I won't lie: this book was a slog. Several years ago I read - and loved - An African in Greenland, written in the 1960s, and hoped that Gretel Ehrlich's This Cold Heaven would be similar. While Ehrlich does weave the accounts of her own time in Greenland in the late 1990s throughout the book, it was mostly a re-hashing of those who had gone earlier, much, much earlier, with at least half the book devoted to recounting the voyages and work of Knud Rasmussen in the early twentieth century.
It's not that Rasmussen's voyages are uninteresting, but Erhlich is prone to philosophize a bit too much for my liking, particularly when reflecting back on those earlier travelers. I did eventually begin skimming such chapters as "The Time Between Two Winters, 1922" and "The Mackenzie Delta, 1924." Where Erhlich's work shines best is in describing the culture and people - as opposed, for example, to her sentiments on the universe when traversing the ice. Her accounts of the Children's House are fascinating, and I had to actively remind myself that the scenes she witnessed occurred when I was in high school. (In that sense, it was a bit similar to Call the Nurse, which is perhaps not surprising when considering the Hebrides in the 70s were virtually as remote as Greenland in the 90s!)
The strongest part of This Cold Heaven and the part I enjoyed most was the last hundred pages, which leaves Rasmussen and company behind almost entirely and tells instead of Ehrlich's time in Greenland in 1998 and 1999. It is here that she writes most of the people, the society, and the magnitude of the shift they are experiencing.
At the end of the day, though, this just wasn't close to my favorite memoir or best travel writing and I say only devotees of Greenlandic history need add this one to their list.
Two stars.
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