The Last Fisherman Hangs on in Assaqutaq

What a day we had in Glorious Greenland! I am very excited about the nascent tourist business that will soon turn into something very significant when Air Greenland begins its twice-weekly flight from Baltimore to Greenland in late May ’07. You can feel that the country is ready to welcome tourists–the Hotel Arctic is renovating and adding 65 rooms, expecting that many of the nearly 8000 tourists who will fly here between May and September will want to stay there. Today, only 30,000 tourists stay over and visit all year, so adding that small number will be a giant increase!

This afternoon we joined Bo Lings, a movie-star handsome, strong and rugged boat captain who took 12 of us out in his new 35-foot cabin cruiser called the Sirius. We cruised up the coast 6 km to an abandoned village called Assaqutaq. The last villagers finally left in 1967, and today, just one soul lives there: an old fisherman who comes to town once a week to sell his fish. The buildings are abandoned, the fish factory long silenced, in the whipping winds we slogged through the snow to peer inside old houses filled with dilapidated bunk beds and the remnants of life. After the fishing plant closed, there was nothing here for anyone, and the one store and tiny church just closed up. Bo said that when he was young this harbor used to freeze, but for the past fifteen years, it hasn’t. Another sign of the ominous warming.

Bo is going to be bringing tourists on diving trips, there is a pristine never before looted Portuguese sailing ship almost perfectly preserved in 26 meters of water near here. The masts are up and you can still see the china in the cabinets down in the water. He also has plans to take fishermen down the coast in his boat to a river where the trout fishing is fantastic. There are many people here like Bo who will captilize on these new visitors. And after you’ve been here, the idea of coming, believe me, is not that crazy.

We also had a coffee mix in a local woman’s home. The tradition of mix is a social imperative–you eat cakes, drink coffee, catch up on news and gossip, and this is the way people get together. Mix is an important Greenlandic word–for example, I am Max i mix. Joe is Joe i mix. You add this to the end of someone’s name.