I have been to northern Norway and Iceland a few times.
It all started when I was running my previous SaaS at the peak of its growth. I needed a break, and wanted to go far away, while still being close enough if sh*t hit the fan. My co-founder had recently talked to some friends who had been to Tromsø, Norway. The place looked perfect, so I booked a 5-day solo trip there.
Places that are so distant, with such harsh conditions and few people living there always give me a feeling I do not experience anywhere else in the world. I feel small, irrelevant, in the face of brutal, powerful nature.
And believe me, it is a feeling that is overwhelming. But never have I perceived it as something negative. The opposite was true. Feeling small made me feel calm, embracing that that was the right spot for me as part of God's creation. Suddenly, all those dark clouds that followed me everywhere I went back home were... Gone.
If you ever have the opportunity to go to one of these places - go. It might change you in profound ways.
Completely agree. I’ve been on many hikes and in particular there was one time where I was walking up a mountain, at winter, with skis on, that I felt like wow if everyone got to experience this particular feeling of just you and the mountains and not a single soul around, there would be less conflict in the world. If we all got to go on these long solitary trips in the mountains alone. All kinds of grievances and conflicts and whatever you might feel about people that you dislike, it all suddenly feels so insignificant and pointless to even expend any energy on.
More wind means less mosquitos. One step forward and one step back.
Also don't fly with sas to the faroes. They turn back and try again the next day like in the article. Fly atlantic airways, they have equipment to fly through the fog or they will refuel in iceland and try again same day.
And when you want to experiance true issolation in the face of nature, Alaska and Westerm Canada are waiting. Try a drive north through BC in winter. Fish on an Alaskan river only accessible by floatplane. Wake up to watch the northern lights only to realize you are looking south. Or pan for gold only to look up and see a grizzly cub walking cassually past.
Finnmark in Northern Norway is more like 1.5-2, Troms is 3-6. But I agree, Alaska and Western Canada are places to go some day.
Funnily, as a student I had this offer to go to work as a waiter on Alaska. For different reasons that didn't materialize, but definitely this makes me want to go see it even more.
Not so much for the possible bear encounters. I do not think I am ready yet for that.
I happen to be one of the Danes who partially grew up in Greenland that he talks about in the article. I even recognize the places from the article.
Some of my cordial childhood memories are from there and it is a place I will forever love. One of the most visceral memories I have is looking across the ice fjord listening to the thunderous breaking of the ice bergs - you can hear the sounds on videos, but combined with the enormity of what is in front of you and actually being able to feel the sound in your body it can only be experienced by being there.
I can see that the author was initially worried that Greenland would be devoid of anything to do, which is of course not true, as is written in the article. Especially the people are one of a kind in what I can only describe as directness or pragmatism.
One time a local from the place I lived was driving his car as it broke down and - rather than having it regularly towed to the mechanic - actually decided to tow it with a group of sled dogs. We just watched him sticking his head out the window shouting commands to the dogs while driving by. The dogs there can distinguish left and right, so it was surprisingly trivial to get the car to the mechanic. The Greenlanders see nothing extraordinary about this.
In other words, it is really valuable to have local connections if you want a great vacation in Greenland. I can also recommend the small, mini village settlements that are spread across the coast of the grand county. Some of them have hotels also.
"The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him; but when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long, it takes away your appetite."
It's funny to me that in portraying Indiana as a "blank state" he's highlighting one of the most beautiful parts of the state (the route through the Dunes along the Michigan lakefront; if you've seen "Road To Perdition", you know what that area looks like). It's not important to the article, a complete tangent, but I can't not call that out.
Having grown up in that area of the Midwest, I largely agree with the author's categorization, except that "people on their way to somewhere better who got tired and decided this was good enough" describes a LOT of the midwest, not just Indiana. Significant chunks of Michigan, Ohio, and Missouri, most of Iowa/Kansas/Nebraska, etc.
If you read the history of westward expansion, "got tired and decided this was good enough" is literally true for how much of the area got initially settled (by white people)
It's really easy to write off a giant part of the country that millions of people live in as tired (and the implication underneath is usually "backward"), it's also dehumanizing them and makes assumptions about their quality of life when it might actually be a lot better than the people making these assumptions.
Spend some time not just driving through them, and one may be surprised to find plenty of diverse and interesting people that live full lives with rich family and social bonds, reasonably priced housing, ample winter outdoor activities (a lot of people actually want snow because it's beautiful and you can do fun things with it) and plenty of nearby nature and recreation opportunities, which I would contrast less unfavorably than the zeitgeist against the crowded, expensive vagrant culture that tends to dominate the more popular places on earth.
I lived in the area for more than 20 years, have annually visited family living there for my entire life even after I left, and consider myself quite qualified to comment on the area, the people who live there, and their culture, thanks.
I've traveled a lot through the area. I was throughout Ohio earlier this year, spent two weeks in Illinois last year, etc.
The phrase “got tired “is not referring to the modern populations but rather the people who founded those original settlements in those states centuries ago.
They didn't "get tired", they found rich soil and ample water to do farming and milling, which is what they were intending to find. It's called the bread basket of America for a reason.
In some places, some people absolutely could not endure the long travels to the West Coast, for example the Oregon Trail was extremely difficult and many people quit somewhere in the middle and settled into those Midwestern states. Yes they did in fact get tired, in some situations.
It’s actually a very famous city, but not for entirely good reasons. For starters, it did in my youth have the highest per capita rate of murder in the United States.
However, Michael Jackson is from there. So there’s that.
Clearly not a fan of musical theater. The Music Man ~~takes place in~~ repeatedly refers to Gary. Ron Howard sings a song called Gary Indiana in the movie version. He’s about waist high in that movie.
Pretty close, but the musical takes place in the fictional town of River City, Iowa and Henry Hill claims to be an alumnus of the Gary Conservatory (class of '05), which is the hook used to launch the song in question.
Gary, Indiana is still memorable to me 50 years later from when we'd drive through it, handkerchiefs pressed to our faces to block out the terrible smell from some sort of toxic industry. Is Gary still like that or has it been cleaned up?
Illinois has a few rust belt towns as well. Decatur is the asshole of Illinois, with a water supply to match. Though for variety, it smells like old gym socks instead. Corn processing plants are almost as bad as paper mills, and when I lived there it had two, ADM and the very aptly named Staley.
The thing about the middle of Illinois is they consider Chicago to be a separate state and East St Louis to be Missouri’s problem. “Oh you’re from Chicago” is a common reply any time you found out you’re from an exurb. Often said with just a hint of dismissal. That’s not the real Illinois. Nobody talks about Rock Island and Moline (the Illinois half of the Quad Cities) this way, for instance.
