ABSTRACT
When I travel in Melville Bay, I often find myself preoccupied with the horizon, with the sky, with clouds and light. I also think about the drama of historical, cultural and environmental encounters. The sea, ice, glaciers, weather, animals, the movement of people in, through, and across Melville Bay, the ways people have approached and written about the area, and how they have represented and visualized it, all make for a kind of environmental history about this part of Northwest Greenland which sets the tone for discussion about its future. This history is largely intrigued with, as well as shaped by, a fascination with points of convergence, with remoteness, boundaries, crossings, horizons, edges and limits, horrors, adventures and heroic exploits, the sublime and the quest for the unknown. The thin air and the clarity of light, or the ubiquitous fog and the all-too-frequent whiteouts, can just as equally deceive, disorientate, confuse, obfuscate, frustrate, and make one bewildered. Distances are deceptive, one can quickly lose sight of the coastline, and islands can become indistinguishable from icebergs. The wind can be raw and desolate, and the horizon often disappears from view as sky and sea merge in a milky mist. That has been my experience on several occasions, moving across the ice by dog-sledge or drifting slowly on grey waters by boat in squally weather. And it has been the experience of many people I know in Northwest Greenland, including hunters who have spent considerable time travelling in Melville Bay. But this experience has been highlighted as a characteristic of nineteenth-century whaling voyages or journeys of exploration, as ships were beset, befuddled, and crushed by ice.
