Arctic Cruise III: Nuuk, Greenland (8.15.25)

We docked at Nuuk, capital of Greenland, on August 15, 2025.  Dave and I agreed that it wasn't what we expected.  Greenland has some 56,000 people, 25,000 of whom live in Nuuk.  

Nuuk has government buildings, a shopping mall, and even some high rise buildings--six or eight stories.  On the late summer day when we visited, it was chilly enough for a light parka, but not bitter cold.

Our morning shore excursion was titled, "Artists of Nuuk."  We visited the National Museum, where the museum director showed us around the exhibit of works created by Inuit artists during the last year.

The director told us that President Trump's recent pronouncement that he planned to buy Greenland created both confusion and terror among Greenland's people. Many of the works in the exhibition reflected that turbulence.

The most memorable work, for me, was a depiction of the U.S. stars and stripes flag, made into a beaded necklace.

An accompanying piece showed the beaded necklace worn by a model in different ways.  The museum director said that the work depicted all the possibilities of a U.S./Greenland relationship, from Greenland proudly displaying its affiliation, as a decoration, to Greenland being strangled by it.

Another work showed Greenlanders gathered together in an arena.  On the sidelines, a shadowy man was taking notes on his phone.  The director said the gathering represented Greenlanders, as a community.  The man taking notes, she thought, was an outsider like President Trump, using the community for his own purposes.

Another work showed the artist (or her country) struggling to keep her (or its) head above the ice.

Art works by non-Inuits, whether traveling from Europe or as colonists in Greenland, were shown in a separate room of the museum from Inuit art work.  It was interesting to see the perspectives of Europeans on Greenland.  One painting showed the gigantic ice sheet that covers central Greenland, with crevasses running through it, and a few, small explorers.  Another painting shows an Inuit guide leading a European explorer.

The next artists we visited rented space in a government-owned workshop.  They made souvenirs out of soapstone and caribou antlers.

 

I'm sure some Greenland crafts are beautiful, like the paintings in the National Museum, but most of what we saw in the workshops and souvenir stores was not to my taste.

Our next stop, on the artists' tour, was to a government-funded workshop where artists made the intricately embroidered national costumes worn for funerals, baby blessings, marriages, and national holidays.  We watched a woman use the Inuit curved knife, an ulu, to scrape the skin of a seal, before sewing it into a costume.  Most Greenlanders identify with Denmark, rather than with the nearby Inuit communities in Canada, but I bought an ulu in Alaska during our last trip there.  The Inuit culture extends across the whole North American arctic region.  The workshop only makes two or three costumes per year and rents them to local Greenlanders to wear for special events. 

In the afternoon, we took a boat tour into the fjord to look at waterfalls and icebergs. It was a foggy day, so we couldn't see the steep cliffs along the fjord.  The waterfalls and icebergs, though, were beautiful.