Snorricam

This is our weird little camera mount in action at last.

Greenland fashion statement

Here we are preparing to record a performance by Nive Nielsen in buggy buggy Greenland. The mosquito netting is a very stylish look, I think, but we decided after much deliberation to remove it for the take. However, having done that, we then had to halt things a few times when insects flew into her ear or her eye. She did complete one entire take with a mosquito that had crawled up her sleeve munching happily on her arm. I am hoping that take will have a certain pained intensity that will make it stand out. However I suppose it's actually more probable that it will suck. Get it? Mosquito? Suck? Never mind.

Exotic Greenland

Here's something I would never see at home: a nice bicycle, unlocked.

Flight to Nuuk

5:30 am call for an early flight, in a harsh and unforgiving land where the coffee shops don't open until 11.

Captain Dave

This is the captain of our chase boat, as we call it, the boat from which we will be shooting the Dax dodging icebergs. It is also known as a follow boat. In Danish, foljebot. Hey, I almost speak Danish!
His name is David, which inspires confidence, don't you think?
It is very interesting for me to meet these Greenlandic people, having now spent some time in the Canadian arctic. To me, they seem exactly like the Canadian Inuit. The same accent, the same mannerisms, the same sense of humour.
"We are going to have to go back now," he says very seriously, "we have run out of coffee."
We Daves understand and respect each other in ways non-Daves can never fully understand.
I'm sure that to each other, the Greenlanders and the Inuit seem quite different, I'd love to learn enough to start noticing the differences myself. They were made up of populations that had actually lost contact, and were unaware of each other's existence for a long time. The person credited with discovering that they in fact shared the same language, the same culture, and the same genes, was an early explorer named Knud Rasmussen, who although clearly not a Dave, was nevertheless a righteous dude. He was born in Ilulissat, and his birth house is now a museum. We go up there to shoot a scene, arriving at the agreed-upon time, and discover that the woman who was supposed to meet us had showed up and waited for us a day early. The two people working there haven't been told anything about us, don't speak English, don't particularly care, and make if clear that they think the best plan would be for us to go away now. I try to communicate with them by inserting Js into my sentences here and there, but it doesn't work. I guess I don't almost speak Danish after all. However Swedish and Danish are closely related, and Martin, the captain of the Dax, steps in to help and manages to negotiate a plan.
I am now considering extending to Martins some of the respect I had previously reserved for Daves. Of course I shall first have to investigate more fully his feelings about coffee. 

Greenland sled dogs

Greenland dogs are bred to be sled dogs. So bred, in fact, that they won't allow any other dogs onto the island anywhere north of the arctic circle, so the breed will remain pure. There are dogs tethered all over Ilulissat, they're not working at the moment because it is summer, they just hang out, and occasionally, at feeding time, whimper and howl in unison.
There are several at the hotel. The adults are tethered, but the puppies roam about freely. There are signs asking people not to pet, feed, or interact with the dogs, because they are working dogs not pets. However I see several guests ignoring the signs, so I think the morals of these hotel dogs have been a bit tainted. However I observe the rules meticulously myself and walk past ignoring them dismissively. But they don't ignore me, several of them have taken to escorting me protectively down the path to my hotel room, stopping occasionally to look back and make sure I haven't gotten lost yet.
There is something about being escorted to my room by a group of young female dogs that incites me to indulge in an extended but inappropriate piece of wordplay, but I shall resist the temptation. Instead, please make up your own jokes, and enjoy this highly SFW photograph of a cute puppy.

Ice mountain

This is Richard Tegner one of the crew of the sailing ship we are following, being interviewed in front of a very large iceberg; that mountain in the background is actually floating very slowly out to sea, where it will slosh around among others of its kind, occasionally rolling over without warning,or breaking apart and dropping slabs the size of apartment buildings into the ocean, creating unexpected tidal waves that take six minutes to pass. In the fiord we could see the slow rise and fall of the water by about a metre, the leftover ripple from some massive collapse somewhere a long time ago and far far away.
Richard and his two compadres sailed through a posse of these bad boys on their way into town. Muy macho, as they say in Swedish.

The view from my window part 3

I am staying in Illulisat, the iceberg capital of the world. Two of us are staying in igloos. I stayed in an igloo once before, it was kind of cold and I got no sleep at all because I was sleeping between a cameraman and a soundman who both snored. This time it isn't a real igloo, it seems to be made of stainless steel, and instead of being kind of cold it is hot inside like a convection oven.
However there are no snoring technicians sharing it with me, and the view is amazing. I am looking out at the icebergs fresh off the glacier as they head out to look for ocean liners to sink.
Tomorrow our mission is to film the Dax making its way between these icebergs. And successfully failing to ram any, we hope.

The view from my window part 2

I was trying to take an interesting photo of the fields of icebergs we were flying over as we reached Greenland. Instead what I got was an interesting photo of how the high speed rotation of the propellor blades interacts with the scan of the camera built into my tablet.
Interesting to me anyway. Perhaps not to most people. Sorry, it's a long flight.

John Tran, relaxing again

This is John, the cameraman, taking his mind off work on the plane by reading a magazine about black and white photography. So relaxing! Only two colours!