Polar Podcasts
In Polar Podcasts, 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?
Episodes
38 episodes
31: Allen Nutman: A lifelong love of making geological maps
In this last episode of Polar Podcasts, we hear more from Allen Nutman, Professor of Geology at the University of Wollongong in Australia, about his lifelong passion for making geological maps, focused particularly on the Nuuk region, where he ...
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Season 1
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Episode 31
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15:05
30: Bjørn Thomassen: Chasing gold in wild weather, North-West Greenland
In this episode, we hear more from Bjørn Thomassen, emeritus senior scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, about facing severe storms while following up on gold anomalies on Kiatak – Northumberland Island – in northwest Gr...
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Season 1
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Episode 30
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17:42
29: Kent Brooks: Mantle xenoliths and dislocated shoulders
In this episode we hear more from Kent Brooks, emeritus Professor at the Geological Museum in Copenhagen, about the chance discovery of an unusual rock he picked up in East Greenland that led to years of productive research about the nature of ...
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Season 1
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Episode 29
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11:12
28: Bjørn Thomassen: Encounters with animals while prospecting for lead-zinc in east Greenland
In this episode, we hear more from Bjørn Thomassen, Emeritus senior scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, about some of his experiences with wildlife around Flemming Fjord, in central East Greenland, while prospecting for...
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Season 1
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Episode 28
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12:48
27: Agnete Steenfelt – From geochemical exploration to a Greenland-wide geochemical map
In this episode, we hear more from Agnete Steenfelt, emeritus senior scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, about developing the Greenland-wide geochemical sampling into a regional geochemical map of the whole island – a c...
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Season 1
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Episode 27
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10:54
26: Bjørn Thomassen – Stalked by a polar bear in East Greenland
In this episode we hear more from Bjørn Thomassen, emeritus senior scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, about a close encounter with a polar bear while on field work in east Greenland.
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Season 1
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Episode 26
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10:58
25: Brian Upton: Working in remote Northeast Greenland
In this episode, we hear more from Brian Upton, Emeritus Professor at the University of Edinburgh, about his expeditions to Northeast and North Greenland with the Geological Survey of Greenland, in environments in stark contrast to where he had...
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Season 1
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Episode 25
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9:21
24: Allen Nutman – “Faraway places with unpronounceable names” – dating Greenland’s ancient rocks
In this episode, we hear more from Allen Nutman, Professor of Geology at the University of Wollongong in Australia, about his work on dating some of the oldest rocks in the world, in the Isua supracrustal belt, close to the inland ice in the Nu...
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Season 1
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Episode 24
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25:38
23: Bjørn Thomassen: Vertical fieldwork – exploring the niobium-tantalum-enriched Motzfeldt Intrusion
In this episode we hear more from Bjørn Thomassen, emeritus senior scientist, about his first job working for the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, running a field program to study the niobium- and tantalum-enriched Motzfeldt Intrusio...
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Season 1
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Episode 23
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18:20
22: Bjørn Thomassen – Mining the Black Angel
In this episode, we hear more from Bjørn Thomassen, emeritus senior scientist from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, about his time working as a geologist and later a mine inspector at the Black Angel lead zinc mine in west Greenl...
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Season 1
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Episode 22
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24:11
21: Niels Henriksen: Reaching remote western North Greenland – mapping the Thule region
In this episode, we hear more from Niels Henriksen, emeritus senior scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, about geological mapping in remote western North Greenland in the mid 1980s.
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Season 1
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Episode 21
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14:23
20: Allen Nutman: “What if the boundary is folded?” – figuring out the structure of Earth’s ancient crust
In this episode, we hear more from Allen Nutman, Professor of Geology at the University of Wollongong in Australia, about how his mapping work together with Vic McGregor and Clark Friend led to the beginnings of a model for how the ancient rock...
