Welcome to Polar Podcasts

Welcome to Polar Podcasts, where you’ll hear stories from geologists who’ve spent their careers, their lives, exploring and studying the remarkable and remote geology of Greenland. Why did they become fascinated with Greenland? What were the problems and the discoveries that drove them? And what was it like working in these remote places, where few people venture, even now? 

Transcript

Transcript

Polar Podcast Introduction

Note: Polar Podcasts are designed to be heard. If you are able, please listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not evident in the transcript.

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Julie 0:00
Welcome to Polar Podcasts, where you’ll hear stories from geologists who’ve spent their careers, their lives, exploring and studying the remarkable and remote geology of Greenland. Why did they become fascinated with Greenland? What were the problems and the discoveries that drove them? And what was it like working in these remote places, where few people venture, even now?

Over the coming weeks, you’ll hear from six of the many geologists who have devoted their research and exploration careers to Greenland.

Allen Nutman 0:32
We were left on our own for the best part of three months, one geologist and a field assistant. So basically field assistants were, you know, paired with a, a geologist for life, shall we say.

Brian Upton 0:46
Then it got really rough. We got to a stage when you lost all visible contact between sea and air. There was nothing except moving water. Then we er, took a big one, green, which smashed the window in the wheelhouse. My first thought was, 'I haven’t written a will'.

Agnete Steenfelt 1:03
We were also, in fact, invited to China as early as in 1981. They had a Ministry for Uranium Exploration with fifty thousand employed people. And I was thinking of our small uranium exploration unit in the survey with two people at that time.

Kent Brooks 1:23
And er, I had a, a pistol there under my pillow and I managed to get the pistol out, carefully unzipped the door of the tent and looked out and there was a bear about a, he had his snout about a foot away from me.

Bjørn Thomassen 1:36
And there were thousands of geese, and they were making those geese noises, you know. The whole valley was full of it. And I remember waking up, coming out of my tent one morning. They were all gone. And it was so quiet!

Niels Henriksen 1:49
What is of great value for the survey now. They have old hands like Stuart Watt, Feiko Kalsbeek, and myself – we are all from 1933 – acting as the survey’s memory.

Julie 2:06
Join me each week to hear stories of the exploration of Greenland from the 50s to the present through the lives of geologists who have experienced places that few people ever will. I’m Julie Hollis and this is Polar Podcasts.