Carbondale is slightly better, but I think it’s a notorious party school for very good reasons. Small town Midwest has a saying that “there’s nothing to do here except drink, fuck, and knock over mailboxes”. Most Iowa this is especially true, but Carbondale also gave me that vibe. Also that’s a fucking long drive. St Louis too. Nobody appreciates that Illinois is half as tall as California (not that anyone appreciates how long a trip up and down CA is either).
Indiana is seriously considering annexing much of central/southern Illinois. It’s amazing just how aggressively divisive politics have become in the last 20 years.
Gary is also interesting, though. It used to be interesting for good economic and cultural reasons, then bad reasons. Now it's experiencing some revitalization in the manner of Detroit or Rockford, which might actually make it more boring, though better to live in.
I thought the Indiana aside was odd as an objective assessment, but it worked well as a flavorful bit of travel writing to help me understand the perspective of the visitor to Greenland.
Gary is fine during the day compared to a lot of the surrounding areas because the population is actually fairly diverse. White, black, latino, there are enough of you that it's possible to blend in as long as you dress poor enough. If you aren't into drugs or banging and out during daylight hours and don't flash valuable you'll probably be fine.
Vs. say some parts Cleveland, where I've been robbed at gunpoint the second my vehicle broke down and people noticed I'm not from around there.
Yep. Even worse, the problem is recursive: a town I lived in for a while growing up, Vandalia, Ohio (a suburb of Dayton, itself not exactly a booming metropolis in this millennium, but I digress) was settled by westward migrants aiming for Vandalia, Illinois - a town in the absolute middle of nowhere that just so happened to be the end of the National Road, presumably because the road builders got bored and/or ran out of money. Anyway, the travelers got bored and/or ran out of money on their way to Illinois, gave up, said "good enough", and named their new Ohio settlement after the place they failed to reach.
The Midwest is many things, but for quite a lot of it, "where anyone really wanted to get stuck" is not one of them.
Gary is basically part of the Chicago metro area; it's not characteristic of the run of the state you go through between Michigan and Illinois. You don't see it until after you commit to getting onto the Skyway.
Good enough, but also the abject fear of seeing the rocky mountains rear up from the plains. For someone walking beside a wagon in late summer, a horizon of tree and snow-covered mountains topped with jagged peaks would seem like the end of the earth.
Irked me too. I'm running for state representative in House District 9, which covers much of that area. The district is drop dead gorgeous and it's growing rapidly. There's a lot here.
Pretty much everyone on earth is proud of their home area. I've never really been to a place where people didn't describe their home as one of the most beautiful places on earth.
Earth has a lot of nice places. The flatness of Indiana can be calming and beautiful. But if you're driving on main roads, it's not very exciting, and it's not the kind of exciting people will fly across the world to see. And that was the point in the article.
I love my home town. I grew up there, and it was fine. I would never describe it as one of the most beautiful places on earth. I'm I proud of it? Only in the sense it's home and I have family there.
Many areas have some minor hills, or some variant infinitely more interesting (hoosier myself, I regret moving here 10 years ago and may finally be bothered enough by it to deal with moving out in Spring). All in all, a state this big with less than 1,000 ft between the highest and lowest parts is just disappointingly flat, given the general lack of other natural attraction.
I'd say the caves in that region of the state are interesting, but options like Mammoth Cave are not that far away in KY (and they have better hills too).
People do fly out to vacation in the part of Indiana he highlighted!
I'm not saying Indiana on the whole isn't flat. When I was growing up, their ad campaign was literally "there's more than corn in Indiana". I'm just saying, he couldn't have picked a worse map location to make the point with.
You don't have to drive it on I-94; in fact, for many years it was faster not to, because of insane bottom of the lake traffic. You can take the Dunes Highway instead (and then keep off 94 up the Michigan shore; there's good stuff up there).
I'm speaking up for Indiana here but honestly if you're looking for those dunescapes and beaches, western Michigan is the better bet. Road To Perdition was filmed around Saugatuck, just an hour into Michigan; that part of Michigan really is worth a trip to see (you'd want book a place to stay up by the lake for at least a couple days; it's not so much a sightseeing deal as a chill-out-by-the-lake deal).
The whole stretch though from Chicago up to Traverse City is basically where Chicago vacations.
And the southern part of the state is actually one of the most famous places in the United States for painters to retreat in the autumn as there are no trees as beautiful as you will find there.
Calling some states good states and others not is just a silly thing to do anyway.
This is good to know, I have passed through Indiana a number of times on I-70 and I've found it to be particularly flat and boring. I know there are pretty places everywhere but that stretch has felt like exactly what he was saying, a place you have to get through to go somewhere else.
Heh, as someone who lives there (Northwest Indiana) that was a rough read.
Then again, our state motto did used to be "Crossroads of America", so I guess that's kind of fair. These days it's the more aspirational "More to Discover".
I live somewhere that you’ll find almost nothing but insults about online. Meanwhile it remains a great place to live because those people don’t come here. Consider it a blessing.
The Indiana Dunes is indeed one of the most beautiful unexpected places I have encountered traveling in the US. And Wagner’s have to be the absolute best ribs in the world.
I bugged me too. I'm from Southern Indiana and when I hear people say "Indiana is flat" or "Indiana is boring to look at" all I hear them say is "I've only been to the Northern part of Indiana."
There is a lot to shit on Indiana for but its natural beauty isn't one of them.
Indiana and other midwestern states have some awesome nature, but it's basically taken for granted by people from there because you grow up having your family show you all those places. Imagine if aliens showed up to a megacity, and declared there was no food anywhere -- a local would show them places called "restaurants" that actually have more varied and competitive tasty foods than about any farmland areas you'd find, but the aliens would think there's food only in the farmlands and declare the city worthless for finding something to eat.
If you drive out west, you don't even have to look for them; astounding nature is evereywhere.
End result is people from midwestern states appreciate the beauty of their state, but people who haven't lived there for years generally don't. Even after leaving the midwest, I have a high appreciation for the natural landscape, but that's only because I know where to go when I get there.
> The second I stepped outside I was set upon by a flood of mosquitos like I have never experienced before. I have been to the jungles of Vietnam, the swamps of Florida and the Canadian countryside. This was beyond anything I've ever experienced.
> There are bugs in my mouth, ears, eyes and nose almost immediately. The photo below is not me being dramatic, it is actually what is required to keep them off of me.
> In fact what you need to purchase in order to walk around this area at all are basically bug nets for your face. They're effectively plastic mesh bags that you put on.
This is pretty standard for Scotland in the summer too.
In the 70's we visited relatives in northern Minnesota and took a .22 rifle to a dump, I think to shoot rats. So many mosquitos would immediately land on us and the rifle that you couldn't see the sight on the end of the barrel. We got out of there quick.
