September 2006  We sailed for Greenland from Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen,  first north with gradually darkening nights then south west into the sunsets and the first moon in over 3 months, a big full moon coming up over the sea. We moved with open ice and good seas until close to Greenland and found we were blocked by close sea ice. Eventually we came into Kong Oscar Fiord and were able then to sail north to Kaiser Franz Joseph Fiord – a narrow fiord bound by majestic mountains of folded  rock – yellow and red and blue. Here we landed at Blomstbugt, Flower Bay, where the valleys and nooks and crannies are vegetated by golden polar willow, red and orange beech, crimson bearberry bushes and other plants in autumn hues, all no more than 30cm high.

The rock here is smoothed by glaciers and easy to walk on. Some small lakes, one coloured purple and a few birds – geese, snow buntings and we can hear a diver or loon. We saw musk ox on the hillside and a very white arctic hare. Back at the landing site the bay was dotted with huge icebergs and broken bergy bits. Getting off the beach back into the zodiacs was an adventure. The wind had blown icy bits from disintegrating icebergs close to the beach and they rolled like stones onto the shore and in the waves at our legs. The waves were high and the crew did well to get us back to the ship, the zodiacs whipped about in the wind.

The weather turned from snow to sleet and back again. I couldn’t go on every outing – work gets in the way – but the Expedition Leader, Morten Joergensen, was keen for me to see a special place he had been shown last year by Inuit hunters. It was a Thule site on one of the Bear Islands . The Thule people had inhabited the area and then disappeared. It was snowing hard as we left the ship and stung the eyes of the zodiac driver but we came to a gentle place, a natural harbour with a small island sheltering the interior from the wind. It was a not much more than a beach, a small area bounded on one side by the sea and on the others by the sheer rock face of a mountain, but here there were 20 or more rounds of low stone walls, some with small entrance tunnels visible on the lower side, their roofs would have been animal skins. Similar mounds of stones hollow inside would have been stashes for food, rings of stones clear in the middle would have been tent sites. The sleet turned to soft snow and I could see across the bay, I could almost sense the freedom of the people, bound by the environment yet free inside it, given strength by the dominating surroundings of ice and sea and rock. I climbed a rock and imagined playing king of the castle, tag, hide and seek. I felt it was a good place. Everything had a coating of snow but I gathered some of the last of the blueberries, tangy and sour, for the chef, and ate black crowberries dry and seedy that he wouldn’t like.

The Thule people disappeared, perhaps migrating back to the North West from where they possibly originated, or perhaps overcome by the harshness of the environment in which they lived. It was a magical moment when I stepped momentarily back in time.