Free Sixty Degrees North by Malachy Tallack

but I was stopped by a loud voice calling. A man was beckoning me from his open window,Danish rock music pouring out from behind him. I couldn’t understand what the man was shouting, nor could I see the expression on his face, friendly or angry. But he stretched his arm in my direction and called me over, so I moved, somewhat reluctantly, towards him.
    â€˜Dansk?’ he asked, when I was close enough to comprehend.
    â€˜Nej, Engelsk,’ I responded, for simplicity’s sake.
    â€˜Where are you from?’ he said slowly, in English.
    â€˜From Scotland,’ I answered, a little more accurately this time.
    â€˜Scotland, yes,’ he smiled. This was clearly a welcome answer, for the man immediately invited me in to his house, and sat me down opposite him by the window. An open can of beer stood between us on the table. ‘I am Thomas,’ he said, then elaborated. ‘Thomas Jefferson – you know? – the United States’ president. That was not me!’
    He laughed, then lapsed back into Danish, where he remained for the rest of the conversation. I tried my best to follow.
    He told me he was a pensioner, though he was only 57 years old. He used to be a sailor, working on the ferry between Esbjerg in Denmark and Harwich in England, but now he was retired. This was his house, he said, but he didn’t really live here; he lived with his mother. There was a photo of her on the wall, which he pointed out to me with pride. He lived with his mother, but he came to this house during the day to listen to music and to get drunk. In the summertime he went hunting and fishing in his boat, and sometimes he took tourists up the fjord. But for now, it seemed, the next can was as far as he was going.
    A big man, with a slight limp, and a face that smiled even when his mouth did not, Thomas was, I thought, somewhat shy, though alcohol had brought him confidence. His exuberance was not really talkativeness either, just enthusiasmfor sharing a moment; and like many of the Greenlanders I met, his conversation was punctuated by long, silent gazes out of the window.
    Thomas was not the only person in town who spent his days with a beer in front of him. I was visited at the cabin on more than one occasion by men some considerable distance from sobriety. They were always polite and quiet, but still I was disconcerted by these uninvited guests. Alcoholism in Greenland, as in many Arctic communities, is a major problem among the native population. More recently, drug and solvent abuse have also become serious issues, along with a rise in teenage pregnancy and in health problems such as obesity. The reason, in part, is poverty, and a lack of education. But it goes deeper than that.
    In Narsaq, two weeks earlier, I had spoken to Bolethe Stenskov, a social worker and counsellor, who told me that the country was suffering from the problems of rapid social change. ‘We have moved from being hunters to modern life very quickly,’ she said. In just a few decades a massive cultural transition has been made, and it has not been an easy one. Low self-esteem is a particularly significant problem, she explained, especially among men, who find themselves without their traditional community status. Once they were hunters, providing for their family. Now it is much harder for them to find a role. Capitalism has introduced a new set of values to Inuit culture – a framework of indulgence – and while Western materialism has yet to be fully embraced, our compulsive consumption has been adopted in an altogether damaging way. Alcohol, drugs, tobacco, junk food: this is non-accumulative consumption. It is our own excess, translated into Greenlandic.
    Bolethe offers support, advice and information to those who need it, and despite her familiarity with the problems, she maintains a remarkably positive outlook. She sees her job as, unfortunately, a necessary one within this society.The damaging cycles of addiction,