(Fri 22/6/2012)
Finland and Finnish people REALLY enjoy their Juhannus, aka Midsummer's celebration (Oh yes! We're REALLY into these pagan rituals!;) and this is my third summer studying - while other Finns are at their cottages, having grilled sausages, drinking beer (and Koskenkorva (keeping up the stereotypes, huh?);), bathing in the sauna and swimming in small lakes, sleeping late and being hung over three days in a row…
Well, not me! This was my schedule on Juhannus:
- lesson in GRL language, dictation practice (did quite well, I must say!)
- lesson in GRL literature
- lesson in GRL media: radio, tv, internet
Interesting stories about "pirate tv" in GRL:
Greenlanders residing in Denmark taped tv-programmes and sent them over to Greenland on VHS tapes. This process was very much influenced by human factors. F.e. some tv-series were incomplete and had only a few episodes, or the persons responsible for the taping could sometimes fall asleep during the taping. There was also a case when TV viewers had been upset that many of the good movies ended abruptly in the middle. When they had done more research, they found that the person in charge for taping the movies always went to bed at 10 P.M.!:)
We also went to see a literature/writers' evening at the city library: two fiction writers Kim Leine and Iben Mondrup with connections to GRL were invited to come to Nuuk city library and present their recent books. The library was quite full, but i noticed that the people there seemed very Nordic, well educated and to some extent "academic". The discourse was also quite academic and analytic when talking about passages in the novels and writing methods (I'm glad one of the writers read a few lines describing a man going to the toilet - talking about taking a dump always makes a session feel less academic;). I've noticed that the people here are in a sense a creole mix of Danish and ethnic GRL, but still I felt that the segregation was obvious - and when I talked with my course mates, they felt the same. This is probably a topic I'll be coming back to.
Afterwards we went to a bar called "Daddy's" and had some drinks, a GRL guy (with his friends celebrating a bachelor's last night out) offered to buy us (me & Oda) drinks. But, shy as we are, we gals left and went to bed;)
OR SO WE THOUGHT. When we got back to Hotel Nuuk, we met our friends coming out of the building screaming "Iceberg! Iceberg in Kolonihavnen!" So we went to see stranded blocks of ice (at this point we were all still excited at the sight of ice:). The big block of ice was already gone, but we found a smaller one.
It was midnight.
Thick fog had invaded the town.
The air was fresh, moist and sea scented.
Nuuk City library (GRL National Library)
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| There is a graveyard right outside the university, on the other side of the road. |
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| View in the evening, thick fog floating into town over the hills. |
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| Kim & Iben at the library. |
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| Pub "Daddy's" :) |
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| Block of ice in Kolonihavnen. |
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| Photos of ice block. |
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| Kolonihavnen in the background. |
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