The midges are horrific. It's amazing how something so tiny can make your life so miserable. I don't know how people in the olden days survived. I wonder what kind of social and political effects the midges had. I can imagine Scots with all their gifts of the mind and body fleeing and surrendering to the English just to get away from them.
> I don't know how people in the olden days survived.
Maybe they found a material they could smear on their body.
For a similar example, I have a friend who spends a lot of time hiking and camping. He tells me that the first day, he needs to apply sunscreen. The next day onward, he doesn't need to anymore, as his body oil and sweat seems to do the job.
It makes sense that our skin has not evolved to be cleaned every day.
People simply got used to it, for the most part. It takes me a few weeks to readjust to the insects whenever I go back to the Arctic, after which they're just dramatically less annoying.
Keep in mind that the swarms you see today are usually a historical anomaly exacerbated by changing conditions in the Arctic. Longer, warmer summers create more spaces for them to breed, and sudden, bitter cold spells in winter affect the predators controlling their population more than the insects themselves. The palearctic region is a very different place than it was centuries ago.
In Scotland they would have smeared bog myrtle over themselves. Other alternatives were animal fat mixed with an aromatic or even tar and pine resin. As far as I know most cultures had some sort of equivalent.
The best contemporaneous example would be the otjize clay rub used by the Himba in Namibia. It’s largely an adaptation to water scarcity but it also protects them from insects and cleans their hair and skin by trapping dirt and flaking off.
I'm fortunate that they just don't like me as much as some of the people I've done week+ hiking/camping trips with. I was ok with deet. Some folks still got dozens of bites even after it.
«This would end up being a theme, where buildings representing Denmark were made out of lots of wood, almost to ensure that you understood they weren't from here.»
Wooden buildings is much more of a Swedish or Norwegian thing than Danish. Wood is just a good material for building in the arctic.
Why is it a good material? I would think steel or reinforced concrete would be better, with cheap corrugated metal paneling. And either way you need reinforced concrete foundations right?
Wood is a much better insulator than those two materials. At cold temps even the fasteners holding on cladding over foam sheets is a significant source of lost heat, so if screwed into wood instead of steel framing, you conduct much less heat.
Certainly for Sweden and Norway, wood is very plentiful, and a good insulator. I don't know if steel would technically be better, but historically at least it would have been harder to get hold of.
I flew over Greenland coming back from Europe recently. From the air, the fjords and glacial snowscapes there and in northern Canada are profoundly beautiful and completely devoid of signs of humans in a way you don’t see even in some of the remotest parts of the US.
Definitely worth opening the shade for if you have the opportunity
There is a YouTuber making a really remote cabin in I think northern Canada called Off Grid Engineering and he has a similar narrative style. Nice :). Recommended
Having grown up in northern Indiana and having spent my honeymoon ski touring in Greenland - I must say I don’t find the two to be very comparable. The skiing was significantly better in Greenland and the people much friendlier to boot.
I'm not a fan of bugs but it's only when I consume these travelogues I'm reminded that I should be grateful things are nowhere as apocalyptic over where I live in south India.
> There is nothing distinct about Indiana, it's just a place full of people who got too tired on their way to somewhere better and decided "this is good enough".
This is how Norte Dame was (allegedly) founded. Priests set out from the East Coast, planning to found the greatest Catholic University in the world in California. They get to Indiana and encounter a terrible snowstorm. They hunker down and decide they’ll get moving again when the weather improved. It never did.
I'm not sure what this person expected, they seem to have gone in this with Rose tinted glasses only to come away with it feeling like "Greenland, why?" It's like they set out to prove a point and were disappointed.
Who controls what territory in the world is hardly stable. At some point, if one is not a military power, one will have to take sides. If, for example, valuable resources are discovered in Greenland.
Well, US has the base near Guantanamo; I haven't been to that side but I have been to Guantanamo proper... trust me, that place is hot and has mosquitoes and two decades ago the naval base was almost as infamous as North Korea. And then there's the newly opened "alligator Alcatraz"... I think Mr. President have gotten some ideas for Greenland :-)
>fun-fact: CIA is currently mucking around in Greenland trying to get rid of people against annexation
That's a very misleading phrasing for what's essentially an influence operation. Your wording of "get rid of people ..." implies there's some assassinations/violence going on, but there's nothing to suggest that's happening. If Republicans/Democrats or even Russia was running an influence operation in the US, nobody would characterize that as "getting rid" of opponents or whatever.
In spite of wanna-be-kings like Putin and Trump, the obvious historical trend is for larger empires and countries to break up into smaller independent ones.
I think it even makes sense if it were pursued in a different way. Greenland is looking for full independence but can't really hack it financially without aid. I think the COFA (Compact of Free Association) model that we have with Palau and Marshall Islands would work well.
We get expanded military rights and potentially some mineral/drilling rights, while Greenland gets protection, lots of money, access to USPS domestic rates, and probably increased tourism in addition to the independence they desire. Their citizens could also live and work in the US indefinitely.
I think the Danish intelligence services should apply this model to Hawaii and Guam. It would make a lot of sense. Hawaii and Guam could get better health care on average while being semi independent. The EU could protect both with nuclear weapons.
Native Hawaiians would escape the continued mistreatment:
Lol I realize this is tongue in cheek but Denmark has no ability to administer or protect anything that far away. Nor are those places seeking independence.
But hey, maybe I'm wrong and the Danes will successfully integrate a large group of people that don't share their values. They've already done that, right?
Oh gimme a break. That's one of the largest benefits to COFA and is heavily used by the Marshallese. Greenland on its own is not a first world country - there simply isn't enough population/work and it's a hard existence as detailed in TFA.
You may not want to come here and that's fine, but it's a huge draw and will continue to be. Administrations are fleeting, but the allure of opportunity remains. You're posting on a forum that is somewhat of a monument to exactly that.
EDIT: some of this made a bit more sense prior to your hasty edit
The Arctic will be the battleground and trade route of the future as it warms. Being associated with the US is preferable to the other options (Russia, China most likely). There won't be an option of the status quo.
Greenland, as part of Denmark, is part of and protected by NATO. As its in the Atlantic it benefits fully from that treaty.
It is also protected by Denmark's membership in the EU and the CSDP by virtue of the EU's collective self defense clause (which protects all of all member states territory, not just the parts in europe).
The status quo - apart from the part where the US is threatening to violate its NATO treaty obligations and invade something it is obligated to protect from invasion - is just fine.
US ownership would be pointless. The US already has relatively free access to its ally Greenland for military purposes. See for example the US base in Pituffik (formerly Thule). Proposing to annex your allies is a bit rude, to say the least...
If a country other than Denmark was to claim Greenland, either Iceland or Canada would make more sense.
What would that even mean? Especially the use the word 'ownership'?