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Season 1
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Episode 20
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14:08
19: Kent Brooks: “Nanoq! Nanoq!” Close encounters with polar bears in East Greenland
In this episode we hear more from Kent Brooks, emeritus Professor at the Geological Museum in Copenhagen, about his encounters with polar bears while on geological field work in East Greenland.
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Season 1
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Episode 19
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13:08
18: Agnete Steenfelt – The beginnings of systematic geochemical exploration of Greenland
In this episode, we hear more from Agnete Steenfelt, emeritus senior scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, about introducing a program of stream sediment sampling to surveys in East Greenland in the mid-1970s – a program ...
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Season 1
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Episode 18
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13:18
17: Allen Nutman: “Paired for life” – the beginning of a career mapping the oldest rocks in the world
In this episode we hear from Allen Nutman, Professor of Geology at the University of Wollongong in Australia, about his early years working as a field assistant in Greenland while studying geology at Exeter University, which led him to work for...
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Season 1
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Episode 17
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18:04
16: Kent Brooks: Discovering gold in the Skaergaard intrusion
In this episode, we hear more from Kent Brooks, Emeritus Professor at the Geological Museum in Copenhagen. After a sabbatical working in Papua New Guinea in the mid-1980s, Kent returned to working in East Greenland and the next phase in the sto...
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Season 1
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Episode 16
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18:51
15: Agnete Steenfelt – Exploring for uranium in East Greenland in the 1970s
In this episode, we hear from Agnete Steenfelt, emeritus senior scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, about how she started out with the Geological Survey of Greenland in 1972 exploring for uranium – the beginnings of wha...
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Season 1
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Episode 15
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11:30
14: Bjørn Thomassen – One Man Expedition in East Greenland
In this episode we hear from Bjørn Thomassen, emeritus senior scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, about his one man expedition in East Greenland while working for the Nordic Mining Company in 1973, an expedition that su...
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Season 1
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Episode 14
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9:28
13: Kent Brooks: “Mayday, mayday, mayday, helicopter going down”
In this episode, we hear from Kent Brooks, Emeritus Professor at the Geological Museum in Copenhagen, about a very close call while working for a mineral exploration company in East Greenland in the early 1970s.
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Season 1
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Episode 13
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8:18
12: Niels Henriksen – Mapping remote, uninhabited eastern North Greenland
In this episode, we hear more from Niels Henriksen, emeritus senior scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, about geological mapping in the most inaccessible part of Greenland – north Greenland – in the mid to late 1970s.
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Season 1
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Episode 12
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13:51
11: Bjørn Thomassen and Kent Brooks: The discovery of the Flammefjeld porphyry molybdenum deposit
In this episode, we hear from Kent Brooks, emeritus Professor at the Geological Museum in Copenhagen, and Bjørn Thomassen, emeritus senior scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, about the summers of 1970 and 71 working for...
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21:44
10: Niels Henriksen: Mapping the Caledonian Fold Belt – the Alps of East Greenland
In this episode, we hear more from Niels Henriksen, emeritus senior scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, about his years spent mapping the Caledonian Fold Belt, an ancient mountain belt in remote parts of northeast Green...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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14:17
09: Kent Brooks: Earliest drilling of the remarkable Skaergaard layered intrusion
In this episode, we hear more from Kent Brooks – Emeritus Professor at the Geological Museum in Copenhagen – about the Skaergaard Intrusion, which he first encountered on a geological expedition in 1966, and which was to become the focus of his...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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20:51
08: Brian Upton: Beginnings of understanding plate tectonics, “a hell of an exciting time!”
In this episode, we hear more from Brian Upton, Professor of geology at the University of Edinburgh, about his early years as a researcher when the theory of plate tectonics was being developed, his time at Caltech, in Iceland, La Reunion, and ...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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12:44
07: Niels Henriksen: Lifting the ‘iron curtain’ on geological mapping in Northeast Greenland
In this episode, we hear more from Niels Henriksen, emeritus senior scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, about the late 1960s, when the survey embarked on an ambitious and very successful campaign of systematic geologica...
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15:10