Special to New West.Net

Exploring the Warming Islands of Greenland

By Eric Ristau, Guest Writer, 1-22-07

Editor’s Note: Eric Ristau, a Utah-based writer and filmmaker, recently accompanied explorer Dennis Schmitt on an expedition to a “new” island in Greenland. The trip was featured this week in a New York Times story about Greenland’s warming. Below is the official premiere of Ristau’s film from the expedition and in this New West essay, Ristau reflects on the trip and what ramifications the explorers’ findings have on the ongoing discussion of global warming.

At my sister’s wedding in Spokane in August, a family friend asked in a casual, offhand way, “Have any interest in Greenland?” Naturally, my answer was “Who doesn’t?” Two weeks later I was camped on a glacier on the east coast of Greenland in a particularly rugged area called Liverpool Land.

Click here for a photo slideshow from Ristau’s trip.

The family friend had recruited me to take his place on a small, self-funded expedition to explore what was being referred to as a “new” island.  Renowned Arctic explorer Dennis Schmitt, 60, who is credited with discovering the Northern-most point of land on Earth—also an island on the coast of Greenland—had formed the expedition.  A year earlier on a French voyage, Schmitt had sailed into a Liverpool Land fjord and made a startling discovery:  a rugged peninsula, which he had once explored on dogsled, was no longer connected to the mainland.  The isthmus, it turns out, was an ice sheet, which had crumbled into the sea, creating a new channel and a new island.  Schmitt immediately began planning for a return trip to explore and document the island, which, in reality, was a Caledonian-era formation nearly 425 million years old.

We arrived in Reykjavik, Iceland in warm, sixty-degree weather.  The team assembled gear and food and I waited for my film gear to arrive from Amsterdam, where it had been relaxing without me.  Thanks Delta. 

Schmitt has contacts all over the Arctic. As a Berkeley linguistics scholar under Noam Chomsky at age 16, he began to learn the many indigenous dialects as he explored the coastlines of Alaska and Siberia.  An illegal crossing of the Bering Straight during the Cold War led to several days of FBI interrogation and later a paid spying gig, keeping the feds up on any subversive communist activities in the remote Siberian Inuit villages.  A cloak and dagger linguist.

For average citizens, arranging for a rifle, ammunition, and white gas to be transported from Iceland to a remote Danish outpost in Greenland could mean months of red tape.  For Schmitt, a few calls to a mysterious Icelander named Frederik was all it took.  He speaks Icelandic, too.

We flew from Keflavik, Iceland to a spot on the East Greenland coast called Constable Point.  The Danes own Greenland, but it’s largely self-governing.  This outpost serves as a fuel depot and heliport, hosting a few dozen employees who work shifts of six months on, one month off.  We unloaded our gear, checked the weather, shot the breeze with the Finnish helicopter pilot, and lifted off for the North.

At 400 miles above the Arctic Circle, September is usually really cold.  Our weather was mild and clear as we flew over mountainous, glaciated Liverpool Land.  The Caledonian Collision occurred 425 million years ago when continents were on the move in a major way.  The famous fjords of Norway once intermeshed like gears with the peninsulas and fjords Liverpool Land, forming the craggy peaks and deep canyons, now webbed with glaciers.

As we unloaded on a rock saddle between two peaks, the view of the receding ice shelf on the mainland was staggering.  After the sound of the aircraft had faded over the horizon, the silence was broken only by the sonic boom of glaciers calving—50 foot slabs of ancient ice roaring into the newly formed straight between the island and the rest of Greenland.

The island is rugged.  Like the rest of Liverpool Land, small, sharp peaks rise three and four thousand feet from sea level, some right out of the ocean.  The shape of the island is like a claw with three long, narrow fingers pointing north, forming fjords in between, and a wrist, which once connected it to the mainland. 

Along with Schmitt, the team consisted of Jeff Shea, a mountaineer and photographer, John Collins Rudolf, a writer, and his father, John Rudolf, a financier and mountaineer.  We set up camp and made plans to cross the glacier the next day to view the straight on the south side of the island.  Fearless, playful Arctic fox came into camp to greet us.  Several were stark, snow white, others a dark, chocolate brown.

Greenland’s ice sheet is three miles thick in places and large enough to cover Mexico.  How much ice is that?  Oh, about 630,000 cubic miles. That’s why scientists say that if it all melted, sea levels would rise 23 feet.  After seeing “An Inconvenient Truth” I had started to grasp the idea, but learning the aforementioned statistics and then watching the glaciers calve day and night for ten days really drove it home. 

We spent most of our stay traversing the island, climbing several of the peaks, photographing the new straight and taking GPS coordinates.  An Arctic storm with sustained winds of 60 miles per hour provided a blanket of fresh snow and an appreciation for four-season tents.  On one clear night, the Northern Lights danced green and blue and yellow—in the southern sky.  You know you’re really far north when the Northern lights are south of you. The arctic fox continued to pay visits.  Geese flew south over us by the thousands.  The glaciers continued their noisy retreat.

Schmitt, speaking a dozen or so Inuit and Eskimo languages, decided the island would be called “Uunartoq Qeqertoq” or Greenlandic for “Warming Island.” (Pronunciation is something like:  oo-na-talk ka-care-talk)

Before leaving Greenland, we visited one of the most remote settlements in the world, a Danish territorial village called Ittoqqortoormiit.  Greenlandic Inuit receive government stipends to live there.  Traditionally, they have fished and hunted from the sea ice, living on seal, walrus, and Polar Bear.  No more.  Scoresby Hammeken, known throughout Greenland as a Polar Bear hunter, told me that their way of life is vanishing.  He also pointed to places on our map where glaciers have vanished and other new islands have appeared. 

That’s the crux of it.  The island we explored is not uncommon.  Scientists and explorers alike are finding new islands all the time.  Some say that beneath the ice sheet, Greenland itself may be three separate islands.  It’s happening fast.

While on the expedition, I spent time with each member of the team, shooting interviews for a film about the island.  Each of them were similarly philosophical about the experience.  My firsthand look at the changes occurring in this remote part of the world is something I now think about on a daily basis.  With the political warring about the realities of climate change, it’s understandable that people feel unsure of what’s really happening.  Although critical mass seems to be forming, the political and scientific debates continue.

Meanwhile, the ice is melting and the ocean levels will rise.  Tell your friends.  Greenland has become a very inconvenient island.

Click here for a photo slideshow from Ristau’s trip and check out www.warmingisland.org for more information about the exploration.

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.