Untouched by terror

KULUSUK, Greenland – In the age of al-Qaeda, it is getting harder and harder to find a spot on the planet untouched by the terror threat.

This village on the western coast of Greenland has to be one of those rare places: just one cop for the entire community of 300 people; Inuits fishing for cod and wild salmon and hunting for seals and whales amid icebergs big and small, then watching the magnificent Northern Lights before retiring for the night.

Banging on a drum made of driftwood and the stomach of a polar bear, with an iceberg as his backdrop, the elderly Inuit tells visitors a story:

There was a raven that fell in love with a goose. In the winter the goose had to fly with other geese to warmer lands. The raven could not bear to lose the goose and said he wanted to go with her, flying with her on her back, and she agreed. But when she told this to other geese, they remembered that the ravens were stealing their eggs. The geese decided to deceive the raven, telling him that he could go with them, and then leaving him waiting on a small islet in the middle of the sea. Then the geese flew away for the winter. The raven waited for his love to arrive. The tide rose and the sea started to engulf him. Heartbroken, the raven did not move until the water had swallowed him up.

Moral of the story? According to a local guide, some things are never meant to mix.

On this island, Western European culture has mixed with Inuit, but barely. The Inuit, wearing a white anorak, black jeans and sealskin boots, sings the bird story in an ancient language, using groans, bird sounds and facial gestures, dancing and pounding on the wood frame of his drum as his father and ancestors have been doing here for several centuries.

It’s easy to forget your troubles in a visit to Kulusuk (meaning the breastbone of a bird). Icebergs dot the sea; locals believe the Titanic struck an iceberg from this country.

The Inuits are among the few people allowed to hunt polar bears for their own consumption and for the pelt. A bear ventured into downtown Kulusuk just a few weeks ago.

Harpoons for whaling have been replaced by shotguns and rifles, and kayaks made from sealskin stretched on a driftwood frame and slathered with cod liver oil have been replaced by fiberglass motorboats. But the Inuit lifestyle basically remains the same.

It’s idyllic for those who like the slow life. The Inuits are friendly, laugh a lot and seem to be at peace with the world.

But the modern world is creeping in. The village supermarket is stocked with gourmet food supplies, from toffee sauce to panna cotta mix. Despite a high birth rate, the Kulusuk population has remained steady because the youths are leaving for the more developed areas of western Greenland to find jobs. The country, rich in minerals including uranium and titanium, has just struck oil, which could bring development even to remote, backward villages such as Kulusuk.

The Inuit lifestyle has already been modified by contacts with Europeans and, from World War II, Americans.

This year Denmark came face to face with Islamic extremism in the global firestorm generated by cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Iceland, its former colony, was not affected by the controversy. But the country also tightened airport security in the wake of the foiled bomb plot in London last month. Greenland did the same. Airport security for the flight from Iceland to Greenland, however, is still generally light.

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For now Kulusuk is one of the few places on the planet where you can forget the terrorist threat on the anniversary of 9/11. Greenland, which is part of the kingdom of Denmark, still sees no need to set up its own armed forces. Kulusuk’s lone cop doubles as the deacon of the Lutheran Church.

The Lutherans arrived here in 1923, a few decades after the village was discovered by Europeans, who were intrigued by the Inuits still living in the Stone Age. For many years the Danes and Icelanders prohibited visits to Kulusuk as scientists studied the Inuits, whose origins have been traced to migration from Mongolia 4,000 years ago.

But the Inuits preserved their animist beliefs even as they worshipped in the Lutheran Church – the dominant religion in Iceland, where there is no separation of church and state. Today the animism is most evident in the large white crosses adorned with plastic flowers that dot gravesites in the few spots in the village where the soil can be dug up for burial: the crosses have no names.

Kulusuk Inuits believe a human being is made up of three parts: the body, the soul and the name. At death only the body dies; the soul and the name live forever. So the names of the dead cannot be placed on grave markers.

During World War II the Inuits made a leap from the Stone Age to the 20th century as American soldiers arrived and used the village as a staging ground for air strikes in Europe. In the 1960s a US air base was built on a hilltop in the outskirts of the village. A military airport was also built. When the base was shut down and soldiers left in 1989, Americans continued coming here as tourists. From the US East Coast, Kulusuk is just a four-hour flight.

I asked Icelander Halldor Bjornsson, a tour guide of Air Iceland, if either Greenland or his country had faced the terror threat. His quick reply: "Never." Then he grinned and added, "We hope not."

On a hilltop, with an iceberg as backdrop, the elderly Inuit sang a second story in his drum dance:

There was an Inuit (Eskimo, meaning eater of raw meat, is no longer a politically correct term here) who emerged from his igloo one morning in the dead of winter and was surprised to see his breath coming out in frozen vapors.

He touched the frozen particles and wondered what they might be. Then he returned to his igloo and forgot the whole thing. Moral of the story? According to a guide, it’s better not to know some things.

Some places in this world are better off not hearing about terrorism.