Sixty Degrees North (8 page)

When my father died I learned that loss is with us always. It is not a punctuating mark in our lives, it is not a momentary pause or ending. Loss is a constant force, a spirit that moves both within and without us. It is an unceasing process that we may choose, if we wish, to bear witness to. And if we do make that choice, then we are not committing ourselves to a lifetime of grief and melancholy. Instead, we offer ourselves the opportunity of a firmer sense of joy and of beauty. It is no surprise and certainly no coincidence that we experience our greatest appreciation of life in those things that are fragile and fleeting. We find it in the song of a bird, in the touch of a lover, or in the memory of a moment long passed. So it should be no surprise that by attuning ourselves better to the process of loss and transience, we may in turn be brought nearer to beauty and to joy. It is in loss – in the anticipation of loss – that we find our most profound pleasures, and it is there also that we may find a sense of true permanence.

In traditional Inuit society, permanence was to be found in the concept of
sila
, a kind of life force or spirit, which is sometimes translated as air, wind or weather, or, more widely still, as ‘everything that is outside'.
Sila
was the essential ingredient of life – it was breath itself – and it held the inner and outer worlds together. When a person died, their life, their breath, returned to the world and became one with it again, or it found form in another person's body. But
sila
was not a predictable permanence; it was not certainty.
Sila
encompassed both weather and climate. It was changeable, surprising, and sometimes malign. Death was part of its process and part of its force, and the Inuit understanding of the world was shaped by this belief. Or perhaps it would be more true to say that the world in which the Inuit lived shaped this understanding. For natural philosophies do not spring from empty space, they are born from the land. And this seems to me a particularly northern view of life and death. Here, where the seasons turn heavily, emphatically, and where impermanence cannot be disguised,
sila
, somehow, makes sense.

Death is at once an ending and a continuation. A breath is given back to the wind, just as ice returns to the sea. It finds new shape. But a life, too, lives on through stories and through memories, joyful in their retelling and their fleeting recollection. Loss shapes us like a sculptor, carving out our form, and we feel each nick of its blade. But without it we cannot be. Of the many absences that I carry with me – for we all, I think, are filled with holes – the absence of my father is the one that has taught me most. It is the space through which I have come to see myself most clearly. I thought of him then, as an ice-laden wind pawed at the cabin window, and I thought of myself in those first few months without him. His was the loss that had led me to this place.

It was another two days before I felt well enough to venture out beyond the shelter of the hostel again. My strength had drained in the stifling heat inside, and I needed to walk. The morning was dry and calm, and so I aimed for Quaqssuk – Ravens' Mountain – which rose just beyond the north end of the village. Nanortalik's main street was filled with teenagers that morning, just finished their final term at junior high school. They were dressed in white T-shirts, all painted
with slogans and pictures, or printed with photographs of their friends and classmates. Spray cream was everywhere, and treacle too, on their hands and faces. They were chanting a song like a football anthem, and smiling as they went. Cars beeped and people cheered in congratulation.

Much earlier in the day, at five or six a.m., the rabble would have been prowling the streets, dragging tin cans on strings behind them, banging metal trays and yelling loudly outside the homes of their teachers. In Narsaq, further up the coast, I had seen (or at least heard) the same ritual, and wondered at first if some kind of early morning riot was unfolding. But this was an annual event, I was told. It was a ceremony, marking the end of one part of the children's lives and their imminent entry into another. Most of them now would have to leave home, to complete high school in another town.

As I walked out on the dirt track towards Quassik, the sounds of the street faded and the sounds of the mountain grew. Lapland buntings flung themselves into the air around me, then glided back to earth again, wings outstretched, singing as they fell. Among the low bushes, redpolls danced and darted, some stopping close by to watch me pass. The air shimmered with song. Beneath my feet, the lower slopes were thick with life: crowberry, dwarf willows, tiny white flowers among the rocks, plump beds of mosses and lichens. There was, everywhere, an anticipation of summer.

It was warm as I began to climb the trail, and I soon took off my jacket, then my jumper. The walking wasn't difficult, but after three days lying down I wasn't feeling fit. It took an hour to gain the steep 300 metres to the top of the hill, and just a few more minutes from the first cairned summit to the highest point, topped by a pyramid of stones. The view was astonishing. To the north and east, snow-studded mountains rose abruptly from the fjords, all cluttered with ice. Peak after ragged peak stood whisped in haze and shadows. Behind me was the town, looking tiny
and worn out, its colour drained by distance. Beyond it, to the south and west, was the straight line where the sea ice began, a carpet of white and blue and light, with only a few huge bergs protruding above the flat surface.

I sat down on a rock just north of the peak and ate my lunch. There was only a hint of a breeze, and everything was close to silence. The far-off hum of a helicopter; the drone of a bluebottle nearby; an outboard motor, somewhere among the fjords. Besides these, the only sound was the whispering of air among the mountains, a kind of live white noise.

I lay back with my head on the lichen crust of the rocks. The sun was only just breaking through now as the cloud slowly thickened, but it was still warm on my skin. I listened to the quiet and closed my eyes. There is great pleasure to be had in lying down outside. On a sun-drenched beach or a cold Shetland hillside, wrapped up warm or in shorts and a T-shirt, a doze in the open air is rarely a bad idea. Wild sleeping is as rejuvenating an activity as wild swimming, and it has the major benefit of being a lot less wet. I think my fondness for the activity – if you can call it an activity – in part explains why I am such a poor mountaineer. The lure of the summit is rarely strong enough to lead me further than a good view and a comfortable napping spot, and unless I can combine the two goals, such as here on Quassik, recumbency usually wins out. On this occasion, though, I didn't sleep long. Almost as soon as I had closed my eyes, something changed. I felt a breeze on my face – a sudden gust from the north that failed to fall away – and the temperature dropped. Even with my eyes shut I could sense a darkening of the sky. So I decided to move.