I think there's zero chance of US long-term influence on Greenland. They simply have no reason to prefer foreign domination, when they can simply be sovereign. I would place independence + EU membership as more probably than any association with the US, and I think them staying within Denmark is much more likely than them becoming independent.
I don't think the subsidy is required. The net deficit is small.
Some Swedish regions also have a net deficit relative to other Swedish regions, but that doesn't mean that they don't work out economically. After all, not all economic activity in region is taxed there. A firm in Örnsköldsvik pays their taxes to the Swedish government, and then the Swedish government distributes part back to the region.
It's around 600 million USD per year, on 56836 people. Around $1000 per head. But GDP per capita is $58,498.
>They simply have no reason to prefer foreign domination, when they can simply be sovereign.
No, they can't. The likes of Palau are (barely) viable as sovereign countries, because at least the geographic size is as small as their populations. Greenland is not like that at all.
It is absolutely, positively, completely impossible for 50K people to by themselves maintain a country Greenland's size. The $600M annual subsidy by Denmark does not include the funds Copenhagen spends on also running Greenland's foreign relations and defense. But in reality, Denmark spends a relative pittance on those things (like "six dog sleds" pittance); the vast majority of the cost of defending Greenland is borne by the US, as has been the case since 1940. Why should the US shoulder the burden without commensurate political power?
Oh god, this CIA meddling in never ends well for anyone. I mean afterwards Americans will make a Hollywood movie claiming that situation was complicated and their intentions were good, but it will end up with some sort of hell.
I don't think that's an accurate characterization of either of those articles. It sounds like they're trying to find groups who want to be independent, probably with the goal of artificially propping them up. It's still gross, but not as gross as hunting dissidents.
No different than the Russians hunting for American dissidents to prop up. Well, a little different in that the Russians hunted for them in the Senate chamber and golf clubs.
Edit - for those who don't get it, Alberta derives most of its wealth from oil. Successive Liberal governments have both restricted our ability to sell oil while taking significant amounts of money from Alberta in transfer payments. Since Alberta has a border with the US, we have pipelines going south. All the while the Canadian economy has been severely under-performing relative to the US government. The last 2 points naturally push Alberta away from Canada towards the US, without any potential political interference.
> I hope all these countries understand the vast majority of US population is not okay with this
Where are the protests against the current regime in the US? I see more support rather than outrage. If the US in its current state was any other third-world shithole, you'd be invaded by 2003 US.
They used to! Anyway, Iceland is really easy to travel to. Everyone speaks perfect English, and the coffee is good. I know a little bit of Icelandic because they think I am Icelandic for some reason (I can read the signs at least, so maybe I don't look lost). There's a street with hot dog stands and stuff right in the middle of the capitol, which they seem to like. There are good hamburger places too, but they are expensive.
Lots of hydroelectric power (when they need more electricity in Greenland, they just put up another dam) and lots of access to cooling for data centres.
I have been to northern Norway and Iceland a few times.
It all started when I was running my previous SaaS at the peak of its growth. I needed a break, and wanted to go far away, while still being close enough if sh*t hit the fan. My co-founder had recently talked to some friends who had been to Tromsø, Norway. The place looked perfect, so I booked a 5-day solo trip there.
Places that are so distant, with such harsh conditions and few people living there always give me a feeling I do not experience anywhere else in the world. I feel small, irrelevant, in the face of brutal, powerful nature.
And believe me, it is a feeling that is overwhelming. But never have I perceived it as something negative. The opposite was true. Feeling small made me feel calm, embracing that that was the right spot for me as part of God's creation. Suddenly, all those dark clouds that followed me everywhere I went back home were... Gone.
If you ever have the opportunity to go to one of these places - go. It might change you in profound ways.
> Feeling small made me feel calm
Completely agree. I’ve been on many hikes and in particular there was one time where I was walking up a mountain, at winter, with skis on, that I felt like wow if everyone got to experience this particular feeling of just you and the mountains and not a single soul around, there would be less conflict in the world. If we all got to go on these long solitary trips in the mountains alone. All kinds of grievances and conflicts and whatever you might feel about people that you dislike, it all suddenly feels so insignificant and pointless to even expend any energy on.
Thanks for this. I'm going to Nesseby Norway next summer for 3 days over the solstice.
There doesn't look like much to do there, which I guess is kinda the point. I'm looking forward to it.
I had a similar feeling in the Faroe Islands. Even in mid summer the weather was rather inclement.
But the landscape was breathtaking, and the locals friendly in a low key way.
I’d love to go back.
More wind means less mosquitos. One step forward and one step back.
Also don't fly with sas to the faroes. They turn back and try again the next day like in the article. Fly atlantic airways, they have equipment to fly through the fog or they will refuel in iceland and try again same day.
And when you want to experiance true issolation in the face of nature, Alaska and Westerm Canada are waiting. Try a drive north through BC in winter. Fish on an Alaskan river only accessible by floatplane. Wake up to watch the northern lights only to realize you are looking south. Or pan for gold only to look up and see a grizzly cub walking cassually past.
Norway: 15 people per sq km.
Alberta: 6.7
British columbia: 5.5
Alaska: 0.5
Yukon territory: 0.1
Northwest Territories: 0.03
Finnmark in Northern Norway is more like 1.5-2, Troms is 3-6. But I agree, Alaska and Western Canada are places to go some day.
Funnily, as a student I had this offer to go to work as a waiter on Alaska. For different reasons that didn't materialize, but definitely this makes me want to go see it even more.
Not so much for the possible bear encounters. I do not think I am ready yet for that.
I happen to be one of the Danes who partially grew up in Greenland that he talks about in the article. I even recognize the places from the article.
Some of my cordial childhood memories are from there and it is a place I will forever love. One of the most visceral memories I have is looking across the ice fjord listening to the thunderous breaking of the ice bergs - you can hear the sounds on videos, but combined with the enormity of what is in front of you and actually being able to feel the sound in your body it can only be experienced by being there.
I can see that the author was initially worried that Greenland would be devoid of anything to do, which is of course not true, as is written in the article. Especially the people are one of a kind in what I can only describe as directness or pragmatism.
One time a local from the place I lived was driving his car as it broke down and - rather than having it regularly towed to the mechanic - actually decided to tow it with a group of sled dogs. We just watched him sticking his head out the window shouting commands to the dogs while driving by. The dogs there can distinguish left and right, so it was surprisingly trivial to get the car to the mechanic. The Greenlanders see nothing extraordinary about this.
In other words, it is really valuable to have local connections if you want a great vacation in Greenland. I can also recommend the small, mini village settlements that are spread across the coast of the grand county. Some of them have hotels also.
