THE HAIRY GIRAFFE… IN GREENLAND
After five days in Ilulissat, it’s time to reflect. How did we experience this journey? What were our joys, disappointments, questions, doubts, and discoveries? This is not merely an assessment of a country but rather of a trip—how we perceived it individually and subjectively.
 We are François and Benjamin, Canadian and French giraffe hairstylists and travel enthusiasts. On this blog, discover our travels, tips, moods, and everything you need to become a giraffe hairstylist and embark on travelling the world. An honest blog with photos guaranteed 100% unfiltered and untouched. |
Benjamin’s Travel Reflections
Greenland is not (yet?) on the radar for French travelers: barely 1500 of my fellow citizens go there each year. However, our trip to the land of ice was a real favorite for me, one of those places that make you want to come back again and again, where you immediately feel serene. A place that offers immense change of scenery without requiring you to travel to the other side of the world. Because, yes, visiting Greenland is more accessible than we think.
Difficult to project oneself when preparing a trip to Greenland. This immense territory, the second largest island in the world, which is more than three times the size of France, is not entirely a country (since it is still dependent on Denmark), belongs to the North American continent but is economically and politically linked to Europe. Greenland regularly makes headlines for the melting of its ice cap, which covers three-quarters of its area. Looking at a world map, Greenland is often overlooked, much like Antarctica, two ‘white’ territories, where it is assumed that apart from a few animals surviving in the extreme cold, there is nothing to see.
Our short stay in Greenland allowed us to confront these prejudices with reality. Short stay, because while going to Greenland is not so difficult, it must be acknowledged that it remains very expensive, and the lack of roads makes it difficult to connect cities. So, we focused on Ilulissat, a small town on the west coast, and the Eqi Glacier in Disko Bay.
What did I find there? A sense of displacement, undoubtedly. This sensation of having reached the end of the world. Like an endless desert of ice. I could have spent weeks watching the icebergs flow slowly in front of us, listening to the song of the whales, feeling powerless in the face of the immensity and beauty of the landscapes.
Greenland is also the sensation of admiring, not just the end of the world, but the end of the world itself. The glaciers melting is continuous, palpable, touchable at your fingertips. Admiring the impressive Eqi Glacier means admiring a glacier that is melting, a glacier disappearing amidst deafening thunderous noises. And then, as in too many countries, wondering if beyond the ecosystem, it’s not the entire local indigenous culture that is in danger. The feeling of catching a disappearing world in flight.
Behind the feeling of serenity, of appeasement offered by the colorful houses of Ilulissat and the ballet of icebergs, it’s indeed impossible not to question the lack of independence and self-determination of the Inuit people, especially as the melting ice will soon trigger a race for natural resources and geopolitical disputes (between Denmark, Canada, Russia, and the United States) to seize control of the new waterways.
Having the privilege to witness the slow death of Greenland’s ice, finding it magnificent, also forces introspection about oneself, one’s own responsibility, and the role of tourism in such places. The tranquility of Ilulissat is disrupted each time a boat lands, disgorging dozens of cruisers who, all dressed in the same bulky down jacket, transform the small town into Disneyland.
Even though we arrived by plane, our presence obviously raises the same questions, questions that can arise in any country in the world, but are perhaps even more pronounced in Greenland: are we contributing to the acceleration of the destruction of the place we came to admire or (but is that really better?) to its mere Disneyfication? To admire the beauty of the world, there’s nothing better than exploring it, but our mere presence contributes to the transformation of the places we came to admire.
And yet, nowhere else have I felt as ridiculously small and insignificant as I did in front of the Eqi Glacier. Suddenly, facing this ice monster, our boat turned into a raft, and nothing could protect us against the forces of nature. A trip to Greenland cannot help but confront us with our own fragility and our hubris in wanting to visit and control these natural places.
History reminds us of this, as it was an iceberg from Ilulissat that the Titanic, a symbol of men’s excessive pride, struck before sinking. The slow pace of the whales roaming the bay and that of the drifting icebergs imperfectly camouflage the relentless power of Nature. Faced with it, the welcome and smiles of the Inuit offer a comforting warmth that contributes to our tranquility, to our serenity.
Just a few days at the edge of the world that acted as a meditative retreat, where the daily grind gives way to longer times, where the everyday worries fade behind metaphysical contemplations. A real internal upheaval. And a journey with a particular flavor, because it was shared with my parents, as small as I was in front of the spectacle of a glacier that is agonizing and irreversibly retreating.
Check out François’ Travel Reflections:
Find all our other articles on Greenland:
