One of the most important things in a culture is its folklore — tales that have been passed down over the centuries from family to family that shape the morals and fabric of a society. In Western society, these folktales have been watered down via Disney or the Internet, but in a secluded country like Greenland, which was isolated for so long from traditionally modern society, the tales are not only still told verbally, but also performed.
The story telling isn’t just about the dance. (Photo: A Broad Abroad)
At the National Theatre of Greenland, I met the principal, Makka Kleist, and her dance student Kimmernaq Kjeldsen.
As anyone living on the East Coast can tell you: This past winter was rough. I thought I’d seen it all — snow for days, snowdrifts several feet high, icy sidewalks — you name it. But apparently, in the Arctic Circle, what we call Snowmageddon is just another Tuesday in April. Or May. Or, you know, whenever. And when you’re in the Arctic Circle, all plans are speculative.
I went to Greenland in April, with dreams of dog mushing, ice fishing, Northern Lights viewing, and hanging with polar bears and Inuit, possibly in an igloo. I was supposed to fly into the capital city of Nuuk (population 17,000) for a few days before heading north to Illulisat and my adventures. Little did I know a blizzard was on the way. And by blizzard, I mean a snow dump that lasted three and a half days — as in, it didn’t stop snowing for one hot second for three and half days. All flights were canceled and my A Broad Abroad crew and I were stranded — granted, we were stranded at the lovely Hans Egede Hotel, but when the power goes out intermittently for three and a half days, all hallways, no matter how nice, get real creepy, real fast.
Now, I don’t know if you know this, but there’s not much to do in a town of 17,000 people — especially when you can’t walk anywhere due to low visibility and spotty electricity. But, just in case you are ever in the same situation, I have made a handy-dandy list of things to do when snowed in — and, even better, I captured all the randomness on video. So, watch the video and read the list.
1. Make new friends. Or try to…
Just so you know, there are three — count ’em, three — guys on Tinder in Nuuk. And not one of them wanted to hang with me … possibly because in my not-so-subtle message I asked for an interview instead of a date, typing, “Hey! Just in town for a hot second with a film crew — want to be on camera and talk about how to date in Greenland???”
2. Ask for suggestions of what to do on Twitter and Facebook
Which leads to things like making snow angels (and getting snow down your pants), building snow caves (and getting snow down your pants), snowball fights with strangers (fun fact: Locals in Greenland are much, much better at snowball fighting than anyone from 49 out of 50 United States — funny, that), and karaoke/sing-alongs with the guy playing piano at the hotel bar. A lot of karaoke and sing-alongs.
3. Have a drink. Or five.
Speaking of hotel bars, when the sun is blocked out for days on end and every hour bleeds into the next, there’s not much else to do but drink. Thankfully, Greenland has a lively craft brewery scene, and the beer is not only delicious but locally made (unlike everything else in the country, which is imported), so it isn’t insanely expensive.
4. Just give in to cabin fever — start talking to yourself and filming homages to The Shining
When I first heard about the Arctic Winter Games, my head immediately filled with snowboarding, skiing, dog mushing, and possibly ice fishing. But that’s not all that happens…
Occurring every two years, the Arctic Winter Games are the Olympics for athletes in the places that inhabit the Arctic Circle: Canada, Russia, Alaska, and Greenland. Within the games are the Arctic Sports, a series of competitions that derive from Inuit culture and survival techniques that the Inuit needed to have when hunting or camping out on the ice for weeks on end. While now performed inside a warm gym, some of the sports — while featuring some seriously dubious names — can still be dangerous: Greenland’s Prime Minister Kim Kielsen is missing the middle finger on his left hand thanks to a game called the Finger Pull.
According to the Arctic Winter Games website, finger pulling occurs when “Two competitors sit on the floor facing each other and lock middle fingers. Competitors pull steadily at the fingers while bracing their opposite hands on their opponent’s ankle. The object is to pull the opponent over or touch the opponent’s hand to one’s chest.” Again, this can be oddly dangerous.
2. The Kneel Jump
“The competitor begins in a kneeling position, with buttocks resting on one’s heels, toes pointed backward, and hands on knees. From this position, he then jumps as far forward as possible, lands on his feet in a squatting position, and maintains balance.”
“Two competitors lie on the floor, their stomachs facing each other. A looped band is placed over the back of each head above the ears. Rising to a ‘push-up’ position with only hands and feet touching the floor, the athletes pull with their heads, bracing their hands out in front and using their whole body strength to pull steadily backward. The object is to pull the opponent over a line that is drawn between them. (Males only)”
“The competitor starts with a running or standing approach with feet no more than shoulder width apart at take off. The target must be clearly struck while both feet are parallel. Maintaining balance and control, the competitor must land on both feet at the same time, no more than a shoulder width apart.”
