KEY POINTS:
Climbing out of Ilulissat, past the wooden houses built to withstand the arctic cold, the howls of the sled dogs form a sad chorus. Up on the plateau in clear view of the glacier, thousands of them prowl among disused sleds, chained to the tundra in packs waiting
for a winter that no longer comes.
Each spring the inhabitants of this northern outpost, more than 180km inside the Arctic Circle, march through the darkness along this route to the edge of the ice fjord to greet the first light of the year. On that morning the sun appears for 20 minutes. It is one of the few remaining constants for Greenlanders in a world that has otherwise changed beyond comprehension in the past decade.
The Jakobshavn glacier still calves icebergs larger than supertankers into the vast Disko Bay but the ice sheet that once crept south each year to provide the dog-sledders with a frozen hunting ground is now an infrequent visitor. The glacier itself is accelerating into the sea at a rate by now visible to the naked eye.
A very different Greenland is emerging from underneath the thawing ice. The largest and most northerly island in the world is home to a tiny population of just 56,000. Most of its interior is weighed down by an immense ice cap, the glacial fingers of which provide the spectacle of Greenland's ice-fjords. During the winter the polar sea ice stretches south shutting off sea routes to the settlements that dot its jagged coastline.
This harsh landscape was where Aleqa Hammond grew up in a family of hunters. Now the Foreign Minister of Greenland's home rule Government, she is also one of the chief advocates of this unique country's bid for independence. For centuries under the sway of Norway, it is now a self-governing province of Denmark that had been thought to be too weak economically to stand on its own but that, she claims, is about to change.
"The economic independence of Greenland is within range," she told participants at the Religion Science and the Environment symposium.
Greenland depends on a $81.7 million annual grant from Copenhagen but the vast mineral wealth believed to be lying beneath the seabed could dwarf that income if it could be verified and exploited.
Her administration is already in talks with nine multinationals who want oil exploration licences. And Greenland's politicians talk like true believers in the coming bonanza. "In this bay at the next fjord you can touch the oil," says Ms Hammond.
Since the Norse leader Erik the Red was exiled to its southern shore and boasted of finding a "green land" in a bid to entice others to join him, outsiders have been arriving on this continental-sized island bringing their own misconceptions with them.
Minik Rosing is a geologist and a giant of a man born to parents from Greenland and Denmark who has a pretty good idea how the outside world thinks of the Inuit: "He's a little stubby guy outside an igloo with a big smile."
Outsiders come in search of the first victims of climate change. And amid the melting ice they find them. Aqqaluk Lynge, a renowned local poet and politician has become an effective spokesman for the Inuit, chronicling the immense impact of global warming on his homeland. "Our hunters report disappearing animals, new animals appearing, seas and ice changing, sea currents moving," he says. "In other words their world is ending."
Not everyone agrees this is a tragedy and modern Greenland's challenges are more complex than a lament for lost hunting grounds. In Ilulissat the fishermen are landing record catches of halibut and an influx of cruise ships means the Hotel Arctic now boasts shining aluminium igloos with views of the bay.
There is a kind of frontier fever for minerals. The home rule government is sponsoring a "bounty hunting" competition, encouraging ordinary people to send in rock samples with the most valuable winning a prize. The entire flying capacity of Air Greenland is booked out for much of the arctic summer by diamond prospectors looking for the new Kimberley. US metals giant Alcoa has already signed a memorandum of understanding and a huge new smelter is planned that could bring jobs to more than 3000 people, or one-tenth of Greenland's workforce.
In Qassiarsuk, once home to Erik the Red, they are farming lambs and growing potatoes and radishes. The local paper carries a headline on rows over food prices but the entire notion of Greenland potatoes would have been laughable five years ago.
Growth and change of this scale and rapidity has been followed by social strains. The capital Nuuk is home to fewer than 15,000 people but its problems would be familiar to any metropolis. Alcoholism, unemployment and suicide make for a depressing urban roll call.
It was this down-at-heel world in which Peter Lyberth grew up. Better known as "PandL", he's Greenland's leading hip-hop artist. A softly spoken, squat man in his 20s, standing outside a bleak block of flats, he tells a story familiar to rappers the world over. The son of a travelling fisherman and an alcoholic mother his Inuit lyrics are all about neglect.
"I write about my life," he says. "I write about my neglected childhood and about suicide. Everyone in Greenland knows someone or has someone in their family who has killed themselves."
A sudden opening out to the rest of the world has brought serious concerns that this bewildering pace of change could accelerate and that the tiny local population could be overrun by newcomers.
The arctic paradox is that while consumption of fossil fuels has spurred global warming and melted the ice sheets, it has also opened new areas to commercial shipping and enabled exploration for more oil and gas and now triggered a new scramble for the North Pole.
The twin promises of mineral wealth and control over the fabled Northwest Passage has prompted Norway and Canada to study their claims to the Pole, while Russia has sent a submarine under the ice to plant a titanium flag on the seabed at magnetic north. Denmark itself is studying the undersea mountain range known as the Lomonosov Ridge and battling Canada for ownership of the remote rock outcrop of Hans Island in a bid to further its claims.
But the Danes insist that Greenlanders must decide on independence and that Copenhagen will not stand in their way.
Svend Auken, a former Environment Minister and leader of Denmark's Social Democrats, predicts that "As soon as we find oil that will end independence.
"As everyone gets more desperate for that commodity you don't want to be a very small, very independent country, very far from anywhere else. Independence based on oil is probably not a good idea."
- Independent
