jedioffsidetrap’s Reviews > The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey into Greenland's Buried Past and Our Perilous Future > Status Update

Nansen expedition, 1888

Snowstorms blow in regularly over the Greenland ice sheet, known by the Inuit as “piteraq”

The ice sheet is not flat but shaped like a gently sloping dome w/its highest altitude in the center of G; in practice to walk across is tantamount to climbing half of it then descending the other.

adding to difficulty of the crossing is edges of ice sheet can be vertical cliffs hundreds of feet high; b/y that for 20-30 mi is crevasse zone: varies in width & difficulty, succession of steep ridges, hills, fissures

It was the search for the lost colonies that led to the initial exploration of the ice sheet.

Norwegian Lutheran pastor Hans Egede appointed official missionary to Greenland by Danish King— set sail on May 12, 1721, arr in southwestern G on July 3

Set up mission on coastal island he called Island of Hope; few years later moved to the mainland to town Godthab, which in time became capital of Nuuk

The Norse colonies died off; last ship arrived in G in 1406 & returned in 1410; also letter from 1424

Disappearance of Norse colonies remains mystery: some catastrophe, could have been change in climate lead to mass starvation, or storm, plague or deadly skirmish with Inuit

- from arch evidence, it seems likely that groups of Inuit settlers arr in G via sea ice connecting northern Canada around 1200

[Lief Erickson was the second son of Erik the Red who founded Greenland; Erickson made his journey to North America at Newfoundland/Nova Scotia after 1000]

The [Norse] Greenland colonies were divided into 2 residential clusters known as the Eastern Settlement & the Western; they had been estab beg. in the year 985 after several hundred men & women followed a charismatic warrior named Eric the Red there from Iceland. Banished from Iceland for murder, Erik apparently chose the name G to make the treacherous voyage from I. to G. seem more appealing to potential followers.

Greenland is a semi-arid environment which means snow accumulations are modest. Still, decade after decade enough snow began to pile up that its weight & pressure formed it into ice. Eventually that ice became hundreds of feet thick—& later still several miles thick.

Taking in the immense expanse of Greenland from low altitude was like surveying the landscape of some kind of frozen exoplanet. The hard blackness of the coastal mountains, the soft whiteness of the ice sheet— the only color intruding on the scenery was the light blue of the sky & a deeper blue from crevasses in the ice that radiated a luminous aquamarine glow.