Customer Reviews

This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Greenland isn't green at all, but the world's largest island is covered by the biggest continental ice shelf in the world. Sparsely populated on the rocky outer fringes of its 840,000 square miles, it's probably as unknown to Americans as anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. Gretel Ehrlich knows its ice leads and midnight sun as well as any American, and probably as well as any non-Inuit except for a handful of Danes, whose territory it is. That's because she's obsessed with the North in general and with Greenland in particular. Over the past decade, she has traveled to the frozen island at least seven times, staying for months at a stretch, traveling long distances by dogsled, making friends with hunters and villagers, and participating in seal and
polar bear hunts. Erlich chronicles her trips and relationships in a new book called "This Cold Heaven." ((...) 377 pages, Pantheon Books) She does far more than record her own journeys, however. She also puts Greenland into cultural, historical, and anthropological perspective by weaving her trips with those of Knud Rasmussen, who died in 1933 after traversing the polar North from Greenland to Alaska. Even now, some of Greenlandic culture is largely unchanged from the days when Rasmussen and his close friend Peter Freuchen made "first" contact with some of the bands of isolated Inuit (Eskimos) on the island. Bears, seals, hare, fox and walrus are still hunted for food, clothing and fuel made from blubber, dogsled is still the chief method of land transport, and ancient stories and religion abound. There are modern encroachments, however - Danish bureaucracy, snowmobiles, alcohol, helicopters, and cars, to say nothing of the enormous American military base at Thule. Erlich is enticed by the old ways, which seem as pristine and "unbroken" as Greenland's vast ice. She is also enticed by the ice itself, communal life, the land, and the dramatic ways with which Inuit culture deals with a nature it cannot dominate. Her own use of language sometimes approaches the poetic, which isn't so surprising when you learn that she's a poet, too. Using the specialized language of poetry, Erlich is able to render what might seem a static and frozen environment into one that lives and breathes on the page. She's at her best when she describes the physical world, whether populated by other humans at the time or only by 25 varieties of ice, snow, and the midnight sun. She does a good job, too, of delving into the lives of both exiled Danes and Greenlanders, and when she doesn't know something, she's not afraid to say so. More often than not, she finds out and lets the reader know. Sometimes, I found certain facts repeated and wasn't sure why. Not a huge deal, but distracting. Also, I would have liked to know a little more about the personal relationships Erlich cultivated on the island, although that wasn't the purpose of the book, and is almost a compliment, rather than a criticism, because I found her such an interesting person. Her aim was to view history, cultural observation and travel through her own prism, and to create a picture of Greenland that is simultaneously unique and universal and conveys the essence of the unlikely place she has come to love. If those are, in fact, her goals, Erlich succeeds.

This woman truly loves the high north, with all its paradox and ambivalence . . . Erlich paints the beauty and complexity of northern Greenland (before reading this book it never occurred to me to think of Greenland as HAVING a "north" and "south"!) and the struggle a tiny minority are having to maintain their ancient -- and sustainable -- ways of life. I'd classify this first of all as a love story between woman and land, but it is a love story in which the sentient observer is aware of the problems with the beloved, and yet still remains committed.
This is not a "been there, seen that, got the T-shirt" travel book -- Erlich is drawn to Greenland no fewer than seven times, in various seasons, and she lives with the people in traditional housing (including tents on the ice). She encounters the brutality of bureaucracy as well as the incredible hospitality of the Inuit -- and at the same time she does not shrink from the pervasive alcoholism and domestic violence that are a sad feature of northern life, nor does she neglect to mention the impact even in Greenland of the growing pollution in "the south" (i.e. North America). Her thesis is essentially Romantic in a philosophic sense . . . subsistence living was/is hard but authentic. The coming of modernity, with its internet connection, TV, store-bought goods, etc., has removed both the means and the incentive for a life of integrity. She leaves it to the reader to see the Greenlandic experience as paradigmatic of the wider world.
Read this book - it will lift your heart and trouble your mind, and leave you wanting more.

