A sprightly woman friend, a woman of a certain age, has just gone off on a short holiday to . . . Greenland. Some of her earlier holidaying has been done in Spitsbergen and, at the other end of things, on the Seychelles. Early this year there was a note here that Greenland was being opened up to anglers, and that there is a travel agency running trips for those anxious to extend their experience to rivers which are teeming, it seems, with that most precious of all the salmonide (say some), the salvelinus alpinus or char. However, our friend is not an angler, just a bit of an explorer. And Greenland is not all one huge iceberg. You may have seen recently on TV a programme which enlightened this viewer with the information that for centuries, at the beginning of the second millennium (dates remain vague, at least in this person's case) Greenland, or a portion of it, was colonised by Vikings. They put down strong roots. Some of their buildings, of fine cut stone, were photographed, including the ruins of a church. But, a few centuries after first setting foot on the territory, the Vikings disappeared. The commentator thought they might have taken to their boats again and gone homewards, or at least somewhere else.
On the other hand, they might have dwindled in numbers and finally died out. For a point was made by the commentator that they did not adapt to the local conditions in terms of what they ate. The native population, Innuit, or Eskimo as they used to called, lived off the fish and the seals and the sea birds, with their eggs. The seal fur was probably also a source of clothing and bedclothes. There may be serious historical works written on all this. It would be good to hear of them. Another factor in the disappearance of the Vikings was mentioned; around the time of their colonising Greenland, there occurred what the commentator described as a mini ice-age, lasting, from memory, a couple of centuries.
The summer (now) is warm, the nights hardly exist. Animals galore: ermine, lemming, wolf, arctic fox, reindeer, musk ox, a hairy-looking beast, and the rivers full of char and the seas around bulging with fish "in the most unpolluted waters in the world". Can't wait to hear all about it. Oh, and yes, this is the biggest island in the world. She might bring back a snap of a polar bear. Y