The ice is a living organism. Like the topsoil in a garden, it is the key to the ecosystem. Plankton grows underneath the ice; fish, birds, seals and bears feed on that krill. So many stories are written on this beautiful “blank” canvas! Polar bear tracks crisscross the ice floes, and pressure ridges tell stories written by the wind. Although the ice prevents our approach to the top of Greenland, it is in itself the reward. The ice is absent in many places in the Arctic now; 2007 marked the lowest ice coverage in recorded history. Climate change is evident in our approach to what  our maps tell us should be tidewater glaciers, now hanging—having receded back quite a distance from the shore.

As part of this International Polar Year expedition (in which our ship plays a part of by collecting water samples and charting new data), it has been my main purpose to pay witness, recording in paintings this rapidly changing landscape.

We exit the large ice pack and duck into a wonderful fjord system. Hochstetterbugten is a large bay bounded on the south by Pendulum ÿer, Wollaston Forland, Shannon Island and Hochstetter Forland. We are also at this point entering Greenland’s only national park, which is also the world’s largest park encompassing 972,000 square kilometers. Northeast Greenland National Park is mostly icesheet and mountain tops, but coastal tundra provides excellent habitat for muskox.

Bredefjord is a long fjord that we aim to explore on an afternoon expedition; I again paint on the moving ship quickly, using the paint scraper to carve out—of an earth red wash—the etched geologic rhythms and echoes of ice that has retreated to higher ground.

Afternoon landings by zodiacs (inflatable boats) give us a chance to explore the valley. Wind made it  impossible to set up on the glacial outwash plain, but I aim for the still colorful vegetation and find shelter for a view of the cloud patterns cast along the 1700-meter peaks in the distance. It is well into autumn and a chance to indulge in my warm palette, after so long working with the cool colors from this summer's earlier North Pole trip.

I find it's so important to find a comfortable set up, and it is relief and rejuvenating to sit among  the blueberries and stunted arctic willow, while an arctic hare muches the dry plants—breaking the incredible silence. The wind has stopped, and the movement now is the mixing of the complementary autumn colours: violet, yellow and orange blue, which bleed into one another on my paper creating warm grays. In this painting Autumn Valley Bredefjord Greenland (see previous blog entry), the values are most important, so to keep the darks dark, I avoid too much water on the brush. This is a problem in cold temperatures when freezing is an issue, a problem I anticipate encountering tomorrow in the high altitude landing on Wordie Glacier. The cold will be welcome in this warming climate!

 
More information:
To read about glaciers, visit http://www.swisseduc.ch/glaciers/arctic-islands/arctic-04-en.html

James Mann (Jock) Wordie (1889-1962) was a genial British geologist, born in Glasgow; he took part in a number of polar expeditions, most notably with Shackleton on board the Endurance in 1914.