The walk back down the slope was easy and enjoyable, and the threatened downpour failed to materialise. I made my way into the village again, through the ramshackle streets of its eastern edge, but I was stopped by a loud voice calling. A man was beckoning me from his open window,
Danish rock music pouring out from behind him. I couldn't understand what the man was shouting, nor could I see the expression on his face, friendly or angry. But he stretched his arm in my direction and called me over, so I moved, somewhat reluctantly, towards him.

‘Dansk?' he asked, when I was close enough to comprehend.

‘Nej, Engelsk,' I responded, for simplicity's sake.

‘Where are you from?' he said slowly, in English.

‘From Scotland,' I answered, a little more accurately this time.

‘Scotland, yes,' he smiled. This was clearly a welcome answer, for the man immediately invited me in to his house, and sat me down opposite him by the window. An open can of beer stood between us on the table. ‘I am Thomas,' he said, then elaborated. ‘Thomas Jefferson – you know? – the United States' president. That was not me!'

He laughed, then lapsed back into Danish, where he remained for the rest of the conversation. I tried my best to follow.

He told me he was a pensioner, though he was only 57 years old. He used to be a sailor, working on the ferry between Esbjerg in Denmark and Harwich in England, but now he was retired. This was his house, he said, but he didn't really live here; he lived with his mother. There was a photo of her on the wall, which he pointed out to me with pride. He lived with his mother, but he came to this house during the day to listen to music and to get drunk. In the summertime he went hunting and fishing in his boat, and sometimes he took tourists up the fjord. But for now, it seemed, the next can was as far as he was going.

A big man, with a slight limp, and a face that smiled even when his mouth did not, Thomas was, I thought, somewhat shy, though alcohol had brought him confidence. His exuberance was not really talkativeness either, just enthusiasm
for sharing a moment; and like many of the Greenlanders I met, his conversation was punctuated by long, silent gazes out of the window.

Thomas was not the only person in town who spent his days with a beer in front of him. I was visited at the cabin on more than one occasion by men some considerable distance from sobriety. They were always polite and quiet, but still I was disconcerted by these uninvited guests. Alcoholism in Greenland, as in many Arctic communities, is a major problem among the native population. More recently, drug and solvent abuse have also become serious issues, along with a rise in teenage pregnancy and in health problems such as obesity. The reason, in part, is poverty, and a lack of education. But it goes deeper than that.

In Narsaq, two weeks earlier, I had spoken to Bolethe Stenskov, a social worker and counsellor, who told me that the country was suffering from the problems of rapid social change. ‘We have moved from being hunters to modern life very quickly,' she said. In just a few decades a massive cultural transition has been made, and it has not been an easy one. Low self-esteem is a particularly significant problem, she explained, especially among men, who find themselves without their traditional community status. Once they were hunters, providing for their family. Now it is much harder for them to find a role. Capitalism has introduced a new set of values to Inuit culture – a framework of indulgence – and while Western materialism has yet to be fully embraced, our compulsive consumption has been adopted in an altogether damaging way. Alcohol, drugs, tobacco, junk food: this is non-accumulative consumption. It is our own excess, translated into Greenlandic.

Bolethe offers support, advice and information to those who need it, and despite her familiarity with the problems, she maintains a remarkably positive outlook. She sees her job as, unfortunately, a necessary one within this society.
The damaging cycles of addiction, of abuse and ill-health, passed down between generations, cannot be broken without intervention. And key to that intervention, Bolethe believes, must be education, for both children and adults. Currently, many youngsters struggle in school. They struggle because their parents may be unable to help them, or unwilling to encourage them. They may have a Danish teacher, but may not have the necessary skills in that language to carry them along. There is, too, a shortage of positive role models among the adult population. These factors can easily lead to a lack of interest in education, and a failure to connect with the learning process. But if they are to find a meaningful place for themselves within society, as it exists today, they must make that connection.

There is a paradox here, though, as there is in many traditional societies. For Greenlandic culture is deeply woven together with the idea of place, and the community is central within people's lives. Yet with each step in the education process, and with each successful progression, children are likely to find themselves drawn further and further away from their place and their community. At fifteen, they must leave home to complete high school elsewhere. Then, if they wish to go further, to college or university, they must go to Nuuk or to Copenhagen. These students must travel far from home, and that distance will not just be geographical. Almost as soon as they enter the education system, children are already leaving behind the traditional knowledge of their grandparents, and the higher they climb the greater that distance will become. Education promises choice and opportunities, but in return it asks for aspirations and ambition. These aspirations are rarely compatible with a small Greenlandic community; they are rarely compatible with a life that maintains a real connection to culture and tradition. There is much to be lost here – much that has already been lost elsewhere – and
while education represents an opportunity, it also potentially poses a threat.

When I put this to Bolethe, though, she disagreed. There is no contradiction, she told me. ‘We need to improve education and quality of life, but also retain our culture as hunting people.' So how is that possible, I asked. How do you retain a culture that is, at its heart, at odds with the education system and with the economic system that education underpins? Bolethe smiled and looked out of the window. She lifted her hand and gestured out towards the harbour, the ice and the mountains across the fjord. The answer was simple, she said. ‘We have the nature; we have the landscape and the sea. There is our culture. It is with us.'