My fellow Wyo resident Gretel Ehrlich has never been a personal favorite of mine - I have found her writing a bit bloodless and strident. This Cold Heaven is no exception. Fortunately in this case, bloodless not only works, it is preferable. The native residents of Greenland are a hardcore bunch of seal-eating, dog whipping, communal living Last Best Men and their stories rival any on the planet for sheer toughness. Ehrlich packs her book with tales of ice explorers like Peter Freuschen and Knud Rasmussen, who make the cowboys, Marines and murderous I have known seem as simpering as Boy George and Anne Heche off their Wellbutrin. The author weaves their tales cleverly among her own personal accounts of more modest contemporary adventures, although we never really get to see what drives Ehrlich to this place. Maybe that doesn't matter. Ignore the Luddite whining that stains books like these and you're in for a treat.

Having heard Ehrlich speak on NPR's Saavy Traveler about her time in Greenland, I had high hopes for THIS COLD HEAVEN. She spoke about the endless nights and endless days of the Artic, the cold and the snow and the ice. It promised to be a meditation on both the inner life of a writer living in relatively isolation and on her discovery of the riches that lay within that dark and cold world.

Imagine my disappointment after handing over $... to find a book that was neither poetic nor particularly well done. Ehrlich's metaphors gush without precision. Her historical writing skills are dismall. I could barely get through her retelling of what by all accounts is a riviting history of human exploration of the Artic. The best parts of this book, which desperately needs an editor, were here own narratives. But they could not carry the three hundred plus pages saddled on them. Very disappointing.

This ethnographic study and travel guide about Greenland reminds me of Paul Theroux' "Happy Isles Of Oceania" which I read about 10 years ago; also her compressed prose reminds me of Annie Proulx author of "Close Range" with whom she shared the adopted state of Wyoming, also of James Michener, author of "Alaska". I have also read this author's "Heart Mountain" which I enjoyed a lot,and more recently "The Future Of Ice". .
Ehrlich's frequent plane trips between Copenhagen and Greenland and her stopovers at the state-of-the-art American military base at Thule, Greenland give the book a link to the outside world, but beyond the airports she transports the reader to a culture many thousands of years old and also with a multitude of current social problems based on the clash between the Danish, who arrived in the 18th C., and indigeneous cultures.
She interviews numerous Danes with Eskimo blood or vice versa, or other expatriates, including information on an American artist Rockwell Kent, who decided to give up on modern society in favor of some more ancient or traditional values. Hence they become New Age subsistence hunters in Greenland. The book also includes several interesting chapters on the explorations of the Arctic by the Dane Rasmussen in the 1920's, who did his own ethnographic studies, as well as by other less renowned explorers. Rasmussen travelled all the way across the Canadian Arctic from Greenland to Alaska. You will be impressed with the breadth of knowledge Ehrlich has about her subject as well as her anecdotal knowledge of modern astronomy; really this is her own ethnographic study, and you will be surprised at the countless small details of living in such an unusually cold, white climate with polar seasons that include many months of total darkness or total light, and the great importance of dogs and dogsleds in their culture. One of the obvious consequences of living in -30-40 degree temperatures is the layers of clothing a human must wear, not to mention the Eskimos' unusual food choices,the threats of starvation and the resultant cannibalism, and age-old hunting practices. Really an eye-opener for those who live in the middle latitudes.

Having spent two weeks on a ship last August travelling from Kangerlussuaq to Siorapaluk and back, it was great to see the magnificance of Greenland through another's eyes. Ehrlich describes her seven seasons in Greenland, but the book is also interspersed with accounts of the adventures of the "greats" who explored the Arctic--Rasmussen, Freuchen, and Kent. The author has a keen sense of the beauty of the Arctic and its people.

Gretel Ehrlich's wonderful book has been a nightly treat, savored at the fireside. Since the lives of the Greenland Inuit are so remote from daily experience, it takes quite a bit of adjustment to enter into their perspective. Ehrlich accomplishes this through an obsessive, recurring immersion, reminiscent of her hero Knud Rassmussen. She went back to Greenland seven times, for goodness sakes! The focus she achieves through these revisitings, and our chance to re-encounter characters and experiences, builds a powerful emotional bond. I felt a real loss when I had to say goodbye to these characters for the final time. This is a deceptively beautiful, powerful book.

