Kangerlussuaq

Let's have a quick look at Kangerlussuaq. It's a small town that has grown around Greenland's main international airport. The airport has the longest civilian runway in the country and is located at the end of a fjord, where the winds are relatively subdued. What does Kangerlussuaq mean? "Scary fjord", from the Greenlandic kangerluk (fjord) and -suaq (big, deep, formidable, scary). The Greenlandic language is no-nonsense and to-the-point.

Kangerlussuaq and the airport are indivisible, because there isn't much else in the local area. Which is awkward, because there are plans to extend the runways at Nuuk, the capital, and also Ilulissat, which is Greenland's chief tourist destination on account of the icebergs. When that happens Kangerlussuaq will no longer have a raison d'etre, but it seems wrong to abandon such a large facility.

How did Kangerlussuaq Airport come to be? War, and the threat of war. Back in April 1940 the Germans overran Denmark, which meant that Denmark's foreign possessions became part of the Third Reich as well. In practice the Allies stepped in. Britain invaded and took over the Faroe Islands, and also Iceland, which was almost entirely independent from Denmark at the time but we invaded anyway so that the Germans couldn't.

Technically this was wrong of us, but in return for having to pretend to like corned beef and Tommy Trinder the Faroe Islands and Iceland got new roads, new harbours, new runways, plus masses of bored and lonely British and American servicemen. That must have been incredibly awkward but that is another topic for another time.

Things went slightly differently with Greenland. The United States wasn't happy with the idea of Britain interfering with its sphere of influence, so we didn't stick our oar in. Canada set up a base in the south of the country, but the US wasn't particularly happy with that either. For a year Greenland existed in a kind of legal limbo, theoretically part of the Axis but in practice too remote for Germany to exploit, until in April 1941 the US ambassador to Denmark, a chap called Henrik Kauffmann, signed a defence treaty that gave the United States the right to set up military bases. In doing so he overstepped his authority, because the Danish government continued to exist and the King of Denmark remained in Denmark, but in the long run there were no hard feelings and he was pardoned at the end of the war.

And so in late 1941 the US built a series of bases in Greenland, codenamed Bluie West and Bluie East depending on their location. This all happened before the US formally entered the Second World War. The rationale was that the bases would extend the reach of the US Navy and make it easier for the USAF to transfer lend-lease aircraft to Europe. This does raise the question of whether the United States provoked the Second World War purely so it could get its hands on Greenland, and I imagine there are people on the internet who believe that to be the case. Construction of Bluie West 8, which became Kangerlussuaq, began in September 1941, and was completed in January 1942, a month after the Pearl Harbour attack. It can't have been easy building a runway in Greenland in Winter.

Bluie West 8 was particularly useful for ferry flights. The flights typically took off from Presque Isle Army Air Field in Maine, before heading east over the Atlantic via Gander to their destination in Scotland. However the distance from Gander to Scotland was just over two thousand miles, which was too far for heavily-laden transports and almost all fighter aircraft.

In contrast the US-Greenland-Iceland-Scotland route had a longer overall distance, but the hops were shorter, so long-range fighters could complete it. Have you ever read about Glacier Girl, the P-38 that was dug out of Greenland's icepack? That was lost during one of the US-Greenland-Iceland-Scotland ferry flights. Poor weather prevented it from reaching Iceland, along with a B-17 and a bunch of other P-38s, so the flight leader turned back to Greenland, but he got lost.

Low on fuel, he elected to belly land on the ice, after which the aircraft was covered in snow and forgotten about for years. The internet is cagey about exactly where in Greenland Glacier Girl came down, and I don't blame them because souvenir hunters would probably pick the place clean.

Why Bluie? The internet says that it was a US codeword for Greenland, but the codeword doesn't appear to have been used outside the context of the airbases. Perhaps it was just a random word plucked from a book. Perhaps someone in the Government felt that Greenie would be too obvious and Spaciegrey would never catch on.

Germany still attempted to militarise Greenland. They set up a series of weather stations on the east coast. After initial success the venture ended in a series of skirmishes that left one Danish and one German soldier dead, so not even Greenland escaped the destructive influence of war.

