from Antarctica to Greenland

My friend and fellow expedition cruise guide Rolf Stange has returned from his Antarctic season a bit earlier than me, and is already working at the other end of the world, i.e. in East Greenland. Here he will devote the next months to dogdriving with traditional 'Grønlander' husky teams, living in a small hut in Ittoqqortoormiit and learning to master his team of 12 more or less tame and more or less well-behaved Greenland dogs. His main tools for this task are fitness, determination and his 'kuskepisk', a long whip which is used to impress the dogs and restore a driver's ('kusk') authority in case of a turmoil.

For those who cannot find that name on the map - or do not know how to pronounce it - the Danish have invented "Scoresbysund". This still contains a surprising amount of consonants, which usually tend to get washed out of Danish pronounciation, but at least it is a bit easier than double-t's and double-q's. But I deviate...

Rolf has set up a very nice website and supplies a newsletter which can be found here in English version.

Here is an excerpt:

"As soon as the first dog is in front of the sledge, you have to get the next one. In the meantime, of course, the first one doesn't simply stay where he should, but stampedes around the sledge or, even better, under it (before you start, make sure there isn't any left there!). This means that the set of twelve lines, which you have just prepared so carefully, is soon turned into one big knot again, but just ignore it - there's nothing you can do about it anyway.

As soon as the second dog is there, you have to get the third one. In the meantime, the second will join the first one's activities, just to add to your pleasure. As soon as the third is there, things change a bit, because this is when they should start a nice little punch-up. Just pretend you don't see it and hope that they've soon got enough. Otherwise, put the wip into use. That sounds very hard, but it isn't. You will soon realise that this is an extremely important tool to improve communication between person and dogs..."