![boat ed version i boat ed version i](https://www.copernicus.eu/sites/default/files/2021-12/marine-power-systems-use-case-copernicus.eu-1324x1386.jpg)
They caught their own food by hunting and fishing and often munched on more serious stuff like walrus or polar bear when locals called them for a treat.Īputsiaq and Heidi on an early trip.
![boat ed version i boat ed version i](https://static.cambridge.org/content/id/urn%3Acambridge.org%3Aid%3Aarticle%3AS0041977X00030159/resource/name/firstPage-S0041977X00030159a.jpg)
They spent nights in the boat at sea or on the beach in a tent, unless they were lucky enough to be invited to sleep in a village.
![boat ed version i boat ed version i](https://senecapark.mwcd.org/upload/events/obec.jpg)
From the beginning, she had her young kids by her side. Pia travels the same way, relying mainly on herself, trying to understand the ways of her ancestors who could forecast the weather far in advance and navigate without maps or compass.
#BOAT ED VERSION I HOW TO#
They were helped by shamans who knew how to fly under and above sea ice, who could see things hidden behind the horizon and could lead the people to their destination. Women carried the young children in their hoods, and together, they all walked across treacherous drifting ice during the polar night in search of their promised land –- Greenland. Inuit migrants traveled with their families. In those days, exploration was not just for men. They ventured all the way from my native Siberia across what is now Alaska and Canada to Greenland’s Far North. Greenland has long been a country of exploration, yet Pia’s ancestors were its first explorers. Yes, even in Nuuk, Greenland, so far away from the metropolises of the south, that is an issue. She adds that she also went north for two practical reasons: to carry on the spirit of her ancestors and to help her children get away from consumer civilization and experience a healthier, more natural life. Pia is a very spiritual person, like most Greenlanders who still customarily talk to the wind and to the ravens before making a decision. What made her go alone with young children into an unforgiving sea? “It was in my soul,” she says first. Today, when world maps are fully drawn, explorers of all races and walks of life face a difficult prospect: What is left for them?īut for Pia, the instinct to explore and the whole idea of exploration have a different meaning. She goes about her life quietly, without fanfare, in the laconic Inuit hunter’s style, with a minimum of comfort and gadgets. She pays for her expeditions out of her own pocket by working long shifts at the psychiatric ward in the Nuuk hospital, a place that can be as brutal as the Arctic sea. Had Pia lived in New York City, she would be hosting lectures, designing exploration clothing, perhaps nibbling on fried tarantula appetizers at Explorers Club dinners, and giving away painted-edge business cards with the title “Polar Explorer” on them.īut Pia is a Greenlander and does not own a business card. On many other boating trips, when her son and daughter were very young, she covered distances almost as long, with both of them. In a small open boat, equipped with a Yamaha 100hp outboard engine, she traveled 4,000km, through storms and drifting ice, from Nuuk to Siorapaluk, the world’s northernmost Inuit village, and back, with her young son onboard. A nurse, a single Inuit mother, and a polar explorer, she redefined the meaning of exploration.Ī single Inuit mother, Pia Larsen, a nurse in Nuuk, is Greenland’s lone contemporary female polar explorer.