In the post-war years Bluie West 8 became Søndrestrøm Air Base, after the Danish name for the local area. The issue of place names in Greenland is a fascinating one that I'm going to ignore completely because it's controversial. In 1992 the US left, although there's still a military presence, mostly the Danish Arktisk Kommando (just visible in the top-right of the first image). The US and Canadian Air Forces still use the place occasionally:

The US also maintains a base at Thule, in the north. It's pronounced Tool. Throughout the Cold War Greenland was a vital part of the United States' early warning line, but advances in technology have meant that radars in the continental US can do the same job. Furthermore the greater range of post-war airliners means that Kangerlussuaq quickly lost its importance as a refuelling base, so unlike Gander in Newfoundland it never really had a civilian heyday. As far as I can tell none of the civilian flights airborne on 11 September 2001 were diverted to Kangerlussuaq. They went to Gander instead.

Did you know that there's a whole subgenre of accidental noise albums? They're albums that have been automatically uploaded to YouTube and Spotify, but the uploading process went wrong, so the albums are totally corrupted and changed, e.g:

Even the Amazon previews are corrupt, because the whole process is one-click automatic and no-one noticed. It's entirely possible that by the time you listen to the video above someone has fixed it, but it reminds me of The Talos Principle, a video game set long after the demise of the human race. I can tell that the upload is corrupt because I'm human, but what about them (gestures to robot overlords; alien successors; pan-dimensional scientists; rocks and stones; water underground). What about them? How can they tell that the upload is wrong? I'm digressing here.

Kangerlussuaq's fuel is stored in a bunch of tanks just outside town. They're topped up by ship in the second half of the year and used up in the spring and summer. While I was there Kangerlussuaq smelled a bit like Morocco - dust and unburned fuel - but perhaps the cars are in need of repair. It apparently costs a fortune to import a vehicle. Perhaps because of this Kangerlussuaq has a high concentration of Toyotas and Volvos. Sensible, sturdy cars:

The purple car is a Lada Niva 4x4, which is still in production. It actually looks pretty cool. During the Cold War my hunch is that the USSR had at least two missiles aimed at the base, one at the runway and one at the fuel storage. There's a harbour down the road, but it's icelocked during the winter months. Perhaps there was a missile aimed at the harbour as well.

Would anyone have survived a nuclear strike? Given Kangerlussuaq's bowl-like geography an airburst would have been super-effective, and anybody who did survive would have faced an eighty-mile trek to Sisimiut, assuming they didn't die of burns or radiation poisoning first. They would presumably have to integrate with the local population, and perhaps hundreds of years later Brazilian scientists would be puzzled by the blonde, sarsaparilla-craving inuit of Sisimiut.

There are still traces of the US presence in Kangerlussuaq today:

Should I drop a sick Deus Ex reference, or not? That game came out more than twenty years ago. Most people reading this would be baffled.

The US National Science Foundation struck a deal to continue using Kangerlussuaq in support of its science missions after the USAF pulled out, although I have the impression that this has been cut back by successive US governments. NASA still uses the airfield for research into climate change, and when I was there I spotted a Kenn Borek turboprop DC-3 conversation that, as far as I can tell, was supporting NASA's Oceans Melting Greenland project:

But I could be wrong, because that blog post is two years old. Someone else might have hired the plane. If Greenland's ice cap melted away the results would be catastrophic for coastal areas in the lower latitudes, but Greenland itself would be relatively safe.

The colour scheme reminded me of Mirror's Edge(tm).

For most visitors Kangerlussuaq isn't a destination, it's a delay. I imagine that the majority of visitors only leave the airport terminal to see what's outside. International flights arrive at 10:40, and the local flights are scheduled for the afternoon or early the next morning.

The town itself is split in half by the runway. The civilian airport side is in the photograph at the top of this article. It has the main supermarket, the civilian hotels, the post office, and the main restaurant, which is part of the hotel. Technically there are two restaurants. There's a cafe that serves surprisingly good food and a posher restaurant that I didn't visit because my trousers were filthy.

I'm tempted to say that after hiking for six days anything would taste okay, but the lasagne and musk ox burger were legitimately good. The lasagne in particular. Pulled musk ox is tasteless but the same is true of all pulled meat. I'm not a fan of pulled meat. It was a bad fad that needs to die out.

The meals came to around 16-17DKK, which is about £18, which is not cheap, but you're paying for the fact that it's in Greenland. Ordinarily I wouldn't post a picture of lasagne to the internet but this lasagne is in Greenland.

You have to walk along a curved road to reach the southern, military side of the base. Apart from a few neat-looking summer houses it's mostly made up of utilitarian blocks, like a low-poly 3D game:

Datsun. It's been a long time since I saw that name. The Polar Bear Inn in the top image has been closed for several years. Online maps show a Thai takeaway in the same block, but it's not there any more. Instead the takeaway seems to have moved into a mini-market across the way. There appeared to be a bar that opens at 20:00, and some kind of grill house, but I couldn't tell if they still existed or not. Out of town, to the south, is Restaurant Roklubben, which requires a reservation. I've never been to a restaurant that requires a reservation and I felt that Greenland is not the place to start.