I very much enjoyed this book. It was a fascinating look at a land steeped in tradition and culture, and I feel I got to know the people and their lives.
Ehrlich is a wonderful writer who knows how to turn a phrase. But...but....but--why I am only giving this three stars? It's because I felt the book was too much of a good thing. While the stories of the people she met and the Inuit ways are fascinating, do I really need to read 356 pages of how beautiful the ice was over and over and over and over? How many times do I have to hear that "ice is chaos", "ice is time", "the ice was like newly shampooed hair", "the sun was like a flashlight", "the ice was like broken dishes", etc. This gets tiresome very fast. Enough already! I get it-the ice is beautiful and it's cold. Too much of the same thing and too many metaphors detracts from the power of the whole. I wish Ehrlich would have put the metaphor-theasurus away for at least two consecutive pages.
I'm sure that to Ehrlich all of her endless trips across the ice are individual, but to me, they all sound the same. She could have cut out the descriptions of about 10 of the trips she made on the ice, which would have cut the book by 50-100 pages, and had a much more powerful account. Although I loved most of the book, I finally couldn't wait for it to end. She made something that was fascinating into an account that was, ultimately, boring and endless.

In "This Cold Heaven", Gretel Ehrlich extolls the life of the subsistence hunters of Greenland. Her writing is really very nice and brought this remote place to life for me. Jared Diamond's "Collapse" gave us the picture of the european Greenlanders and now Ehrlich gives us the picture from the 'other side of the hill.'

The beauty of the environment and the struggle for sanity in the long dark made very interesting reading, having spent 20 winters in Minnesota where it is dark a mere 16 hours a day.

I'm not sure she takes her observations to their logical conclusion, however. The life she admires is that of the subsistence hunter. What makes it admirable for her is the totality of it, the self-sufficiency, the purity. But that life evolved out of necessity, which has been overtaken by modern life. Most Greenlanders live off the supply ships; only a handful hunt for a living. These few are restrictive in their practices, using rifles but eschewing outboard motors and snow mobiles, for example.

In other words they are playing an elaborate game of 'survival.' They could make it easier for themselves but they don't because it makes it more of a challenge. The fact is, there is no obvious reason for people to go around in dogsleds hunting walrus. They could be educating themselves for the future instead of clinging to an outmoded past.

I think she understands this. I say that because of the incident of the polar bear, where she urged that it not be killed. She accompanied the hunters by dogsled to polar bear country for the specific purpose of getting a bear. Then when it came time to pull the trigger she wanted the men to let it go.

In that moment she understood that synthetics are just as good as bear skin for keeping warm. Food can be gotten from the shelves thanks to the supply ships. Transportation to any place in the world is available. There is no longer any need to shoot polar bears in order to survive, and she knew it.

There is honor and purity in modernity, too. We meet Fred, who has been forecasting the weather at Thule for 27 years. I'm a forecaster, too. I can relate to Fred, and I understand why he has stayed there all this time. While his duties benefit the well-being of everyone on that base, he has undertaken a wider quest, that of comprehending nature and humanity in his specific setting. It is similar to that of the hunter, in that it is also an internal quest which reveals oneself.

Only Fred really knows why is there. Only Jens and Mikele really know why they go out on the ice to hunt. Fred could retire to Punta Gorda. Jens could go to Copenhagen and relax. Gretel slides past this whole matter. But then, her eyes were bothering her.

This book was a treasure that fell, I don't remember whether one morning or night, from Book TV. Being of Norwegian ancestry, and having ancient voyagers in my direct line, I became fascinated with the author's story. Hoping to find some tales of native legends and myths of the kind that Sigrid Undset's historical novels had first drawn to my attention, I bought the book.

I was not disappointed. Ehrlich weaves her words by alternating the fabric of her seven seasons with allied chapters of other Northern wanderers and explorers. This organization, I feel, makes the book somewhat hard to read in two or three sittings. Yet every page is worth the effort.

Having flown over both Greenland and Iceland, I can verify that Greenland is white and Iceland is green. But snow and ice is not just white, and a sled is not just a sled. Erhlich's language is richly nuanced and lyrical. She has the gift of writing prose like a poet. Having lived her stories, she knows her subject, and you easily feel yourself in her shoes as she relates her experiences.

Little gems keep falling from her pages, like the story about the artist, Rockwell Kent, who had lived in Greenland. This immediately explains the stark beauty of his block prints. Treat yourself to this book and read it on some dark and stormy night -- or to cool off on a hot summer afternoon. Either way, you will be refreshed by the experience.