Diary of a journey in Greenland: from the sky to the old church in Ilulissat
Among the scenes witnessed by polarjournal.net this week were a passage over Greenland in a small twin-engined plane and a the sounds of a baptism in a church in Ilulissat dating from 1771.
For a two-week period, polarjournal.net sent two reporters to Ilulissat to take portraits of the inhabitants, in order to report on some of the issues and changes taking place there. To give you an idea of the trip, here are some of the scenes they witnessed.
Saturday 5, from Nuuk to Ilulissat
A small plane; a small theater.
There are about twenty of us passengers.
The stewardess speaks, the in-flight telephone wedged between her cheek and shoulder. She has a round, smooth face, big black eyes, fine, abundant hair pulled back heavily. She speaks and accompanies her words with gestures of circumstance – the same as elsewhere, yet this time, here, in this small plane, in this small theater, everyone is watching: the lifejacket (yellow, crumpled and faded); the brick-colored whistle; the gesture of pulling down on the tabs; and, finally, the mask.
End of Act 1.
She closes the curtain separating her from the cabin, turns on the heating (we can take off our coats) and we imagine her changing – greenlandic actress behind the red curtain of Air Greenland.
The play lasts an hour and she plays all the roles.
The plane takes off. A few minutes later, she opens the curtain again. She’s changed. She’s taken off her coat. She is wearing her party dress: her stewardess outfit. She passes through the rows offering coffee and cookies.
Back and forth in the plane; she returns to the front, parks her cart and closes the curtain she had rolled up and tied along the right-hand wall.
She comes back and sits facing us for a few minutes before placing headphones over her ears.
Below the aircraft, rocks protrude from the ice. The low-angled evening sun glides over a sheet of white scratched by their prominent points. Lakes lie buried between the endless mountain ranges, until the clouds soften them and make them disappear, down to the last teeth embedded in a cottony veil. When it clears, the black, bottomless water sinks into the hollows of the earth-coloured slopes.
At their foot, countless indentations protect the sea, which freezes like curdled milk. Slabs of it break away like trunks carried by a river.
We have good seats in the orchestra (only one instrument): we’re seated in the third row. The propellers make the sound of accelerated electric drums. It’s heavy, it’s deaf, it shakes. It must scare the birds ’cause the sky is empty.
As all the parts of the plane vibrate, the glacier stretches, wrinkles and undulates between the hills, almost losing its shades of grey, allowing the eye to lose itself in a dazzling white, devoid of imperfections.
The ice cap. Another sky. Sky above and sky below. And the mountains, white and black like wrinkled, greasy old skin.
Ilulissat appears through the windows on the left of the plane: a few houses lost in the ice, the clouds, the fog.
She speaks into the old black telephone. The plane begins its descent, then picks itself up, turns around, returns and begins its descent again – the wind undoubtedly has its whims, which we discover as we return to the clouds.
The stewardess hasn’t flinched. She watches us without moving.
Ilulissat, tiny beneath our feet.
And the ice cap.
Small plane. Huge theater.
Sunday 6, Nora’s christening
Sunday.
It’s a beautiful morning.
Yesterday, the sky was a mix of grey and white, blending with the snow. Today, it’s made of two large blocks of color: the ground is white, shiny, dense, and thick; the sky is blue, wide, pearly with violet reflections.
We are walking toward the Zion Church, at the other end of the town.
It’s a few minutes past 9 o’clock when we arrive in front of the building, set at the edge of the ice floe. The church door is open. We enter. The nave is empty and filled with light. We move forward slowly. Voices come from a small room behind the chancel. We approach. The pastor is a woman. We address her in English:
— Good morning, ma’am. We took the liberty of coming in. We work for a Swiss newspaper and we would like to know if you would allow us to record the ceremony this morning (we’re taking a chance by combining our questions, but we have no certainty there even is a ceremony today).
And we add:
— Sound only. No images. It’s for a writing and radio project.
She thinks for a moment, gestures with her hand, and leaves the room. She returns a few moments later and smiles at us.
— It’s fine. The ceremony starts at 10 o’clock. But no photos. And please be respectful of the congregation.
We walk back up the nave and settle in the narthex to wait for 10 o’clock.
The faithful mutter hymns. A galleon with artillery pointing through the gun ports hangs from the ceiling with all sail set. The organist in his shirt applies himself to his keys. The syncopations of the organ shift the beginning of the stanzas into the downbeat, like a procession resuming its march.
They stand up and turn around. At half past ten this Sunday, a procession enters the church. In the hands of a young man in costume, the child, eyes wide open. Not yet able to walk, he is carried to the altar to receive the blessing under the gilded chandeliers.
Wearing a black robe and white ruff, the Ilulissat pastor delivers the service in Kalaallisut. The sun’s glare on the snow shines through the temple’s large windows. One of the oldest buildings in Greenland, its doors still open a few metres from the ice floe in Disko Bay.
Footsteps on the floor, a few splashes of water, words punctuated by a long Amen pronounced in two syllables A-men, and once again the organist’s piano sounding out worship.
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