OPVARMNING NO NEWS BY GROENLAND

Below is an email to Benny Peiser from Jens Kieffer-Olsen M.Sc.(Elec.Eng.), Slagelse, Denmark [dstdba@post4.tele.dk]

Sorry for the limping headline - I tried a free translation from Danish of the homepage of Politiken. The article by Jorgen Fleischer, editor of Gronlandsposten from 1962 to 1987, appeared in the leading Danish newspaper Politiken on Dec. 3rd. I'll translate a section myself :

WARMING NO NEWS TO GREENLAND

Records dating back to the days of Hans Egede provide evidence that over the last 300 years warming periods with cold has occurred every century. To the foreign celebrities who now flock to the Ilulissat Isfjord glacier, which is melting in the extreme, it might be of interest to hear that the melting of the glacier in the ice fiord was even more extreme during the 17th century.

In the year 1747 the trader Peder Olsen Walloe met a very old Greenland woman, who had seen an ice-free Ilulissat Isfjord. In his diary the trader wrote:

"At the edge of the ice fiord an old lady was in the house of a Greenland family. She lay down all the time as in a cramp, she could not stretch her legs or help herself in any way. Her hair was very gray. When asked about her age, she would say she didn't know, but that she remembered well the time, when in this fiord with now so many of so large icebergs there weren't any, and how the fiord was accessible far up. She may have been 100 years old or more. What a change within one lifetime. Now there is so much ice both on the shore and at sea that in the summer it is hardly possible to get around because of large and small icebergs."

Mind you, Peder Olsen Walloe was no ordinary traveller. Around 1752 he explored the East coast of Greenland from kayak, and Qaqortoq celebrates him as the town's founder here

A copy of his diary is for sale on the Internet for 25 pounds , or as little as 10 with the cover missing. I gather it has never been translated into English.

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