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 been working in South Greenland.

Transcript

Transcript

25: Brian Upton: Working in remote north east Greenland

Based on interviews held on January 14–15, 2020 in Edinburgh, Scotland

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

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Brian 0:01

Hop into the helicopter and he found a ledge fairly near the top, put down on this ledge. The sea was completely unbroken sea ice as far as the horizon. It was also windless. No sound of water and there were no waves, no streams, no raindrops or anything. But total silence. Eerie.

Julie 0:21

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? I’m Julie Hollis.

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 been working in South Greenland.

Brian 1:05

Er dyke swarms became very, very important to understanding what was going on, well again what we know about them is this much [indicates a tiny amount with his hands]. A huge amount still to be done. I spent a lot of time with Emeleus, Henry Emeleus, in the Hebridian fields and er, a lot of work, at that stage, was being done by GGU in er, East Greenland.

And er, Oscar

Julie 1:27

That’s Niels Henriksen, known to many as Oscar, from the GGU – the Geological Survey of Greenland

Brian 1:34

said, “Brian, would you like to go and work on this region that sticks out called Hold with Hope? Would you like to go and work there? We know there are lavas there, some Mesozoic sediments under it. There might be one or two volcanic complexes there.”

“Yes!”

If I had to pinpoint the best field season I’ve ever had in my life, I think it was the, we got there in late June. The place was knee-deep in snow. It was just very difficult finding any place at all to put our camp down. Spring and summer followed very, very quickly. And by September you were back into winter again. You were having great jobs trying to get out of the tent in the morning because all the ropes were totally iced up. And er, you had to break ice to get your water to make your porridge, you know. We were evacuated in a blizzard.

There was a lot of er, fossil wood. One of the fun things about the east coast is it’s covered in timber. Wood. Er, you got all the great rivers, the Lena, the Anise, and the Ob taking timber out of central Asia in the spring breakup and tipping it out into the Arctic Ocean. It all moves west, hits Franz Josef Land and Spitsbergen, meets Greenland and gets littered down, like plastic does present day, all down the coast. So all the Inuits knew about wood. They didn’t know where it came from. We found this place, there was loads of fossil wood. It was just beautifully, beautifully silicified. Henry one day, picks one of these pieces up and throws it across the river to me. I thought, what’s he throwing that bit of wood, until it landed and it, clunk! 

Um, Hold with Hope. Again, most wonderful, wonderful playground, to spend three months on. Even just watching the flowers and the er, the birds coming in and out. When we were there, the geese were just nesting in the snow, which puzzled me. But they had to move fast because then the grass is coming up and the goslings are coming out and they need to be fed fast. And they have to be ready by late August to pack their bags and think about going down to the Nile delta or to Po delta or whatever. 

We went north of that up to Wollaston Forland, which is about 74 degrees north. And er, worked a little bit up the cliffs. And the pilot, Icelandic pilot, “Do you want to go higher up?” “Yeah,” I said, it was bloody steep. Anyway, hop into the helicopter and he found a ledge fairly near the top and just put down on this ledge and we got the primus stove out and, completely windless. We had a coffee up there and the sea was completely unbroken sea ice. It was just absolutely, totally flat ice as far as the horizon. And I don’t know what the temperature was but it was a number of degrees below zero, which was important, and it was also windless. So there was no sound of the water and there were no waves, no streams, no raindrops or anything. I’ve been to several places where I have heard total silence. But this was, just looking out on this extraordinary expanse of ice. Oh and icebergs dotted about amongst them. But just total silence. Eerie. 

Brian 4:49

And then Oscar, Niels Henriksen said, “Brian, would you like to, we’ve got a lot of these lavas up in the top right hand corner of Greenland, the Zig Zag Dal lavas and er, Flinksdal and so on, would you like to work up, would you like to come up there with us?” And that was really entertaining.

Feiko and Jensen was er, was his partner. And they worked in the early 1990s in the extreme Northeast Greenland on the Zig Zag Dal lavas. And their stuff was pretty good, to put it mildly, understate it. Anyway, they collected every flow. So when I went there it was very largely, I did some reconnaissance, ah this is what they look like. But I had all the material, all the samples, which had been collected by these two.

Julie 5:36

So Brian embarked on a follow up expedition to study the Zig Zag Dal basalts in North Greenland with the Geological Survey of Greenland.

Brian 5:46

Flew in to Copenhagen, flew across to a Danish aircraft base in Jutland, got on a C130 military transport and flew to Keflavik, overnighted there. The next day I flew on with a number of workmen going up to fix the NATO base at Station Nord, which is the northernmost of all of the NATO bases. We landed there and was then transferred to a, a fixed wing um, Icelander aircraft that flew me from the NATO base to the Greenland Geological Survey base, probably a hundred and fifty kilometres or so, I don’t know. When I got there, I was told that I was to be flown immediately with a helicopter to my field area, a region called Zig Zag Dal and I was assigned a field assistant, a young woman from Northern Ireland, Loraine Craig. And we flew out, again a long way by helicopter to be deposited with a load of boxes and bags to set up tent and said goodbye to the helicopter pilot.

After an hour or two, when we got two tents set up and we got the um, aerial set up, I said, “Loraine, I really could do with a cup of tea.” She said, “Well, get the primus stove out and make some tea, (stupid man).” I said, “Loraine, where are the matches?” She gives me this sort of withering look I only get from women and said, “In the food box, of course, the kitchen box.” “Ah, no Loraine, there’s no matches in the kitchen box.” “Right, they must be in the office box.” “No, they’re not in the office box.” So we then turned out every box we had and we found that we were. Do you remember Gary Larsen’s cartoons? One of my favourite was of a woman sitting in a car, holding the steering wheel and she’s got her map open and it says, ‘Nowhere’.  And there’s a signpost in front of her pointing and it says ‘the middle’.

Anyway, we were in the middle of nowhere and er, didn’t have any matches. We couldn’t get a cup of… And, Oh shit, ok, well we’ll have to call base, tell them, we haven’t got any matches. At this stage we found that we had er, complete radio blackout from the base. Oh dearie, dearie. Which way do we walk? Before we do that I think we better try the NATO base, Station Nord, put a mayday call out, which we did. And they relayed the call to the Grønlands Geologiske Undersøgelse base.

Julie 8:19

That is, the Geological Survey of Greenland

Brian 8:22

And about four hours later there was the musical noise of an approaching helicopter. And it was the same pilot, Icelandic pilot, landed, came running down the slope and gave me a big box, big package. He said, “Brian, look after these very well,” he says, “never in the history of mankind have then been more expensive matches than these.”

Julie 8:49

I’m Julie Hollis and you’ve been listening to Polar Podcasts.

Julie 9:01

In the next episode, we hear more from emeritus senior scientist Bjørn Thomassen about a close encounter with a polar bear in east Greenland.