I probably wouldn’t read this again unless maybe if I was preparing to go to Greenland.
July 6, 2021
A nonfictional account of an American's time in Greenland. I was never quite sure why exactly Ehrlich went to Greenland – early on, she alludes to a medical problem, something to do with her heart, but I'm not clear on how that would lead one to travel to Greenland, and there never is more of an explanation than that brief allusion.
Regardless, once there, Ehrlich sets out to better understand traditional Inuit (Eskimo? she uses the terms interchangeably, but that might have been more common in the 90s when she was there) life and beliefs, and to experience them for herself. Ehrlich structures her trips around those of previous travelers, particularly Knud Rasmussen, an explorer/anthropologist of the early 1900s, and Rockwell Kent, a painter who lived in Greenland in the 1930s. Mostly though, Ehrlich records her perceptions of months-long night, months-long day, dogsled trips, and icebergs. It's a book that's almost more poetry than it is memoir, travelogue, or history. Unfortunately, the quality of the poetry varies enormously. Sometimes it's lovely. Sometimes it's entirely nonsensical:
Now circling sun augered light down like an arrow of time, pushing us across the great expanse because there was nowhere else to go. Ice is time solidified.
Solid space stands for emotional grasping; an ephemeral cataract, making opaque what it is we long to see.
THAT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING. YOU ARE JUST STRINGING RANDOM WORDS TOGETHER.
More than anything, Ehrlich needed a better editor. Both because someone should have urged her to cut the more ~abstract~ bits of poetry, and because she began to repeat herself frequently in the second half of the book: she tells the story of the ill-fated Greely expedition twice, chapters apart; she repeats the same descriptions of people (not in a poetic way, just in an "I forgot I already used this very distinctive phrase" way); the same conversations with the same people are retold, word for word.
I was also made uncomfortable by some of Ehrlich's relationships with local Greenlanders. It's never quite clear if she was compensating them in any way for taking her on weeks-long trips or allowing her to stay in their homes for months at a time. In particular, she has a relationship with a young girl that veers hard into White Savior territory; at one point, Ehrlich offers to take the girl with her to California so that she can attend a better school, despite the fact that would mean leaving her parents (and younger brother, who Ehrlich doesn't seem to care as much about) behind. Ehrlich's writing style treats all emotions and relationships so opaquely that I have no real sense of how the girl's family felt about her in return, or if she bothered to keep in contact with them when she wasn't in Greenland. It was all just weird and awkward.
I would have given this one star, except... well, it did really make me want to visit Greenland! So I suppose I have to give Ehrlich some credit for that.
Regardless, once there, Ehrlich sets out to better understand traditional Inuit (Eskimo? she uses the terms interchangeably, but that might have been more common in the 90s when she was there) life and beliefs, and to experience them for herself. Ehrlich structures her trips around those of previous travelers, particularly Knud Rasmussen, an explorer/anthropologist of the early 1900s, and Rockwell Kent, a painter who lived in Greenland in the 1930s. Mostly though, Ehrlich records her perceptions of months-long night, months-long day, dogsled trips, and icebergs. It's a book that's almost more poetry than it is memoir, travelogue, or history. Unfortunately, the quality of the poetry varies enormously. Sometimes it's lovely. Sometimes it's entirely nonsensical:
Now circling sun augered light down like an arrow of time, pushing us across the great expanse because there was nowhere else to go. Ice is time solidified.
Solid space stands for emotional grasping; an ephemeral cataract, making opaque what it is we long to see.
THAT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING. YOU ARE JUST STRINGING RANDOM WORDS TOGETHER.
More than anything, Ehrlich needed a better editor. Both because someone should have urged her to cut the more ~abstract~ bits of poetry, and because she began to repeat herself frequently in the second half of the book: she tells the story of the ill-fated Greely expedition twice, chapters apart; she repeats the same descriptions of people (not in a poetic way, just in an "I forgot I already used this very distinctive phrase" way); the same conversations with the same people are retold, word for word.
I was also made uncomfortable by some of Ehrlich's relationships with local Greenlanders. It's never quite clear if she was compensating them in any way for taking her on weeks-long trips or allowing her to stay in their homes for months at a time. In particular, she has a relationship with a young girl that veers hard into White Savior territory; at one point, Ehrlich offers to take the girl with her to California so that she can attend a better school, despite the fact that would mean leaving her parents (and younger brother, who Ehrlich doesn't seem to care as much about) behind. Ehrlich's writing style treats all emotions and relationships so opaquely that I have no real sense of how the girl's family felt about her in return, or if she bothered to keep in contact with them when she wasn't in Greenland. It was all just weird and awkward.
I would have given this one star, except... well, it did really make me want to visit Greenland! So I suppose I have to give Ehrlich some credit for that.
July 12, 2011
This one took me about a week. The detail and information about the land that Knud Rasmussen traveled were incredible. If I were ever to go that far north, this book would go with me. Ehrlich is powerful because she ahs walked the walk, frozen, starved and smelled bad. The entire culture and customs are both beautiful and ugly, and the fatalism of the people would drive me nuts. Ehrlich's voice is true to the material, stating more than embellishing the setting and activity. The light and dark of the environment are powerful, as are the cold and danger. One weakness would be redundant thoughts about one's mood in those dark days, to the point reading becomes boring when it should be compelling, if given a few times. Long time to read if done in detial, and worth it.
February 21, 2019
Haunting, evocative, beautiful. I'm glad to have finally finished this and sorry that it's over. The prose and stream of consciousness style are both wonderful.
November 26, 2020
I purchased this book at our library's used book sale. It had been withdrawn from the shelves, unread. Greenland is a land unknown, steeped in mystery. Traditionally, native people subsisted by hunting walrus, narwhal, seal, polar bear at great peril. Starvation was not unknown. Dogsleds often disappeared into open water bordered by ice that looked solid. The author of this book was drawn to Greenland by its harsh beauty and resilient people. She traveled by dogsled with a few of the Inuit people who still hunted by traditional methods. Alternately she froze, starved, almost drowned and thrilled to the beauty of the majestic land. She also witnessed sled dogs forced to labor under inhumane and sometimes cruel conditions. It was difficult for her to witness the slaying of a female polar bear and her cub. That was painful for me as well.
July 15, 2022
I adored this. Her writing was an attempt at communicating what the Greenland state of mind must be. I felt that and finally succumbed to it, but cannot really know if I succeeded until I go there.
One of the saddest passages I have ever read was the killing of a polar bear while she asked for her life to be spared, knowing it was impossible.
Must look up her other books. Truly luminous and transcendental.
One of the saddest passages I have ever read was the killing of a polar bear while she asked for her life to be spared, knowing it was impossible.
Must look up her other books. Truly luminous and transcendental.
November 21, 2023
Feels too harsh on the quality of writing to give it 2 stars, feels too generous given how difficult I felt it was to read to give 3 stars.
The writer clearly has a lot of respect for Greenland, its culture and the people within it. However, it feels too unfocused, too repetitive and too bloated in places. It is beautifully written, and I know so much more about Greenland now than I ever did. Just be aware it is not a quick read.
The writer clearly has a lot of respect for Greenland, its culture and the people within it. However, it feels too unfocused, too repetitive and too bloated in places. It is beautifully written, and I know so much more about Greenland now than I ever did. Just be aware it is not a quick read.
abandoned-without-finishing
December 3, 2020I really want to keep going with this, as her writing is lovely. But it’s too....soniferous?....for me right now. Perhaps another time.
March 2, 2022
Absolutely fascinating and worth reading, but zero interest in visiting Greenland. Sounds brutal.
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