Tuesday 7 September 2010

Leif is Leif...

It's Wiking day! We are going to the places where they went, seeing what they saw. One thing is Hvalsey in the morning. Well, the spot where it should be - the fog enshrouds us so densely that there is nothing at all. Yeah, that's life.
As soon as we go into Skovfjorden towards Qassiarsiuk, different story: Again, the skies open up and offer a clear display of deep blue and feathery white clouds. 


In this 40-soul village that mainly thrives on sheep farming we are expected by a representative of the past: Edda is here to tell the tale of Wiking ransacking, love, violence, exploration, neighbourhood, christianisation and the eventual superiority of female persuasion over religious conviction. No, she's not telling it - she's living it, sermonizing it, declaiming, delivering it with such a verve that we all sit and stare, mouths open until she's finished. She must have been there, no doubt! The following "city" tour catches up with modern times, informing about sheep and dogs and the school system. But unwillingly our thoughts keep drifting to the times of the red-bearded, rude but intriguing people whose most prominent protagonists are to be seen in town. And just to prevent you from the quite common confusion: The furious man in the dragon boat is the founder, the father, the ruler - Eirik the Red. It's not the upright man standing guard over the town. It is the son, the christianizer, the Lucky, who is to be seen from afar so clearly and noble that everybody who comes here for the first time takes him for the father. But that's not Eirik. That's Leif...
The shadows are long already when we get back to FRAM from that beautiful land - Green Land.