Steve Giovinco

I became interested in Greenland several years ago when coming across what seemed a somewhat lost thread of Western history. Taking place in windswept, remote southern Greenland was the probable launch of an epic European exploration led by Norse Leif Eriksson to North America in c. 1000–centuries before other colonialists. Strewn throughout the small settlements were 11th-century ruins, casually spread among sheep farms and the primordial landscape. When I began creating night landscape photographs there, walking alone in near complete darkness was both terrifying and mesmerizing.

I looked to return and became interested in East Greenland’s Helheim Glacier, which, retreating at about three feet an hour–you can almost see it move–is aptly named “realm of the dead” in Norse Mythology. So intense is the rapid melting that it creates a special category of earthquake known as a glacialquake. Unfortunately, this trip became impossible because of Covid-19 travel restrictions so I returned again to southern Greenland and some of the same locations I visited five years earlier. I discovered substantial changes, such as substantial retreating and melting of the dead glacier near Narsarsuaq. I began to interview some local farmers who explained other impacts of climate change they had experienced.

But one of the most fascinating locations was an isolated outcrop in the fjord near the tiny settlement of Igaliku, population 50. It was about an hour boat ride away, and I stayed in complete isolation for over a week. I studied and photographed the slowly moving icebergs drifting from the glacier a mile away, and saw the moon illuminate the unearthly landscape. Several of the photographs in the show are from that location.