A photo taken on board the merchantman S/S ELSE BASSE of Copenhagen. She is at anchor at Ivittuut on Greenland for a cargo of cryolyte The ship’s dog has been tied to the railing. Next to the dog, named Thor, lies a few of the beams used to cover the cargo hold.
The 2nd photo shows us the crew having a wee break.
The Else Basse moored to the rocky Greenlandic shoreline.
i had to look:
ReplyDeleteCryolite (Na3AlF6, sodium hexafluoroaluminate) is an uncommon mineral identified with the once-large deposit at Ivittuut on the west coast of Greenland, depleted by 1987. Due to its rarity it is possibly the only mineral on Earth ever to be mined to commercial extinction. (Wikipedia)
interesting...
I had to look it up too. This is the only site I visit that has me opening more tabs to learn more.
DeleteYears ago working for Boeing and Scandinavian Airlines I flew from Copenhagen to Sondrestrom Fjord, Greenland. Very pretty but very lonely place. Would love to go again.
ReplyDeleteI spent a few weeks at Ivittuut as a boy. It was around 1994-1995.
ReplyDeleteMy best friend's father was there for the summer, working as a biologist, and he brought the family. And I came along for a bit. The old mining town was abandoned, and it was a perfect place for two boys to run around unsupervised. The old mine was just a great big hole in the ground, filled with water. There was only a single family living there at the time. There was a Danish naval base a short distance away, and there was a store there. We walked there on a dirt road to buy candy and chips.
I managed to impale myself on a broken board, and needed to have splinters removed that had broken off inside my abdomen. The doctor from the naval base drove over and performed surgery on me, right there on the kitchen table. We thought nothing of it at the time, because, well, it was Greenland...
That photo of the ship refueling is not at Ivittuut, by the way, but somewhere else along the coast of Greenland. Ivittuut is in a fjord, and there is rich vegetation and an interesting fauna there. I remember it was quite hot there. A real microclimate.
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