What do we eat?

Kivioq, dovekies stuffed into seal carcases left to rot, were once a favorite winter staple in the northern part of Greenland. Knud Rasmussen, perhaps the world's most important Arctic anthropologist, part Greenlander, part Dane, died from food posoining after eating kivioq. He was certainly no stranger to native foods, nor was this a common cause of death amongst the Greenlanders. I presume it was just simply his time.
After Hitler invaded Denmark, the 2oth century invaded Greenland. Already Inuit culture had undergone the dramatic changes introduced by the missionaries in the early 18th centrury which discourged communal lifestyle, shamantic spirituality and wife sharing. Diet however was slow to change as subsistence hunting led gradualy to commercial fishing; both of which allowed for a consitent relationship with the natural world.
After WWII however, Europe had begun to compete with Greenland in Greenland's home waters for cod fish. After the collpase of this industry, Greenlanders looked desperately into the eyes of a lifestyle they had never known before. Already showing some dependance towards the tobaco and alchol and coffee they had become accostumed to in the early days of whaling trade and missionary posts, this new, urbanized style of apartment dwelling, processed food eating and alarm clocks was to prompt a downward spiral that is still circling the drain of dire societal health concerns that do not only end with the stomach.
Though there still is an annaual hunt in Kangerlususaq for musk ox and caribou, as there is in all of the townships, cities and settlements, the Pilersusioq (national grocery chain) provides the food everyone is sustained by. This food is flown in by the Airbus weekly from Denamrk, though bulk goods such as canned food, flour, and frozen meat does come once a year by ship.
The typical fare at the airport cafetireia is boiled potatoes, shredded red cabbage (boiled with sugar), some sort of pot roast and a thick suace one is often too afraid to try.
Other menu items are polish sausages, musk ox burgers, fried fish, instant rice, deep fried egg rolls, iceberg lettuce salads, fried chicken, noodle gulash, pickeld capeline, pickeled halibut, pickeled herring, pickeled cod, boiled shrimp, tinned meat and odd cubic gelitans that seem to be meat based rather than fruity delectables.
No one can go wrong with the cheeses and breads. Fruit is scarce unless it is canned, preserved as a marmalade or unripe as it has just traveld from Mexico to Denmark to Greenalnd.
There are all sorts of chips and candies and sodas the wrappers of which, after there contents have been devoured, can be seen littered all over the town. There seems to be a lack of either respect for the landscape or a yet to be understood as litering is naughty, concept here. Greenlanders did not grow up with Woodsy the Owl, we have decided.
Alot fo the food Steve and I eat has been mail ordered from an organic distributaor stateside; namly walnuts, dried fruits, oatmeal and soymilk. We get apples and some fresh vegatbles as a kick back from the bulk orders ordered by the cook staff at Summit, but this is an unrealaible, usually paltry ammount, say a tomato, 3 avacadoes, 2 quarts of Stoneyfarm yogurt and a leek.
We also get to take some of the frozen vegetables that Raven Camp has orderd too much of, for they have no means of storing food; the ice cap summer tempertures get too high for consistent freezing temperatures and there is space enough only for a cooler. They bascally live in a small yacht on a sea of snow where rain storms are not uncommon.
We buy dark rye sunflower seeded loaves of bread from the bakery at the Pilersuisioq. We buy cream and cheese and chocolate, potatoes, onions and marmalade. Salty licorice, apple juice. Otherwise we do our best with what we can making it an honest goal of eating at least 5 fruits or vegetables a day, whether they be dried, frozen, canned or fresh.
Once we get up on the ice cap to Summit Camp, our diet will improve signifigantly as Summit recieves entire airforce pallets of fresh food ordered from the internation wholesale food supllier, SYSCO. Up at Summit we enjoy a walk in cooler full of asparagus, roamine hearts, fresh herbs, cucumbers, squash, tomatos, avacoadoes, radishes, onions, garlic, beans, tofu, milk, cheeses, yogurt, yams, tempeh, apples, citrus, grapes, pineapple and bananas.
There is also a pantry full of organic soy and rice milks, grains, oats, dried fruits and all matter of sundries, from lemon grass and curry to chipolte and soy sauce. Steve's favorite thing about Summit, I am convinced, isnt so much the solitude and the beauty and the skiing and the sky full of snow, but the endless 5 gallon buckets of Belgian chocolate chips.
I have just learned of an edible wild flower which is growing all over in the rockiest patches of steppe. The Arctic Harebell, a delicate but sturdy purple blue flower can be picked off its stem and eaten. The dandelion greens are deliciously biiter and fresh, there are arctic char, which we haven't yet caught, the blueberries are bursting out and there are several mushrooms one can eat withour fear of mistkaing it with anything posionous, for which wild foods there are none in Greenland, unless you stuff a dead bird into a dead seal and leave it for sometime under a rock in the sun.