As I write this, I’m look­ing out across a (thank­ful­ly) gen­tly rolling gray expanse of the North Atlantic. It’s strange to see an unbro­ken hori­zon after a week of cruis­ing among the ice­bergs and daunt­ing cliffs of  islands in the Cana­di­an High Arctic.

The ances­tors of the Inu­it peo­ple who live there arrived about 5,000 years ago, look­ing for a new place to call home. Four mil­len­nia lat­er, Norse explor­ers came, fol­lowed 500 years after that by Vikings,  who gave up on the place after a few decades.
The European’s relent­less pur­suits of resources, sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge, nation­al pres­tige and per­son­al fame which began in the 1500s were suc­cess­ful – after a fash­ion and at great cost to the orig­i­nal inhab­i­tants, who won in the end because they recog­nised that in the polar regions, the cli­mate is king
Sun­sets can pro­duce what are known as “fata mor­gana”, a phe­nom­e­non named after a minor Greek god­dess who, among oth­er things, dealt in illusions.

Ear­ly explor­ers thought they saw islands, moun­tains and even ships float­ing in the sky in them.
The effect is caused by refrac­tion and reflec­tion of sun­light and ice crys­tals, moist air and the sea.

Add that to the majes­tic beau­ty of ice­bergs that were more often than not larg­er than the ships of day, and it’s no won­der they believed the Arc­tic was the gate­way to untold riches.

 

British explor­er and pri­va­teer Mar­tin Fro­bish­er, who held the first Thanks­giv­ing Day cel­e­bra­tion,  thought he found gold, The tonnes of rocks he mined on sev­er­al expe­di­tions in the late 1500s turned out to be iron pyrites, a.k.a. “fool’s gold”.

Unknow­ing­ly, Fro­bish­er also came close to the start of the North West Pas­sage. It would be more than three ecn­turies before it was final­ly tra­versed by the great Nor­we­gian explor­er Roald Amund­sen in 1905.

In the 1930’s, the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment based three Roy­al Cana­di­an Mount­ed Police offi­cers in small wood­en huts on the bleak shore­line of Devon, the world’s largest unin­hab­it­ed island,  to ensure sov­er­eign­ty over the area.
After a sui­cide and a mys­te­ri­ous “acci­den­tal hunt­ing death”, the out­post was abandoned.
Shame­ful­ly, fifty-two Inu­it forced to relo­cate there under false pre­tens­es were left strand­ed for anoth­er decade.
Devon’s remote­ness, bar­ren ter­rain and freez­ing weath­er make it the clos­est thing on Earth to con­di­tions on Mars, so NASA uses it for train­ing and exper­i­ments on how to sur­vive in an extrater­res­tri­al environment.

It’s a small frag­ment of  Nunavut, which means “Our Land” in Inu­it. The ter­ri­to­ry is the size of France, but its almost entire­ly Inu­it pop­u­la­tion num­bers less than 40,000 per­ma­nent residents.
they have two writ­ing sys­tems, one based on the Roman alpha­bet, and a  “syl­lab­ic” one devel­oped by 19th cen­tu­ry Euro­pean missionaries.
The pros­e­ly­tis­ers also tried to teach the Inu­it Christianity’s ver­sion of the won­der of cre­ation, although why they thought a high­ly spir­i­tu­al peo­ple whose  cho­sen home­land includes Baf­fin, the glac­i­er-graced fifth largest island in the world, need­ed to embrace such a con­cept escapes me. 

I’ve want­ed to see the Arc­tic since I was giv­en a book about it for my eighth birthday.
It took me just short of 70 years to final­ly get there…but is was worth the wait.
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