I’d like to go to Greenland…

I’ve had an interest in Greenland since reading Miss Smilla’s Feeling For Snow by Peter Høeg… and maybe even before then when I read about the Viking adventurers when I was a child, probably in my Children’s Book of Heroes. Then I came across and amazing singer who comes from Greenland, Simon Lynge:

Kalaallit Nunaat, Greenland, is vast, really, really big… and empty; there are less than 60,000 inhabitants of an area over 83,000 square miles… Most of the people are Inuit but there are Europeans living there too. It is an autonomous country but it is within the Kingdom of Denmark.

I was listening to a Radio 4 programme, From Our Own Correspondent’ today and one of the report was from James Fletcher who was trapped in Greenland because of ferocious weather; he was anxious about getting home in time for Christmas and wasn’t comforted by someone helpfully telling him that sometimes air transport was shut down for weeks, even months! It made me think about being stuck somewhere, and how it has only happened to me for a few hours, usually when travelling by train; after the anxiety has become annoyance, and then reduced to passive irritation, there comes a moment when you just accept the situation, and if you can reach that stage fairly soon after realising you’re stuck and can do nothing to become unstuck, then it can be a time for reflection and even creativity! I’m not sure that James Fletcher was feeling very reflexive or creative… the thought of missing Christmas loomed to large for him perhaps! But for people who have enforced ‘stuckness’, such as those who are being held hostage, or who are trapped by some terrible accident, down a mine, in a collapsed building, then to somehow get to grips with their situation and accept it must be the best way to survive the ordeal mentally.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03m3j70