I became nostalgic so I wrote a little blog post with some pictures for you people: https://lucasblog.dk/post/Greenland
Thanks for sharing. Can you tell us where the “if you know where this is” photo is, please?
And how would you make local connections before visiting?
This video about Camp Century in Greenland is fascinating: https://youtu.be/OndXawgRAeo
"The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him; but when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long, it takes away your appetite."
Moby-Dick
Herman Melville
I've had whale when I went to Norway.
Was it good? It was OK. Would I have it again? Probably not.
Still a nice experience. Also trying cured reindeer, moose and seal slices was pretty unique.
It's funny to me that in portraying Indiana as a "blank state" he's highlighting one of the most beautiful parts of the state (the route through the Dunes along the Michigan lakefront; if you've seen "Road To Perdition", you know what that area looks like). It's not important to the article, a complete tangent, but I can't not call that out.
Then again, that stretch also has Gary.
Having grown up in that area of the Midwest, I largely agree with the author's categorization, except that "people on their way to somewhere better who got tired and decided this was good enough" describes a LOT of the midwest, not just Indiana. Significant chunks of Michigan, Ohio, and Missouri, most of Iowa/Kansas/Nebraska, etc.
If you read the history of westward expansion, "got tired and decided this was good enough" is literally true for how much of the area got initially settled (by white people)
It's really easy to write off a giant part of the country that millions of people live in as tired (and the implication underneath is usually "backward"), it's also dehumanizing them and makes assumptions about their quality of life when it might actually be a lot better than the people making these assumptions.
Spend some time not just driving through them, and one may be surprised to find plenty of diverse and interesting people that live full lives with rich family and social bonds, reasonably priced housing, ample winter outdoor activities (a lot of people actually want snow because it's beautiful and you can do fun things with it) and plenty of nearby nature and recreation opportunities, which I would contrast less unfavorably than the zeitgeist against the crowded, expensive vagrant culture that tends to dominate the more popular places on earth.
I lived in the area for more than 20 years, have annually visited family living there for my entire life even after I left, and consider myself quite qualified to comment on the area, the people who live there, and their culture, thanks.
I've traveled a lot through the area. I was throughout Ohio earlier this year, spent two weeks in Illinois last year, etc.
The phrase “got tired “is not referring to the modern populations but rather the people who founded those original settlements in those states centuries ago.
They didn't "get tired", they found rich soil and ample water to do farming and milling, which is what they were intending to find. It's called the bread basket of America for a reason.
In some places, some people absolutely could not endure the long travels to the West Coast, for example the Oregon Trail was extremely difficult and many people quit somewhere in the middle and settled into those Midwestern states. Yes they did in fact get tired, in some situations.
Agree: a farmer arriving in Indiana having previous farmed in New England or New York would have thought he'd died and went to farmer heaven.
I took a moment to realize there’s a place called Gary, Indiana. And that there isn’t just some guy who is so infamous that he’s just known as Gary.
It’s actually a very famous city, but not for entirely good reasons. For starters, it did in my youth have the highest per capita rate of murder in the United States.
However, Michael Jackson is from there. So there’s that.
> it did in my youth have the highest per capita rate of murder in the United States.
> However, Michael Jackson is from there.
There are no coincidences.
Clearly not a fan of musical theater. The Music Man ~~takes place in~~ repeatedly refers to Gary. Ron Howard sings a song called Gary Indiana in the movie version. He’s about waist high in that movie.
Pretty close, but the musical takes place in the fictional town of River City, Iowa and Henry Hill claims to be an alumnus of the Gary Conservatory (class of '05), which is the hook used to launch the song in question.
D’oh. You are correct.
Gary, Indiana is still memorable to me 50 years later from when we'd drive through it, handkerchiefs pressed to our faces to block out the terrible smell from some sort of toxic industry. Is Gary still like that or has it been cleaned up?
The town's even referenced in Futurama:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qUW1pabZpLE
It is known for not being Louisiana, Paris, France, New York, or Rome.
Illinois has a few rust belt towns as well. Decatur is the asshole of Illinois, with a water supply to match. Though for variety, it smells like old gym socks instead. Corn processing plants are almost as bad as paper mills, and when I lived there it had two, ADM and the very aptly named Staley.
East St. Louis, Illinois would like to have a chat with Decatur about which is worst.
The thing about the middle of Illinois is they consider Chicago to be a separate state and East St Louis to be Missouri’s problem. “Oh you’re from Chicago” is a common reply any time you found out you’re from an exurb. Often said with just a hint of dismissal. That’s not the real Illinois. Nobody talks about Rock Island and Moline (the Illinois half of the Quad Cities) this way, for instance.
Carbondale is slightly better, but I think it’s a notorious party school for very good reasons. Small town Midwest has a saying that “there’s nothing to do here except drink, fuck, and knock over mailboxes”. Most Iowa this is especially true, but Carbondale also gave me that vibe. Also that’s a fucking long drive. St Louis too. Nobody appreciates that Illinois is half as tall as California (not that anyone appreciates how long a trip up and down CA is either).
Indiana is seriously considering annexing much of central/southern Illinois. It’s amazing just how aggressively divisive politics have become in the last 20 years.
Newark New Jersey just walked into the room. “The armpit of America“.
Let’s not bicker and argue about who killed who. This is a happy occasion!
Gary is also interesting, though. It used to be interesting for good economic and cultural reasons, then bad reasons. Now it's experiencing some revitalization in the manner of Detroit or Rockford, which might actually make it more boring, though better to live in.
I thought the Indiana aside was odd as an objective assessment, but it worked well as a flavorful bit of travel writing to help me understand the perspective of the visitor to Greenland.
Gary is fine during the day compared to a lot of the surrounding areas because the population is actually fairly diverse. White, black, latino, there are enough of you that it's possible to blend in as long as you dress poor enough. If you aren't into drugs or banging and out during daylight hours and don't flash valuable you'll probably be fine.
Vs. say some parts Cleveland, where I've been robbed at gunpoint the second my vehicle broke down and people noticed I'm not from around there.
Cleveland rocks!
Yep. Even worse, the problem is recursive: a town I lived in for a while growing up, Vandalia, Ohio (a suburb of Dayton, itself not exactly a booming metropolis in this millennium, but I digress) was settled by westward migrants aiming for Vandalia, Illinois - a town in the absolute middle of nowhere that just so happened to be the end of the National Road, presumably because the road builders got bored and/or ran out of money. Anyway, the travelers got bored and/or ran out of money on their way to Illinois, gave up, said "good enough", and named their new Ohio settlement after the place they failed to reach.
The Midwest is many things, but for quite a lot of it, "where anyone really wanted to get stuck" is not one of them.
Gary is basically part of the Chicago metro area; it's not characteristic of the run of the state you go through between Michigan and Illinois. You don't see it until after you commit to getting onto the Skyway.
and gary was where michael jackson was born.
