From snow to rain during the green and flowery summer in Tasiilaq

Snow2Rain fieldwork report from Tasiilaq, East Greenland, June 2022

June in Tasiilaq. Quite a different scenery than the winter season with extreme amounts of snow. The time for melting snow, sailing, hiking and of course ‘Greenlandic national day’ on the 21st of June. This year, it was also the time that the Snow2Rain project team got together for the second joint fieldwork period. In this fieldwork report, you can read about our activities and experiences of the time we spent together in Tasiilaq. If you are not fully caught up and would like to read about our earlier experiences, you can find them here.

Recap - a lot has happened in the meantime

The main aim of this second fieldwork period was to share some insights from our project work with people in Tasiilaq. To achieve this, three members of the Snow2Rain project team were present in Tasiilaq during this joint fieldwork period. Anna Burdenski had continuously stayed in Tasiilaq since November 2021, for her ethnographic fieldwork. Jorrit van der Schot arrived in early June in order to stay for a month. For him, it was the second trip after a short earlier stay in November-December 2021. This time the team also consisted of Sophie Elixhauser, who had previously lived both in Sermiligaaq and Tasiilaq for anthropological research and since then has visited the area every couple of years. Now she returned to Tasiilaq for three weeks in order to assist with the fieldwork activities and, after that, to spend a brief visit to Sermiligaaq. For a better overview, below you can see the timeline of the Snow2Rain project in Tasiilaq so far. 

When Anna and Jorrit landed in Tasiilaq for the first time last year, winter and the first layer of snow had already arrived. Massive amounts of snow have covered Tasiilaq and the surroundings during the winter months of 2021/2022. How different the appearance of the town and surroundings is in summer became clear for Jorrit when he landed in a warm and sunny Tasiilaq with sunlight the whole day. Meltwater streams were flowing through town towards the ocean. The place that in winter was a field of thick seasonal snow, was now a dark green football field often occupied by children playing. Almost all of the snow that Anna had experienced throughout the long and snowy winter had melted.

About the green and flowery part of Tasiilaq

During the first two weeks of the joint fieldwork period of Anna and Jorrit, we were very glad to be able to help out with the socio-economic organisation SiuTsiu’s project of establishing a garden in Tasiilaq. This is the first garden project of that size in East Greenland. It was amazing to see how quickly a few wooden boxes developed into a vegetable growing garden in the midst of the flower valley in Tasiilaq. A lot of people from Tasiilaq, especially young people from Siu Tsiu and curious children, were helping out, which made the work even more enjoyable.

Communicating, engaging and sharing with locals in the research setting

In the final week of fieldwork shared by the three of us, we had two very interesting activities planned. Several young people from Tasiilaq were involved in an intercultural exchange program called “Eyes on Ice”. For this program, young people from Belgium and Iceland were to visit Tasiilaq later in the summer. A part of this program was dealing with the theme of climate change, so it was proposed that we hold a workshop about climate change in order to prepare the participating young people from Tasiilaq for the intercultural exchange. Within the Snow2Rain project, we are engaged with the theme of climate change in a variety of ways. Therefore we were thrilled to be able to help with this workshop. We had a lively discussion with the young participants about climate change in the photo museum in Tasiilaq. The main topic of this workshop was the differences between weather and climate. 

As one of the main aims of this joint fieldwork period was to share results of the project with people in Tasiilaq, we had planned a workshop for this purpose. The three of us had prepared materials that could be shown to and discussed with the participants in the community house, the location for our workshop. We were delighted to see so many people from Tasiilaq attending. The audience consisted of all age groups, children and adults of different ages. Whilst enjoying the coffee and cakes we had prepared, we talked for a long time about the changes people experience in the Tasiilaq region and about those that scientists find and predict for the future. Apart from a presentation by  Jorrit, supported by an interpreter, and of course by Sophie and Anna, we had put up different sorts of visual materials on the walls that people could study by themselves and/or discuss with us individually or in small groups.

After these main activities of our joint fieldwork period, Jorrit returned home, Sophie went on to see old acquaintances and contacts in Tasiilaq and Sermiligaaq for some days, while Anna continues her fieldwork in Tasiilaq for another two months.