Last night the sun set at quarter to midnight local time and throughout the period of relative darkness it stayed barely hidden just below the northern horizon fringing it with a palette of reddish hues. Just after 0300 the colours intensified and slowly the upper limb of an enormous blood orange made its appearance over Greenland’s high mountain range. My last night watch on this Viking passage came to an end and, with less than 80 miles to go, we hope to arrive in Nuuk later this evening.
Although we were still some distance from the coast, we hoisted the Greenland courtesy flag, whose symbolic sun rising over a white horizon reflects the spectacle I had just witnessed.
As a special treat I made pancakes for breakfast, but I somehow feel that after having to put up with my cooking for the last 12 days, Nick and Ivan are looking forward to a nice meal at a good Nuuk restaurant. Unfortunately just as I was writing these lines, the wind has piped up from the north and is blowing stronger and stronger almost directly from ahead. This may delay our arrival, in which case we shall get to Nuuk early on Saturday, and thus celebrate not just a safe landfall but also Midsummer Day, the most important day of the year in the Viking calendar.