Good enough, but also the abject fear of seeing the rocky mountains rear up from the plains. For someone walking beside a wagon in late summer, a horizon of tree and snow-covered mountains topped with jagged peaks would seem like the end of the earth.
Irked me too. I'm running for state representative in House District 9, which covers much of that area. The district is drop dead gorgeous and it's growing rapidly. There's a lot here.
Whoah, neat, congratulations or whatever you say to that. Good luck! Were you already involved in local politics in the area?
> whatever you say to that
Illegitimis non carborundum?
Thanks. That's exactly the right thing to say.
yes, quite a bit
Pretty much everyone on earth is proud of their home area. I've never really been to a place where people didn't describe their home as one of the most beautiful places on earth.
Earth has a lot of nice places. The flatness of Indiana can be calming and beautiful. But if you're driving on main roads, it's not very exciting, and it's not the kind of exciting people will fly across the world to see. And that was the point in the article.
Try going to west Oklahoma sometime. Not even the people who've never traveled think it's the most beautiful place on Earth.
I love my home town. I grew up there, and it was fine. I would never describe it as one of the most beautiful places on earth. I'm I proud of it? Only in the sense it's home and I have family there.
This area has a lot of hills.
Many areas have some minor hills, or some variant infinitely more interesting (hoosier myself, I regret moving here 10 years ago and may finally be bothered enough by it to deal with moving out in Spring). All in all, a state this big with less than 1,000 ft between the highest and lowest parts is just disappointingly flat, given the general lack of other natural attraction.
I'd say the caves in that region of the state are interesting, but options like Mammoth Cave are not that far away in KY (and they have better hills too).
People do fly out to vacation in the part of Indiana he highlighted!
I'm not saying Indiana on the whole isn't flat. When I was growing up, their ad campaign was literally "there's more than corn in Indiana". I'm just saying, he couldn't have picked a worse map location to make the point with.
Unfortunately the dunes and lake are not visible from that stretch of I-94.
Southern Indiana is another beautiful part of the state. It's mostly rolling hills with lush green forests and farms.
You don't have to drive it on I-94; in fact, for many years it was faster not to, because of insane bottom of the lake traffic. You can take the Dunes Highway instead (and then keep off 94 up the Michigan shore; there's good stuff up there).
I need to do that next time I’m driving between Chicago and Michigan. I haven’t seen the dunes there yet and I bet it’s incredible.
I'm speaking up for Indiana here but honestly if you're looking for those dunescapes and beaches, western Michigan is the better bet. Road To Perdition was filmed around Saugatuck, just an hour into Michigan; that part of Michigan really is worth a trip to see (you'd want book a place to stay up by the lake for at least a couple days; it's not so much a sightseeing deal as a chill-out-by-the-lake deal).
The whole stretch though from Chicago up to Traverse City is basically where Chicago vacations.
I have done that! Reminded me of some dunes I scaled in Jordan.
And the southern part of the state is actually one of the most famous places in the United States for painters to retreat in the autumn as there are no trees as beautiful as you will find there.
Calling some states good states and others not is just a silly thing to do anyway.
Having been to Greenland recently, I found his description of it similarly flawed.
In what way/ways?
I’ve never been to Greenland or (to my knowledge) met anyone who has. What is/was your experience like?
This is good to know, I have passed through Indiana a number of times on I-70 and I've found it to be particularly flat and boring. I know there are pretty places everywhere but that stretch has felt like exactly what he was saying, a place you have to get through to go somewhere else.
Whenever I see people say Indiana is flat and boring I know they haven't been south of I-70.
Yeah I didn't open this link to see Indiana catching stray bullets. Does a disservice to this article.
I prefer to see that part as an up-front, honest disclosure of his biases and negativity.
Heh, as someone who lives there (Northwest Indiana) that was a rough read.
Then again, our state motto did used to be "Crossroads of America", so I guess that's kind of fair. These days it's the more aspirational "More to Discover".
I live somewhere that you’ll find almost nothing but insults about online. Meanwhile it remains a great place to live because those people don’t come here. Consider it a blessing.
Cleveland?
The Indiana Dunes is indeed one of the most beautiful unexpected places I have encountered traveling in the US. And Wagner’s have to be the absolute best ribs in the world.
I bugged me too. I'm from Southern Indiana and when I hear people say "Indiana is flat" or "Indiana is boring to look at" all I hear them say is "I've only been to the Northern part of Indiana."
There is a lot to shit on Indiana for but its natural beauty isn't one of them.
It's likely people from west of the Mississippi.
Indiana and other midwestern states have some awesome nature, but it's basically taken for granted by people from there because you grow up having your family show you all those places. Imagine if aliens showed up to a megacity, and declared there was no food anywhere -- a local would show them places called "restaurants" that actually have more varied and competitive tasty foods than about any farmland areas you'd find, but the aliens would think there's food only in the farmlands and declare the city worthless for finding something to eat.
If you drive out west, you don't even have to look for them; astounding nature is evereywhere.
End result is people from midwestern states appreciate the beauty of their state, but people who haven't lived there for years generally don't. Even after leaving the midwest, I have a high appreciation for the natural landscape, but that's only because I know where to go when I get there.
> The second I stepped outside I was set upon by a flood of mosquitos like I have never experienced before. I have been to the jungles of Vietnam, the swamps of Florida and the Canadian countryside. This was beyond anything I've ever experienced.
> There are bugs in my mouth, ears, eyes and nose almost immediately. The photo below is not me being dramatic, it is actually what is required to keep them off of me.
> In fact what you need to purchase in order to walk around this area at all are basically bug nets for your face. They're effectively plastic mesh bags that you put on.
This is pretty standard for Scotland in the summer too.
That first google map has "Myggedalen" (Mosquito Valley) listed as a Panoramic View. At least they're honest :-)
Myggedalen looks like "midge dale".
Etymologically I'm pretty sure it is.
In the 70's we visited relatives in northern Minnesota and took a .22 rifle to a dump, I think to shoot rats. So many mosquitos would immediately land on us and the rifle that you couldn't see the sight on the end of the barrel. We got out of there quick.
The midges are horrific. It's amazing how something so tiny can make your life so miserable. I don't know how people in the olden days survived. I wonder what kind of social and political effects the midges had. I can imagine Scots with all their gifts of the mind and body fleeing and surrendering to the English just to get away from them.
> I don't know how people in the olden days survived.
Maybe they found a material they could smear on their body.
For a similar example, I have a friend who spends a lot of time hiking and camping. He tells me that the first day, he needs to apply sunscreen. The next day onward, he doesn't need to anymore, as his body oil and sweat seems to do the job.
It makes sense that our skin has not evolved to be cleaned every day.
