The lure of massive ice deserts, virgin landscapes, polar bears and authentic traditions is attracting tourists to Greenland's eastern shores, an area previously regarded as a big mass of nothing much.

Remote, cold and gigantic, Greenland, an autonomous region of Denmark, was never destined for mass tourism but its western part, free of ice and open to the world, already accomodates a steady stream of visitors. Not so the east though, which has been so cut off by ice that even European missionaries only got there 125 years ago.

"The east coast has remained wild and managed to safeguard its culture and traditions," says Anda, a former hunter and now a dancer in Kulusuk, one of many colourful villages along this fjord.

Anda, bare-chested and wearing amulets, dances to drummed music at the only souvenir shop in Kulusuk, a hunter village of 300 inhabitants and 1000 dogs.

Battling the elements

Kulusuk, surrounded by islands, is part of a 1.45-million km² ice desert — the combined size of France, Britain and Italy — and inhabited by just 3500 people who resist a singularly inhospitable climate.

Once completely isolated by the ice masses migrating from the North Pole, Kulusuk today boasts its own airport, with a clay runway, which accomodates flights mostly from Iceland, just an hour and 30 minutes away by plane.

"These are well-off tourists, looking for the wild and authentic Greenland where time has nearly stood still," said Quentin Gaudillen (25), a tour guide from France.

After moving to Iceland in 2001 to study, he "fell in love" with Greenland's eastern part, which welcomes some 3000 tourists every year, compared with 27 000 for the rest of the island.

Visitors from the United States, Germany, Taiwan, Japan and France come "to live a unique experience and hike on magnificent glaciers", said Gudrun Eyjolfsdottir (30), a blonde Icelander who runs the gift shop.

She lives here with her husband, Johan Brandsson, an anthropologist who organises tourist trips, and their five-year old son Valur, who proudly shows the hide of a polar bear "killed by daddy".

Village at the end of the world

Eyjolfsdottir said the recent construction of the 'Hotel Kulusuk' has boosted this village's fortunes, making it the most-visited spot on the east coast.

"Tourists come here to breathe the atmosphere of a living village, where kids play in streets almost without cars, where old-age pensioners chat on a bench, and where hunters show their skills in a kayak," she said.

They also buy tupilaks, small figures which represent mythical or spiritual creatures from the Inuit culture made from rare narwhal ivory, and, above all, reindeer antlers.

Angela Ebahie, an Italian from Padua on an excursion from Iceland, said Kulusuk "is a village nearly at the end of the world, full of life, authentic and worth seeing, if only for a day".

Polar bears are one of the region's main attractions
She admired the polar bear skins and said she "dreams of seeing one alive". Eyjolfsdottir said she had just sold the skins of two bears, killed nearby last year, to a Frenchman for 70 000 kroner (€9500), a sign of how lucrative the hunt can be.

Global warming strikes home

But as a consequence of global warming, the sea did not freeze over this year. "No ice, no bears," said Janus, a former hunter now wheelchair-bound in his seventies, who has killed a total of 80 bears.

A conference on global warming in Greenland ended last week with a call to heed the plight of the local community as the ice, and with it their livelihood, melts away.

"Greenland is living the dramatic reality of global warming which scientists have predicted for the Arctic region," Hans Enoksen, Greenland's head of government, said.

"Hunters and fishermen have to stay at home for long stretches of time because they can't hunt if there is no ice or fish if there are violent storms," he said.

AFP