Tuesday 1 September 2009

Dundas / Thule

History alive can look pretty grim. That's what we learn when we land on the lonesome beach of Dundas, where Knud Rasmussen erected his station in 1909 next to ruins from the Thule period. In 1952 the small settlement got the American military forces as a dominant neighbor who not only built Thule Airbase after the Second World War but also forced everybody to move out within four days.
The village is falling apart ever since, the abandoned houses and playgrounds casting an atmosphere of morbid beauty on the place.
Sitting in the background as if watching the scene sits Mount Dundas, a spectacular viewing platform the very steep slope of which we climb to get another marvelous view across the bay, including Thule Airbase. Certainly worth every drop of sweat we shed on the mountain! Back to the beach we got curious visitors, a polar fox and some snow hares that were not shy at all, apparently oblivious to the centuries of history that shaped this very remakable place.