ABSTRACT

The North Water, one of the so-called Arctic oases, that is, patches of the otherwise frozen sea that is open for the better part of the year due to a particular algae production, has always been an important part of the resource basis of the people. For a couple of months each summer, the sea would open up more generally, if not all the way to the Polar Sea. This was the high season for hunting narwhal, moving north with the opening of the sea, and entering the fjord, on which present-day Qaanaaq is situated, through the Whale Sound, so appropriately named at least until recently. The original navigators of the Arctic seas in their elegant kayaks will soon be dwarfed, may be exiled, by larger international interests in the sea bottom, disregarding the sea and the fragility of the age-old ecosystem for large-scale economic returns for the country as a whole.