Town

Kangerlussuaq is not really a town, as we would call such a place. It is not, nor was it ever, a traditional Inuit village. Located at the head of the fjord, almost 150 km from the sea, the "town" is too far inland to have ever offered any good incentives for traveling so far out of one's way, unless for the rare occurrence of a savssat (savssats occur when mammals can no longer reach the open sea from inside of a fjord in a single breath due to a rapidly increasing sea ice band in the fjord. When the fjord was entered there may have only been a small band of ice separating the sea from the fjord, however, as time passed, maybe hours, maybe days, the length of the ice became so long as to prevent the narwhals or belugas from being able to return to the open sea). In fact, not even the local herd of muskoxen are native to kangerlussuaq; introduced to western Greenland from eastern Greenland during the 1960s these Ovibos moschatus have prospered from a very small herd to numbers in the thousands.
Knagerlussuaq means "long fjord". Sondre stromfjord, the name the Danes gave to this place, also means, "very long fjord, to the south"...or something like that. The reason there is anything here now is due in part to Danish colonization the American's concern with the cold war era's potential for Soviet missile attacks and the contemporary Greenland Home Rule's largest airport on the island; the hub for all of Greenland.
The topography also allowed for a very long runway due to the flat sandy moraine left behind in time from a massive glacier. All of which remains, being the Watson river born from the inland ice cap 25 km to the east.
As things are relatively quiet in our world now that the air guard is gone, we were able to rattle around in our old ford truck today doing errands. First we went over to airport cargo. There we meet Tim who speaks excellent English as well as danish and Greenlandic (as does most everyone that works here whether they are Greenlandic or danish) who helped us with a bunch of multi colored papers and receipts which allowed us to pick up a box of "sensitive electrical equipment" shipped from Switzerland by a scientist for a project later on this summer.
We then crossed the ice rutted, thawing, paved street to the tele post where we met a descendant of Knud Rasmussen, named the same, who stamped our paper work with an archaic stamper that must work under a load of about 25 foot pounds of pressure. Back across the street to the airport security to get our badges which will allow for us to enter onto the taxi way during flight operations with the air guard. A brief pause while awaiting the clerk allowed for me to flip through a magazine on the lobby table; "Elite", a danish publication portrayed the uber wealthy flashing gems and yachts and sealskin bikinis under seemingly Bermudian skies. In the office Greenlandic people, come for a job in the air industry (as clerks or municpalities trades) from remote settlements, worked in jeans and modern European styles sipping coffee from delicate clear glass mugs in stainless steel holders, while cell phones chimed, air planes landed and taxied for take off outside the large glass windows.
After lunch we rolled over to the Pilersuisoq (piller shoo so waagg) "Kanger's" only grocery store. We deposited returnable bottles for danish krone and learned that the Greenlandic soccer team is to play Cambridge on may 21st. Promising not to work that day in order to watch the "champions" we left for the accountant. Then it was off to the only gas pumps around; one diesel, one benzene (gas). We used our plastic card and punched in numbers. The directions are in Danish. We filled the tanks, 367 krone for 96 liters. Roughly 78 us dollars for 24 gallons of gas.
Steve saw a pure white arctic fox yesterday evening.