“In the starting position the competitor must brace himself with the elbow of the balancing arm tucked into the body. The competitor begins by lifting his feet off the floor while balancing on his hands. With one hand the competitor reaches up to strike the target while maintaining his balance on the other hand. The striking hand must touch the ground before any other part of the body does so. (Males only)”
“The competitor lies on the floor, face down, with arms straight out in an ‘iron cross’ position. Four assistants lift the competitor two to three feet off of the floor and carry him forward at a constant speed. When the competitor’s body or arms begin to sag, he drops. Longest distance before dropping wins. (Males only)”
7. The Triple Jump
“Using a running or standing start, the competitor completes three consecutive jumps. Feet must stay no more than shoulder width apart. The shortest distance from the back of the starting line to the nearest point touched by any part of the competitor’s body wins.”
While there are more self-explanatory Arctic Sports – including arm pull, stick pull and other jump categories, these were the most… illuminating of the bunch. In 2016, Greenland will host the games solo for the first time ever, so Arctic champion Tonny Fisker took me to the local high school gym where he and other athletes were training… Check out the video above for all the arm pulling, head pulling, stuffed seal kicking, and airplaning in action. It’s pretty fascinating. I swear.
Most people don’t associate the Arctic with couture… and many people would cringe if told a jacket was made from polar bear (a threatened species), seal, or arctic fox. But then again, most people don’t live in Greenland — population: 50,000 — where clothing needs to be functional and warm. Very warm.
In Greenland, the majority of the populace are either full or partially Inuit, a people who have lived self-sufficiently on the island for tens of thousands of years — it’s only relatively recently that they have incorporated outside trade into the culture. So they hunt and eat and wear what they kill. The clothing they made hundreds of years ago is still being made today — in the same way.
Yes, that means they wear things like polar bear fur and skin (which is banned in most countries) and Greenlandic sealskin (which is exempt from the EU ban because it is considered ethically correct — the animals live in freedom until the day they are shot). Plus, the animals are shot for meat, with the skin being secondary. (They do eat polar bear in Greenland. Not a lot of it, but they do. It is supposed to be very fishy.)
Hansen in her national costume that has fit her since she was 13. We are jealous.
“We use every part of every animal we kill,” Louise Lynge Hansen, owner of Nuuk Couture, said, noting the meat is eaten, the skin is worn, and even the bones, claws, and teeth of an animal are used for adornment.
Each community has it’s own take on the traditional costume: in the far north, it is basically a huge polar bear coat and seal leggings, but the further south you go, the more colorful and intricate the costumes become.
Details of Louise’s national costume.
But Greenland isn’t just about old school Inuit costumes — thanks to a new wave of designers, it is now trying to establish itself as a fashion hub. Hansen and a few other local designers are starting to combine function with style, using traditional materials like wool, silk, and seal skin to create unique, new looks.
Hansen, from a Western tribe in the South, still wears the national costume her grandmother sewed for her when she was 13. She keeps it wrapped and stored carefully in a suitcase, only taking it out for special occasions. The outfit is comprised of outer boots with minute pieces of colorfully dyed sealskin hand stitched onto white bleached sealskin, sealskin leggings, fur shorts with more detailing, several inner shirts, an outer coat, and a beaded neckpiece.
It’s probably the only country on earth where people think it’s totally cool to leave their babies in their strollers outside of a cafe while they eat and drink inside, child-free.
It is called ICEland, but it is way more green than icy.
Every two feet is a different landscape … Iceland physically doesn’t make sense.
And, as I’ve reported before, people believe in elves. And trolls. And “hidden people.”
This Viking sees elves. And we love him for it. (Photo: Ricky Montalvo)
As locals will tell you, there’s a lot more awesome weirdness that goes on.
And as we at Yahoo Travel always say: Know (the local customs) before you go. You will have a better time and make more friends — which, in a country like Iceland, is easy to do. Trust.
Watch this video, learn the country’s customs and revel in their oddness. They’re fascinating!
Iceland is a land where magic happens. Magical people live there — and I don’t mean those Vikings roaming the streets of Reykjavik. (Although, for all you single ladies out there, yes, they are indeed magnificent.) If you don’t believe me about the magic, just ask an Icelander. According to one study, up to 72 percent of people in Iceland believe in elves, trolls, and the huldufolk, or “hidden people” — who apparently look just like us but live in a different dimension inside rocks, which open up (for them, not us) like a Harry Potter tent. I’mnot making this up. This is really what people will tell you in Iceland. They will even tell you that stones which from a certain angle look like faces, are actually elves… like this one:
Can you see the face? It’s okay – I couldn’t at first either. Apparently this elf guards the Elf Park and doesn’t allow bad spirits in.
