After leaving Svalbard on August 7, our only contact with humans not associated with the Polar Pioneer was a few hours of exploring a tiny town with a big name: Ittoqqortoormiit. (It’s not as hard to pronounce as it looks if you say it quickly: i-tok-a-tor-mit.)
It’s the youngest town I’ve ever set foot in, having been founded in 1924. Tourist ships visit two or three times in summer, and passengers come ashore to learn about local history and the traditional Greenlandic ways of life.
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- The visitor’s center had informational displays and a small gift shop.
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- We got to touch the pelts of musk ox, polar bear, and several species of seals.
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- They opened their beautiful church for us to view.
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- The local museum pointed out that this was the site of a weather station important to the Allies during WWII.
On the east coast of Greenland, overlooking the mouth of the Scoresby Sund system of fjords, this hamlet of less than 500 inhabitants is about as far off the grid as you can get. The Greenlanders who live here have electricity and satellite service including Internet connectivity.
But they have no running water or sewage system — the permafrost penetrates so deep into the ground that such infrastructure is impossible to construct. Dirt roads connect the colorful little houses and commercial buildings that climb up several hills in photogenic ranks.
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