culinary greenland

On my way from Ottawa to Kangerlussuaqu, the international airport of Greenland, I had three things to think about. The first was that I was hungry. I had arrived in the hotel late and hungry, the bar was closed, there were only tiny bags of peanuts available and I needed my three hours of sleep before the 5:00 A.M. check-in. At noon, halfway across the Hudson bay, I was still hungry, even though sounds and smells were beginning to emanate from the front of the plane that announced an improvement of my condition. The second thing I was worrying about was how I was supposed to eat my meal, once it had arrived. I could, in fact, hardly breathe – wedged against the windowpane of the battered B-727 (not such a big plane) by a set of frontier-culture shoulders, owned by a muscular person shorter than wide, who didn’t communicate (since I survived, I believe that I managed somehow).

Third, and that is the introduction I intended to write, I was rehearsing Greenlandian food in my mind. If you are the father of two children (seven and ten years old at the time) who eat their breakfasts from their special “Save The Seals” plates every morning, you’d better not risk having to answer difficult questions. No seals, in other words. How about Whale? The airline brochure made a great point of telling the tourist that Greenland hunts only non-endangered kinds of whale – so yes, perhaps whale. Maybe no whale blubber. I forget why I thought that.