Enthralled by Greenland

Leif the Lucky (Ingri & Edgar P. d’Aulaire, 1941) was a treasure of my grade school years. My mother encouraged books set long ago or far away, and this was both. Besides, I liked the cover. Leif’s father, the Viking Erik the Red, sailed west from Norway and Iceland to an icy coast he called “Greenland” to attracted settlers. Leif later sailed on to North America, five hundred years before Columbus.

A modern true adventure story rekindled my fascination with Greenland. Rescue Below Zero (Ian Mackersey, 1954) recounts how an airplane, sent to drop supplies to a British research mission in the middle of the icecap, crashed into packed snow over 8,000 feet of ice. The crew survived but the plane would never fly again.

They were in radio contact with Thule Air Base, 480 miles away. Rescue by airlift should be straightforward, I thought. Not so. Helicopters could not fly that far and back. Planes that dropped supplies by parachute were not designed to land on snow and ice, much less take off again. To get enough lift at high altitude, they needed to be as light as possible. That meant carrying just enough fuel to make the round trip, leaving no room for error.

​No spoilers here. To me, Greenland remains a land of mystery and suspense.