Elves, trolls and other sorts of creatures apparently wander all over Iceland – hidden to most human eyes – and hiding in plain sight.
There are trolls on that there beach! No, really! You just can’t see them…
But every now and then, they will come out of hiding and even save human lives.
Icelandic Parliament member Árni Johnsen nearly died in a car accident in 2010 but claims he was saved by a family of elves living in a 30-ton boulder nearby. So, to thank them, he agreed to move their boulder onto his property, where they could live their lives in luxury and not off the side of a highway. True story.
So, if you are as obsessed as I am about all this, and if you want to know everything about these fairy people, stop by theHellisgerði Lava Park, aka the Elf Park, just outside of Reykjavik, and ask for Ragnhildur “Ragga” Jónsdóttir, the official caretaker of the elf park and unofficial elf spokeswoman.
As the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and poet Carl Sandburg once said, “Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have been unexpected, unplanned by me.” This is how I feel about travel. While I plan the trip, the best part is meeting people along the way — and sometimes, very rarely, running into someone you adore whom you never thought you’d see again.
Candace and me, hanging in the Jordan Bar in Amman.
This was the case with Candace Lau. As you may remember, I went skiing in Afghanistan last year for the Afghan Ski Challenge and met Candace, an Australian woman who had set off to travel around the world for as long and as cheaply as possible. She is fearless, and cheap in the Middle East meant public transportation — so she cross-dressed her way across Pakistan and Afghanistan and parts of Iran. We met during her Afghanistan leg and have been Facebook friends ever since.
If you don’t remember Candace or her story (which was insane), watch this before you go any further; it adds context and will reintroduce my crazy pal:
When I left Candace in Afghanistan, I wasn’t sure if I would ever see her again — not just because she was a Western woman traveling alone as a man in one of the most conservative Islamic countries in the world, but because the fact of travel is: You meet people on the road who change your life, and due to time, distance, finances, and opportunity, most times you have to carry them in your heart, as seeing them in person again is unlikely.
So I was beyond shocked when I ran into Candace — randomly, I might add — in Jordan last month. She’d escaped Afghanistan (just barely — watch the video at the beginning of this piece to hear the story; it’s shocking that she’s still alive) and taken a bus into Iran before heading to Israel, Palestine, and Jordan.
I was traveling through Jordan in a tricked-out tour bus like a Persian Liberace on the loose and had oodles of room, so I invited her onboard for the rest of the week that I was in the country.
This was my bus. Not kidding. There were four of us riding in it — with Candace, five. I felt like Cher.
You may be asking, “What the heck? What kind of budget do you have over there?” The answer is none. We did these past few Jordan shoots with the help of the Jordanian Tourism board, and my producer, Nicola, had told them, “It’s four of us and our equipment — please make sure we have access to something larger than a Land Rover.” They gave us the ultimate party bus. We were in heaven. And ready to take on more passengers — like Candace.
“Come on — you can take a decent shower, have awesome dinners, and we can hang!” I told her. “Besides, you said you always wanted to see Wadi Rum.” Candace, who’d been thinking of heading north instead of south, changed her plans and agreed.
And so we got a chance to really catch up.
“What was Iran like?” I asked.
“It was great — it had paved roads,” she said. “I was on a bus from Herat [Afghanistan], and it was so bumpy and awful I thought I was going to [vomit], and the second we crossed into Iran, it was paved roads and smooth sailing.”
Candace, me, and the “A Broad Abroad” crew arriving in Wadi Rum.
Hilariously, she also said that her mother (back in Australia) — who clearly had no access to the Internet or Facebook — had no idea what she’d been up to for the past couple of years.
“She thinks I’m in Austria working,” Candace said. “I didn’t want to worry her, so … but I will tell her everything when I go home at the end of this year.”
We also took Candace to Petra, on the way to Wadi Rum.
We got to Wadi Rum via Petra, and after two days, which included a hoedown in the desert, Bedouin style, and several camel treks, Candace left to herd goats with the family of a friend of a friend deeper in the desert for a week. It was surreal and magical running into a friend who had made such a big impression on me in such a short time — and it’s part of the beauty of life on the road, traveling.
Candace is now in India, still rocking and making her way (very slowly) back to Australia. We wish her luck!
WATCH: Women’s Rights, Freedom, and ISIS: Jordanian Street Artists Express Themselves
Ever been on the road and realized you forgot your make up bag and started mentally kicking yourself, because that shizz is expensive to replace? I’ve been there – but there is a super cheap, if perhaps not the most sanitary, answer: kohl.