There were a couple of huts on skis. I wonder if they were prefabricated research stations that were built to be airlifted into place.

That fact that no-one has swooped in to take over the former site of the Polar Bear Inn doesn't bode well for the local economy. Especially given that online shopping is still very basic in Greenland. But then again I went in May, just after COVID ravaged the world, so perhaps the conditions aren't typical. Greenland largely sailed through the COVID pandemic - eleven thousand cases, 21 deaths - and when I went neither Greenland nor Denmark (nor London, for that matter) enforced any COVID restrictions, although I did have to prove that I had been vaccinated at the Air Greenland check-in desk in Denmark. I didn't have to prove it very hard, but I did at least have to make an effort.

The southern edge of the town is marked by a bridge, beyond which is Lake Ferguson, which I didn't visit:

The western edge is connected by road to a harbour, and thence the defunct Kellyville, which is a ten-mile walk away:

The northern border of the town is a cliff face and the eastern edge is connected by a long road to the Russell Glacier. The hotels in Kangerlussuaq offer tours to the glacier and the surrounding area. I took a four-hour tour which approaches the glacier but doesn't do on it, which I felt best given that I was recovering from the arctic circle trail at the time:

Some people might baulk at the idea of flying across the Atlantic to check out a melting glacier, but as mentioned passim I am a documentarian, so I can get away with that sort of thing. This is a fantastic excuse that works in all situations. Have you ever seen a photo-essay about prostitution in Cuba? There's a cottage industry of photo-essays about prostitution in Cuba. And South-East Asia. Just google "photo-essay prostitution cuba" or "south-east Asia" or whatever. The fiction is that the photographers are raising awareness of prostitution, but in reality they're maximising their return by sleeping with prostitutes and getting a photo-essay out of it while being paid to do so by the UN or whatever. I admire that kind of chutzpah.

I'm digressing wildly here. Apart from the tours, the hiking, the surprisingly decent food, the flights, is there anything else in Kangerlussuaq? Not really. There's a post office just outside the airport from which you can in theory send a postcard, but it has odd hours, and when I popped my head around the door there was no-one inside. It seemed to be aimed at local people who needed a secure postbox.

There's a Canada Goose store and a couple of tourist souvenir shops. Greenland has a limited domestic manufacturing base, so there aren't all that many souvenirs. I brought back some Danish tea that I could in theory have got in Denmark. I also found some shell cases, which I could have perhaps posted back, but it struck me as a bad idea:

A mixture of 30-06, 6.5mm Swedish, .22, and a couple of .222 cases.

As mentioned earlier the only airline that flies to Greenland is Air Greenland. Its main route is Copenhagen -> Kangerlussuaq all year round, with Reykjavik -> Nuuk in the summer. A return ticket from Copenhagen is around £500 if you book in advance, and on top of that you have to budget £200 or so for an internal flight from Kangerlussuaq when you get there, because you can't just hop on a train. There are no trains.

The airport at Nuuk is under redevelopment, which in theory makes sense given that Nuuk is the capital and most populated town, but Nuuk itself has a limited range of things to see. There's a cinema and a small shopping mall. A few hiking trails. A ferry runs up the west coast (about £200 for a bed, more for an enclosed cabin), but only once a week. Perhaps it will be joined by a second ferry when Nuuk's runway is extended. Greenland's major tourist destination is Ilulissat, which has icebergs. It's on the ferry route, further north than Kangerlussuaq.

The ferry doesn't visit Kangerlussuaq, so presumably if the airport is downgraded visitor numbers will plummet. If the airport is turned over to the military or closed entirely Kangerlussuaq would presumably have to be dynamited and bulldozed into the ground, because it would otherwise become a wasteland. Which seems a shame given the existing infrastructure, but what to do with it? Even if the road to Sisimiut is completed there will be very little reason to visit Kangerlussuaq, not enough to justify the expense of maintaining a road. I'm glad I'm not in charge of Greenland's infrastructure.

And that's Kangerlussuaq. If you want check it out you could cover the whole town in a day, or two days if you do a couple of tours and have a meal at Restaurant Roklubben. Despite the Second World War connection I don't recall seeing anything about the town's history. There's a museum, but when I was there it looked defunct, but again I went a month before the season begins.