People simply got used to it, for the most part. It takes me a few weeks to readjust to the insects whenever I go back to the Arctic, after which they're just dramatically less annoying.
Keep in mind that the swarms you see today are usually a historical anomaly exacerbated by changing conditions in the Arctic. Longer, warmer summers create more spaces for them to breed, and sudden, bitter cold spells in winter affect the predators controlling their population more than the insects themselves. The palearctic region is a very different place than it was centuries ago.
In Scotland they would have smeared bog myrtle over themselves. Other alternatives were animal fat mixed with an aromatic or even tar and pine resin. As far as I know most cultures had some sort of equivalent.
The best contemporaneous example would be the otjize clay rub used by the Himba in Namibia. It’s largely an adaptation to water scarcity but it also protects them from insects and cleans their hair and skin by trapping dirt and flaking off.
Most people don't have nearly that good luck.
I'm fortunate that they just don't like me as much as some of the people I've done week+ hiking/camping trips with. I was ok with deet. Some folks still got dozens of bites even after it.
«This would end up being a theme, where buildings representing Denmark were made out of lots of wood, almost to ensure that you understood they weren't from here.»
Wooden buildings is much more of a Swedish or Norwegian thing than Danish. Wood is just a good material for building in the arctic.
Why is it a good material? I would think steel or reinforced concrete would be better, with cheap corrugated metal paneling. And either way you need reinforced concrete foundations right?
Wood is a much better insulator than those two materials. At cold temps even the fasteners holding on cladding over foam sheets is a significant source of lost heat, so if screwed into wood instead of steel framing, you conduct much less heat.
Can’t you put some insulation on fasteners? Or just hold insulation on from the inside without piercing the outside wall?
Certainly for Sweden and Norway, wood is very plentiful, and a good insulator. I don't know if steel would technically be better, but historically at least it would have been harder to get hold of.
hence, "Norwegian wood"?
I flew over Greenland coming back from Europe recently. From the air, the fjords and glacial snowscapes there and in northern Canada are profoundly beautiful and completely devoid of signs of humans in a way you don’t see even in some of the remotest parts of the US.
Definitely worth opening the shade for if you have the opportunity
I’ve flown that way but got absolutely blinded by whatever is outside - it was very hard to tell any details on the land below.
The best flights are to/from Seattle. Copenhagen/Seattle goes over the far north of Greenland.
Same here. My favorite pictures from flights are from the London/Seattle route over Greenland.
Enjoyed this. Reminds me of the great Idle Words (Maciej Ceglowski’s blog) travel posts.
Shuffleboard At McMurdo: https://idlewords.com/2016/05/shuffleboard_at_mcmurdo.htm
There is a YouTuber making a really remote cabin in I think northern Canada called Off Grid Engineering and he has a similar narrative style. Nice :). Recommended
came to say the same thing :-) I love those posts; this one was right up there with Maciej's
Having grown up in northern Indiana and having spent my honeymoon ski touring in Greenland - I must say I don’t find the two to be very comparable. The skiing was significantly better in Greenland and the people much friendlier to boot.
Poor doggywogs :(
Edit: Wow, HN didn't like that. Nevermind, screw the dogs I guess, just toss the frozen ones over the cliff.
> Even professional travel personalities seemed to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. "There's the grocery store again!"
Hah, that's exactly the feeling I got when my favorite travel YouTuber went there.
Other than what in this post you also had boat excursions which were nice.
I'm not a fan of bugs but it's only when I consume these travelogues I'm reminded that I should be grateful things are nowhere as apocalyptic over where I live in south India.
Charming, and well written! I'd love to go backpacking there some day - perhaps the Arctic Circle Trail.
Nice try, Matt. I think everyone knows you just want Greenland all to yourself.
Funniest shit I've read in awhile on here!
Perfect weekend read - kudos on a nice piece of writing
> There is nothing distinct about Indiana, it's just a place full of people who got too tired on their way to somewhere better and decided "this is good enough".
This is how Norte Dame was (allegedly) founded. Priests set out from the East Coast, planning to found the greatest Catholic University in the world in California. They get to Indiana and encounter a terrible snowstorm. They hunker down and decide they’ll get moving again when the weather improved. It never did.
I'm not sure what this person expected, they seem to have gone in this with Rose tinted glasses only to come away with it feeling like "Greenland, why?" It's like they set out to prove a point and were disappointed.
Beautiful, but definitely not worth invading or sending our troops to take over, if you don't awfully mind Mr. President.
Somebody is likely to take it at some point, for strategic military and resource purposes.
Denmark took it centuries ago, and that's how it should stay unless or until the Greenlandic people decide otherwise.
What kind of argument is that!?
Who controls what territory in the world is hardly stable. At some point, if one is not a military power, one will have to take sides. If, for example, valuable resources are discovered in Greenland.
Well, US has the base near Guantanamo; I haven't been to that side but I have been to Guantanamo proper... trust me, that place is hot and has mosquitoes and two decades ago the naval base was almost as infamous as North Korea. And then there's the newly opened "alligator Alcatraz"... I think Mr. President have gotten some ideas for Greenland :-)
/s
fun-fact: CIA is currently mucking around in Greenland trying to get rid of people against annexation
this is not going to end well
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0j9l08902eo
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit...
>fun-fact: CIA is currently mucking around in Greenland trying to get rid of people against annexation
That's a very misleading phrasing for what's essentially an influence operation. Your wording of "get rid of people ..." implies there's some assassinations/violence going on, but there's nothing to suggest that's happening. If Republicans/Democrats or even Russia was running an influence operation in the US, nobody would characterize that as "getting rid" of opponents or whatever.
In spite of wanna-be-kings like Putin and Trump, the obvious historical trend is for larger empires and countries to break up into smaller independent ones.
Exactly my thoughts.
I think US ownership (not necessarily of land) is inevitable, but it is going to take a couple of decades of these kind of polarising pieces.
I think it even makes sense if it were pursued in a different way. Greenland is looking for full independence but can't really hack it financially without aid. I think the COFA (Compact of Free Association) model that we have with Palau and Marshall Islands would work well.
We get expanded military rights and potentially some mineral/drilling rights, while Greenland gets protection, lots of money, access to USPS domestic rates, and probably increased tourism in addition to the independence they desire. Their citizens could also live and work in the US indefinitely.
I think the Danish intelligence services should apply this model to Hawaii and Guam. It would make a lot of sense. Hawaii and Guam could get better health care on average while being semi independent. The EU could protect both with nuclear weapons.
Native Hawaiians would escape the continued mistreatment:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/hawaii-no...
I think Radio Free Denmark should launch a soft power campaign.
Lol I realize this is tongue in cheek but Denmark has no ability to administer or protect anything that far away. Nor are those places seeking independence.
