A strange thing is happening at the edge of Poul Bjerge’s forest, a place so
minute and unexpected that it brings to mind the teeny plot of land Woody
Allen’s father carries around in the film “Love and Death.”
Its four oldest trees — in fact, the four oldest pine trees in Greenland, named
Rosenvinge’s trees after the Dutch botanist who planted them in a mad experiment
in 1893 — are waking up. After lapsing into stately, sleepy old age, they are
exhibiting new sprinklings of green at their tops, as if someone had glued on
fresh needles.
“The old ones, they’re having a second youth,” said Mr. Bjerge, 78, who has
watched the forest, called Qanasiassat, come to life, in fits and starts, since
planting most of the trees in it 50 years ago. He beamed like a proud grandson.
“They’re growing again.”
When using the words “growing” in connection with Greenland in the same
sentence, it is important to remember that although Greenland is the size of
Europe, it has only nine conifer forests like Mr. Bjerge’s, all of them
cultivated. It has only 51 farms. (They are all sheep farms, although one man is
trying to raise cattle. He has 22 cows.) Except for potatoes, the only
vegetables most Greenlanders ever eat — to the extent that they eat vegetables
at all — are imported, mostly from Denmark.
But now that the climate is warming, it is not just old trees that are growing.
A Greenlandic supermarket is stocking locally grown cauliflower, broccoli and
cabbage this year for the first time. Eight sheep farmers are growing potatoes
commercially. Five more are experimenting with vegetables. And Kenneth Hoeg, the
region’s chief agriculture adviser, says he does not see why southern Greenland
cannot eventually be full of vegetable farms and viable forests.
“If it gets warmer, a large part of southern Greenland could be like this,” Mr.
Hoeg said, walking through Qanasiassat, a boat ride from Narsarsuaq, a tiny
southern community notable mostly for having an international airport. Two and a
half acres near here of imported pines, spruces, larches and firs are plunked in
the midst of the scrubby, rocky hillside next to the fjord, as startling as a
mirage. “If it gets a little warmer, you could talk about a productive forest
with enough wood for logs,” Mr. Hoeg said.
Farther north, Greenland’s great ice sheet, a vast white landscape of 0.695
million square miles covering 80 percent of the island’s land mass, is melting
rapidly, alarmingly, with repercussions not only for the traditional way of life
on an island of 56,000 people, but also for the rest of the world. The more the
ice melts, the higher sea levels will eventually rise.
But here in the subarctic south — a land of icy water, forbidding mountains,
rocky hills, shallow soil, sudden winds and isolated communities slipped in,
almost apologetically, along a network of glacier-studded fjords, the changes
are more subtle and carry more promise.
“The limiting factor for human survival here is temperature, and there’s a lot
of benefits with a warmer climate,” Mr. Hoeg said. “We are on the frontier of
agriculture, and even a few degrees can make a difference.”
Greenland, a self-governing province of Denmark, was settled by the pugilistic
Viking Erik the Red in the 10th century, after his murderous ways got him
ejected from Iceland. Legend has it that he called it Greenland as a way to
entice others to join him, and, in fact, it was.
It was relatively green then, with forests and fertile soil, and the Vikings
grew crops and raised sheep for hundreds of years. But temperatures dropped
precipitously in the so-called Little Ice Age, which began in the 16th century,
the Norse settlers died out and agriculture was no longer possible.
Climate is a delicate matter in a place like this. A degree more of warmth here,
an inch less of rain there; these can have serious repercussions for a farmer
eking out a living raising sheep on the harsh terrain. But while temperatures
here in the south dipped in the 1980s, they have risen steadily since. Between
1961 and 1990, the average annual temperature was 33 degrees; in 2006, it was 35
degrees, according to the Danish Meteorological Institute.
Winter is coming later and leaving earlier. That means there is more time to
leave sheep in the mountains, more time to grow crops, more time to work
outdoors, more opportunity to travel by boat, since the fjords freeze later and
less frequently.
Cod, which prefer warmer waters, have started appearing off the coast again.
Ewes are having fatter lambs, and more of them every season. The growing season,
such as it is, now lasts roughly from mid-May through mid-September, about three
weeks longer than a decade ago. “Now spring is coming earlier, and you can have
earlier lambings and longer grazing periods,” said Eenoraq Frederiksen, 68, a
sheep farmer whose farm, near Qassiarsuk, is accessible by a harrowing drive
across a rudimentary road plowed in the hillside. “Young people now have a lot
of possibilities for the future.”
Scattered reports of successful strawberry crops in the odd home garden are
heard, although it helps to keep them in perspective. As Hans Gronborg, a Danish
horticulturist, put it, laughing, “They know whether they’ve harvested 20
strawberries, or 25.” He works at Upernaviarsuk, an agricultural research
station near Qaqortoq, one of the largest towns in the south. Like everywhere
else, it is accessible only by boat or helicopter. As a rule, no roads connect
Greenland towns.
As if visiting the zoo, people come from all over to gape at the varieties of
grass in the fields and to see what is growing here, among other things, 15
strains of potatoes and, for the first time, annual flowers: chrysanthemums,
violas, petunias.
Mr. Gronborg plucked a head of cauliflower from its nest of leaves. It had a
rich, almost sweet flavor — the result, he explained, of slow growth, long
summer days of 20 hours of light, and wide swings in temperature from day to
night. “It’s small, but it means you get all that flavor concentrated in
one-third the size of a regular cauliflower,” he said.
Mr. Gronborg loaded a dozen trays of vegetables into a motorboat to take them to
the supermarket in Qaqortoq. Soon, he said, restaurants will serve Greenlandic
vegetables beside Greenlandic lamb and reindeer.
“Greenlanders are hunters, and it takes time to change their way of living and
being,” he said. “But I am confident that things can grow in south Greenland.”
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