Next in my belated ‘catch up’ posts for 2021 is a trip to Greenland back in November to run a series of community photogrammetry workshops for Greenland Science Week 2021 in Sisimiut and Sarfannguit with collaborators Hans Harmsen (Nunatta Katersugaasivia Allagaateqarfialu // Greenland National Museum & Archives) and Katie Grow Allen (SUNY Potsdam).
Lamp, Narsannguaq – Sisimiut Museum by Dr Alice Watterson on Sketchfab
With the support of the Sisimuit Museum (in particular its fantastic curator Dorthe Katrine Olsen) we hosted a number of high school and college students who were able to get ‘hands-on’ experience of archaeological methods by helping us 3D document artefacts from the recent excavations at Narsannguaq. In parallel, our community workshops were more relaxed with smaller numbers of visitors, but this made space for time to chat with people about their interests in local heritage. Citizens were invited to bring an ‘object from home’ to 3D scan which represented their Greenlandic heritage – these ranged from carvings by local artists, to family heirlooms, one of my personal favourites was an owl carved from whalebone with a very intense gaze that followed you around the room!
The great thing about the community drop-in workshops where citizens brought in objects from home, was not just the objects themselves, but the stories that came with them – for example, the knife below, brought in by local translator Hanseeraq Jonathansen, had been found decades earlier by his father when he was out on a hunting trip. Although we started off discussing the object itself, Hanseeraq spent time telling us about hunting trips with his father and spending time out in the landscape.
Knife brought in by Hanseeraq Jonathansen by Dr Alice Watterson on Sketchfab
During the workshop events, Katie was also busy recording material for her Applied Anthropology class back in the States. She was running a ‘virtual fieldtrip’ for her students during our trip which saw her interviewing people we met along the way to find out more about life in Greenland. Katie wrote a series of fantastic blog posts about our trip which you can find here.
In 2018 a new UNESCO world heritage site was designated between Aasivissuit to Nipisat, described as an “Inuit hunting ground between land and sea”. The area is within the Arctic Circle and spans about 235km from the coast to the ice-cap and contains a number of important sites and localities of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage spanning around 4200 years of human history. Sarfannguit is a small fishing village of around 90 people located inside the UNESCO area and we were lucky to visit on an absolutely stunning day with clear skies to run some workshops. On the boat journey home to Sisimuit that evening we were even treated to a fantastic display of the aurora.
We were back in the capital, Nuuk for the second week to attend the conference portion of Greenland Science Week and give a few talks. It was the first in-person conference I’d been to since the pandemic started and it was fantastic to chat to people face-to-face again – everyone knows the best discussions happen over the coffee breaks and those just aren’t possible in the same way over Zoom!
Exploring Nuuk was great fun also, and I got to nerd out over kayaks (qajaqs) of course! I didn’t manage very much sketchbook work while I was there – mainly because y’know, it was November, I was north of the Arctic Circle and I’d like to keep my fingers intact – but I caught up on some sketching on the way home. One for each place we visited – Nuuk, Sisimiut and Sarfannguit.
We met some wonderful people during the trip and I hope this is the beginning of many more visits to Greenland….
Digital Dirt Virtual Pasts 