But hey, maybe I'm wrong and the Danes will successfully integrate a large group of people that don't share their values. They've already done that, right?
> I realize this is tongue in cheek
That's your mistake.
> Their citizens could also live and work in the US indefinitely.
Not sure why Greenlanders would care at all.
They can already do the same in Denmark, which is a country with far better standards of living.
Oh gimme a break. That's one of the largest benefits to COFA and is heavily used by the Marshallese. Greenland on its own is not a first world country - there simply isn't enough population/work and it's a hard existence as detailed in TFA.
You may not want to come here and that's fine, but it's a huge draw and will continue to be. Administrations are fleeting, but the allure of opportunity remains. You're posting on a forum that is somewhat of a monument to exactly that.
EDIT: some of this made a bit more sense prior to your hasty edit
Greenland needs protection from whom? The only country threatening it is the US.
The Arctic will be the battleground and trade route of the future as it warms. Being associated with the US is preferable to the other options (Russia, China most likely). There won't be an option of the status quo.
Greenland, as part of Denmark, is part of and protected by NATO. As its in the Atlantic it benefits fully from that treaty.
It is also protected by Denmark's membership in the EU and the CSDP by virtue of the EU's collective self defense clause (which protects all of all member states territory, not just the parts in europe).
The status quo - apart from the part where the US is threatening to violate its NATO treaty obligations and invade something it is obligated to protect from invasion - is just fine.
I don't think that's any more inevitable than US ownership of Scotland or Finland.
inevitable... because of Manifest Destiny?
Like so (source Wikipedia)
"... there were three basic tenets behind the concept:
The assumption of the unique moral virtue of the United States.
The assertion of its mission to redeem the world by the spread of republican government and more generally the "American way of life".
The faith in the nation's divinely ordained destiny to succeed in this mission." ?
US ownership would be pointless. The US already has relatively free access to its ally Greenland for military purposes. See for example the US base in Pituffik (formerly Thule). Proposing to annex your allies is a bit rude, to say the least...
If a country other than Denmark was to claim Greenland, either Iceland or Canada would make more sense.
Why is that inevitable?
Sounds like Danish former colonies aren't the only thing three letter agencies are bumbling around in.
What do you mean inevitable? The people there want nothing to do being somebody's colony.
>I think US ownership (not necessarily of land)
What would that even mean? Especially the use the word 'ownership'?
I think there's zero chance of US long-term influence on Greenland. They simply have no reason to prefer foreign domination, when they can simply be sovereign. I would place independence + EU membership as more probably than any association with the US, and I think them staying within Denmark is much more likely than them becoming independent.
> They simply have no reason to prefer foreign domination
The reason is they require subsidy to live there. The economy appears to run at a net deficit. The same reason the Vikings gave up on it.
I don't think the subsidy is required. The net deficit is small.
Some Swedish regions also have a net deficit relative to other Swedish regions, but that doesn't mean that they don't work out economically. After all, not all economic activity in region is taxed there. A firm in Örnsköldsvik pays their taxes to the Swedish government, and then the Swedish government distributes part back to the region.
It's around 600 million USD per year, on 56836 people. Around $1000 per head. But GDP per capita is $58,498.
> I don't think the subsidy is required. The net deficit is small.
Continuing to lose money leads to bankruptcy.
10k.
>They simply have no reason to prefer foreign domination, when they can simply be sovereign.
No, they can't. The likes of Palau are (barely) viable as sovereign countries, because at least the geographic size is as small as their populations. Greenland is not like that at all.
It is absolutely, positively, completely impossible for 50K people to by themselves maintain a country Greenland's size. The $600M annual subsidy by Denmark does not include the funds Copenhagen spends on also running Greenland's foreign relations and defense. But in reality, Denmark spends a relative pittance on those things (like "six dog sleds" pittance); the vast majority of the cost of defending Greenland is borne by the US, as has been the case since 1940. Why should the US shoulder the burden without commensurate political power?
Oh god, this CIA meddling in never ends well for anyone. I mean afterwards Americans will make a Hollywood movie claiming that situation was complicated and their intentions were good, but it will end up with some sort of hell.
I don't think that's an accurate characterization of either of those articles. It sounds like they're trying to find groups who want to be independent, probably with the goal of artificially propping them up. It's still gross, but not as gross as hunting dissidents.
>find groups who want to be independent, probably with the goal of artificially propping them up
The same thing is happening in Alberta. It is unsettling and disturbing
No different than the Russians hunting for American dissidents to prop up. Well, a little different in that the Russians hunted for them in the Senate chamber and golf clubs.
The Trudeau/Carney government is doing that all on their own. Just gonna drop this here:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...
Edit - for those who don't get it, Alberta derives most of its wealth from oil. Successive Liberal governments have both restricted our ability to sell oil while taking significant amounts of money from Alberta in transfer payments. Since Alberta has a border with the US, we have pipelines going south. All the while the Canadian economy has been severely under-performing relative to the US government. The last 2 points naturally push Alberta away from Canada towards the US, without any potential political interference.
There are less than 60,000 people in Greenland
Not 6 million, only 60K
It's like a small city population spread out much further
Much easier to disappear opposition than try to recruit people pro-oppression
This is not going to end well because it's not about the mineral rights
It's about the northwest passage, which will then be another cold war with Canada
I hope all these countries understand the vast majority of US population is not okay with this
> I hope all these countries understand the vast majority of US population is not okay with this
Where are the protests against the current regime in the US? I see more support rather than outrage. If the US in its current state was any other third-world shithole, you'd be invaded by 2003 US.
I note there was no mention of a McDonald's. I for one look forward to the McWhale.
Why would you want McDonald's when you have pølsevogn?
https://www.facebook.com/p/Kunuks-P%C3%B8lsevogn-61575713986...
This makes sense. Denmark is to pigs what New Zealand is to sheep.
Not even Iceland has McDonald's
They used to! Anyway, Iceland is really easy to travel to. Everyone speaks perfect English, and the coffee is good. I know a little bit of Icelandic because they think I am Icelandic for some reason (I can read the signs at least, so maybe I don't look lost). There's a street with hot dog stands and stuff right in the middle of the capitol, which they seem to like. There are good hamburger places too, but they are expensive.
Greenland is another level.
We doing travel blogs here now?
Always have. Because it's interesting stuff.
The submission guidelines summed up in a sentence is "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
Travel blogs for remote places definitely do gratify my intellectual curiosity.
Far from being the first time I see it. I don't see why we shouldn't.
Greenland may be a good place to put data centers on
I must have missed that bit in the post.
Lots of hydroelectric power (when they need more electricity in Greenland, they just put up another dam) and lots of access to cooling for data centres.
Is this a US propaganda article to make greenland join the USA?