DAY 1 THE LITTLE SNOW HARE

Welcome to the travel log reporting Norse Theme Parks intrepid quest to Greenland! Our mission was to film nine different sites of interest for a 2020 exhibition on the lives of the Norse settlers. Our small team of explorers consisted of me (team manager); Daniel (a wizard art director), and Theis and Ole, (360° film and audio experts from TridaMedia). We were also lucky enough to have the support of Lotte Brøns Symes, an expert in Greenland affairs, who would be arranging meetings and managing the logistics side of the trip.

The 4½-hour flight from Copenhagen, took us to Kangerlussuaq Airport (Sønder Strømfjord), a former US Airforce base located at the base of a fjord. As a member of the Joint Arctic Command, Denmark's air force plays a prominent role here, monitoring the area around the Faroe Islands and Greenland part of the Kingdom of Denmark. They’re also involved in air rescue missions.

Outside the airport there’s a famous signpost showing how long it would take to fly to the North Pole, Copenhagen, Los Angeles, New York, Rome, Moscow, Paris, Tokyo. Here we are in one of the most silent places on the planet, yet some of the noisiest over-populated places are well within reach!

While waiting for our next connection (5 hours late), we took a walk along the valley where the views of the fjord gave us just a hint of how majestic this place is. Before too long we'd be testing our city-boy endurance levels, hiking along rocky trails and carrying some pretty expensive equipment.

At some stage, Ole – who turned out to be quite fearless – disappeared up a rockface, and when he came back (which was far more difficult than he thought) he said he’d seen a huge rabbit. He filmed it, and when he showed it to Lotte, she told him it was just a little snow hare. “They taste great – they’re my favourite food,” she said, bursting Ole's bubble.

The flight down south to Nuuk hugged a rugged coastline. We saw the inland ice sheet in the distance, bone-white and breath taking. This blanket covers around 80% of Greenland (the world's largest island) and is the biggest ice mass in the Northern Hemisphere.

As we flew along the coast, my over-active imagination saw me soaring under a parachute over life-giving waters and green and pleasant valleys. I could see the glacier showing her nurturing side: beds of milky sand released from a mother’s breast. Then I'd land in a well-equipped rescue rib and float in a sunny, turquoise embrace. And as the evening drew in, I’d relax with a gin and tonic containing 100,000-year-old ice cubes! And come night-time, I’d drift under an infinite ocean of stars...