Exploring Paamiut, Greenland
This is blog post #21 from our tour of northern Europe. On Tuesday, July 15th, we were offshore from Paamiut, Greenland, having arrived the previous night. We would tender ashore after breakfast. Cathy and I planned to look around the community for as long as she wanted, then I would take a good hike out onto the land by myself, perhaps to find some reindeer.
I shot the first photo a couple of minutes before 06:00. Our first day on shore in Greenland was looking like a 10/10 one for exploring 🙂
The huge pan of ice I mentioned last night was continuing its path out to sea.
At about 08:30 we went to get the priority tendering tickets that our Club Orange upgrade gets us. We would get the next available tender, and would wait the few minutes for it in the comfortable Pinnacle Grill restaurant.
We were soon aboard the tender, then started for shore. We had been told that the community was quite a distance away, down a channel not suitable for our ship.
Here’s an aerial look at the area. See an interactive version of the map here.
The channel to Paamiut has been found to be particularly unsuitable by at least one ship. The trawler Greenland Star ran aground near the entrance in thick fog in 1984. The backlight and dirty windows of the tender didn’t allow for a decent photo, but I’d work on getting better ones somehow.
We had been told that tendering could be slow because the pontoon only allowed one tender at a time to be used. Yes, it’s very small, but at 09:30 Cathy were off on our Adventure.
Paamiut, formerly known as Frederikshåb after a trading post was established there by Jacob Sørensen Severin in 1742, has a population of about 1,300.
The tender pontoon may be tiny, but on a day like this, the harbour was lovely. Thanks to the Gulf Stream, it’s ice-free year round. The infrastructure around it showed that fishing is the industry here. In 1967, a large cod processing plant was built, and Paamiut was to be Greenland’s most important fishing community, with up to 10,000 residents. Its population peaked in 1988 at 2,433 but then cod cod disappeared from Greenland waters and the economy collapsed. The town, though, still has great infrastructure from the boom days.
Our first stop was the museum, but it was closed! And there was no indication that it was going to open 🙁
We made a basic loop around town to start. Paamiut is a very attractive community, with most buildings in good condition, lots of bright colours, and mostly underground services. Two things would become apparent after a bit – there are no dogs, and no snowmobiles. Well, 1 dog and about 4 snowmobiles. What a difference from Arctic communities in Canada and Alaska!
Cafe Tamu for possible later shopping and refreshment.
A chapel with a Volvo hearse.
High on a hill overlooking both sea and the town are 3 large buildings – housing for fisheries workers originally, I expect, and possibly still are. Each has a large sign – ALASKA, CANADA, and SIBERIA.
Cemeteries are always interesting, but this one has more questions than answers. Most of it seems to be a fairly recent rebuild.
Cathy and I saw ambulances driving around town all morning, and could make no sense of it. Later that day, though, I saw one making food deliveries to residences. It seems they operate a “Meals on Wheels” type program.
This facility either produces power or desalinated water – it makes no noise except a slight hum, and there are no visible emissions from those stacks.
We spent quite a while in one of the two grocery stores. In mid-summer at least, they seem to lack nothing.
Many labels were familiar – we didn’t try to convert any prices, which to me would have been the most interesting thing. This is the liquor room.
What’s an Arctic community without a whale-jaw arch? 🙂
Only a couple of the homes were using the great ground-level storage spaces.
The artificial-turf playing field is very nice.
Utilidors, but why above ground here?
There were lots of bugs, but they weren’t a biting type so I had no problem ignoring them. Cathy thought a idea she saw in a cruising group was great – use the mesh bag my robe came when I wanted a fresh one, as a headnet. I did see a few people doing it 🙂
A group of apartment buildings were all boarded up.
There were crafts for sale in a few places – this was the largest group. We were tempted by a lithograph by a Paamiut artist here, but couldn’t figure out shipping so came away empty-handed.
The whale tail fountain in the park in the centre of town is really nice but the water wasn’t flowing.
I love these spiral staircases – there are a few around town.
When Cathy had enough for a while, I headed out on my own. The first direction, as for many others, was up, to a small viewing platform high above the town.
There are a lot of cars for a town with only a few miles of road – there are no roads to other places. There’s even a gansta car! 🙂
The former dirt path up to the viewing platform has very recently (possibly in the past few weeks) been replaced by stairs. They’re barely wide enough for two people to pass, but still very nice, and a significant “welcome” to cruise ship passengers.
The first tenders available to take passengers back to the ship started running at 11:00, and when I shot this at 11:20, there was a long lineup of people waiting.
Yes, the view from there is excellent.
From the base of the viewing platform, I could see another hill that I thought offered better views, so went looking for a route to it. Here’s a place where putting utilities underground wasn’t really an option.
The final part of reaching the hill I wanted was pretty dicey, and I thought about it for a minute before crossing – it’s a long way down.
Looking back at the viewing platform.
The new hill provided a better look at the Greenland Star shipwreck…
…and of the Nieuw Statendam.
The view to the north across the harbour and industrial area was very good, too.
There’s a telecommunications facility on the new hill I had reached – this is looking back from it to the actual viewing deck.
The garbage dump.
I was soon back in town, where this particularly fine view caught my attention.
I was surprised by how old some of the buildings are – I haven’t found date on this warehouse (?) but I expect it goes way back.
The turf-house, used for winter accommodation, is open to the public, at no charge.
There’s a lot of rockwork around town – even the ditches have carefully-laid rock walls.
I really like the Greenland flag, and got a tshirt at Qaqortoq that features it.
The lovely Fredenskirche, or just Paamiut Church, was built in 1909. As the population of Paamiut exploded in the late 1980s, it was made 20 feet longer, but you’d never know it.
I wanted to get out onto the land, and my route took me past the main cemetery again. The oldest part (I assume) needs a lot of work.
In one corner, about 20 graves have had flowers recently added. This is what I mean about the cemetery producing more questions than answers.
Past all the homes, I hiked up a hill where I didn’t see any other people, and got this panoramic view of a little valley to the northeast. This is 3 photos stitched together.
Looking back over the town.
From that hill I could see the direction I wanted to go – out onto the land.
That route started as a rough road but it quickly petered out.
It turned into a trail but that soon also petered out.
Ahhh, that’s what I wanted. I had soon left all the people far behind. This is country I know, I understand, and I love.
I was dressed far too warmly for an 18°C day. This quickly led to me getting completely comfortable as I often do at home.
Finding the coast was pretty easy. Now the hike was perfect.
Okay, not quite – now the hike was perfect.
The water was crystal clear, but rocks and seaweed made getting into it difficult so I didn’t go for a dip as I wanted.
I explored out there for almost 2 hours before reluctantly heading back towards town.
Time get a few more photos of things I had missed or could improve on with better light.
Back at the tender to return to the ship. There was no lineup now, and only a few passengers were still walking around town.
A low view from the tender.
We started sailing away from Paamiut at 5:00. So many islands…
So many islands and icebergs!
I got a few more photos of the Greenland Star.
What a magnificent coastline. I wish I could say I’ll come back some day…
After being blessed by perfect weather for our day at Paamiut, we had been warned that the weather was going to turn ugly soon, and it did. I shot this 5 hours later, at 10:05 pm. An iceberg sure adds some interest to an angry sea.
The next day, Wednesday, July 16th, we would tender ashore at Qaqortoq, Greenland, after arriving at about 08:00.
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