When I was visiting with the bedouin in Jordan, my friend Suleiman took me to see his (female) neighbor who decided that I needed some… beautifying.
“Women wear kohl for weddings,” Suleiman explained.
“Um, I’m not getting married anytime soon,” I said, kind of laughing, while looking around for an exit. “Really. I’m NOT.”
“It is not just for that,” Suleiman quickly added.
This is what I thought I was going to look like…
According to Suleiman, kohl around the eyes can do pretty much everything but watch your goats, including: protect your eyes from the sun, cure styes, and grow your eyelashes. I also started envisioning myself as Elizabeth Taylor/Cleopatra, so, I figured “why not?”
Suleiman’s neighbor then cooked up a batch of kohl by putting an iron pot over a burning fire, and scraping the blackened char off.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“That’s it,” Suleiman said as his neighbor came at me to apply it with a matchstick end.
“Oh well. I’ve come this far,” I thought. “I’ve had my tetanus shot and my health insurance is still active so… why not?”
The result:
Not exactly Elizabeth Taylor… but you get the idea.
I was just psyched that when she insisted on doing my eyebrows, the neighbor (who refused to be named or photographed due to her custom) didn’t give me a unibrow. I had enough of that in high school. Fun fact: Kohl doesn’t come off easily so you will have the Cleopatra look for about two days. Hot.
I later realized I looked familiar. Like I’d just been to a celebrity lookalike camp and drawn the short straw. I now present the evidence:
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Not sure but her older sister’s in the Jordanian desert!
For more on the Suleiman and the bedouin lifestyle, check out this video in which I name a goat (who will likely be eaten soon), and gulp down desert coffee like a caffeine addicted camel:
About two months ago — right in the middle of Snowmageddon 2015 — my pal Eric Ripert called me up and said, “We are filming an episode of my show [Avec Eric] in Puerto Rico — want to come learn how to surf with me?”
I took one look out the window and about half a nanosecond later said, “HELL YEAH!”
In hindsight, I don’t know why I thought surfing was such a great idea.
1. I get seasick at the drop of a rudder.
2. I have a healthy respect for the ocean and all living things within it. [Read: I am petrified of sharks. So what if there hasn’t been a fatal attack there since 1924.]
But I’ve always liked the idea of surfing. It just looks so cool — you know? My friends do it and say it’s like meditating on the water — and I love meditating … you just sit there! I’m GREAT at sitting!
So off I went.
I met Eric at Rincon Beach — the surf capital of Puerto Rico — and our instructor, Jen, from the Rincon Surf School all duded up in my new wetsuit (which of course I bought, as I knew I was going to be SO GOOD at this I’d need this wetsuit forever).
“I cannot swim very well,” Eric said. He was already starting to sweat. “I am nervous.”
“It’ll be fine,” I said. So confident. So cool. So… wrong.
A storm was blowing in — so even getting the 12 foot surfboard to the water was challenging … and then there were the 6-foot swells.
An hour later, Eric and I were clutching the sand on shore for dear life — he with a minor back injury, me with bits of rocks embedded in my shoulder and heaving my lunch out on the sand. (Remember my seasickness issue?)
Long a vacation spot for Brits, it has also historically given inspiration to writers like Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, and Bram Stoker — who based one of the most famous scenes from Dracula in the town.
It’s creepy and romantic all at once. This is Whitby. (All photos: ABA team)
In the book, Dracula (the name itself taken from a name Stoker found in the Whitby public library) arrives in England on the ship Demeter, which crashes into the port. The captain is strapped to the wheel and no one else is alive. The cargo: coffins full of dirt (from Transylvania). After the crash, a large black dog is seen bounding from the ship and running up the cliff stairs to the ruins of Whitby Abbey — which is as creepy in real life as it is in the book [Editor’s note: Who the heck walks around a graveyard at night — it’s like asking to be bitten].
There’s been an Abbey on this cliff since 664, when it was established by the Celts, and it operated until 1583 when Henry the VIII closed all Roman Catholic places of worship. Alongside the old Roman Catholic ruins is a new(er) protestant abbey — complete with an ancient graveyard and mists that roll in a few times a day, adding to the creep factor.
The town is actually adorable.
The town has embraced the famous literature it has inspired. Twice a year there’s a huge annual goth fest called the Whitby Gothic Weekend, during which thousands of people arrive in their best corsets, fangs, and dark eyeliner to troll the streets.
But the real attraction is Whitby Abbey itself, which looms large over the town. Inside the attached museum you will find historical artifacts, stories, and remnants of the town’s past — before strolling through the Abbey ruins.
I wasn’t sure where I was going to buy a sword for my buddy’s birthday. This gift shop had me covered.
