The peninsula was bone-shaped with a flat, low-lying central plain and tipped with a bulbous outcrop which thrust out into the bay. It was spring then, the time of ice, when the Uummannaq fjord surrounding the land froze solid, hard enough to hold the weight of husky-drawn sleds and the plodding paws of wandering polar bear. The sun had just returned after an absence of over three months, its weak light gently casting welcome shadows and breathing bright life into the surface of the frozen pond. The time of darkness, winter, had been almost unendurable, its end seeming never in sight, but now gone, best forgotten.

The ice sheet was broken here and there by ship-wrecked icebergs whose heavy wanderings had been temporarily suspended by a stronger force of nature. They’d be released come the thaw, free to tumble in the waters once more; their scale incomprehensible in that place, with white planes the size of runways. Guillemots gathered on top of one large specimen, their tiny black forms sprinkled like sesame seeds. Otherwise the ice was a desert; vast, flat and empty.

On the peninsula, there was a small settlement, no more than ten houses. They were positioned close together on the short, narrow diaphysis. They were squat, none higher than two stories, wooden and painted in primary colours with black or white window frames. The place could be mistaken for a toy town sprung from a child’s imagination if it were not for the brutality of the surroundings. Each house appeared frozen to the very earth with ice grasping their corners, holding them down, no escape. By the steps of one house lay the body of a dog, long dead, muddy ice tangled in its grey-white hair. Outside another, skin was stretched over a dark wooden frame; the fur mottled brown and creamy white round the edges. The creature’s hide was secured to each corner of the mount with pale blue cord and its antlers lay on the floor below. A narwhal skull was mounted above the entrance to the blue house next door, not one, but two, twisting tusks. Fishing boats lay docked on the land sheltering beneath tarpaulin, waiting with their nets.

In summer, the fjord would lap again at the shoreline on both sides of the village, a time for hunting, of renewal, to prepare once again for the darkness ahead. But for now, the waves must bide their time, churning unseen under the calm concrete exterior, waiting for the seasons to turn.