This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland

This amazing book opened my eyes to the Inuit culture and homeland in a most unexpected way. I really bought it hoping to learn something about Inuit kayak hunters, but that aspect of Inuit hunting life is not heavily covered in the book. Instead, the author takes us on many wonderful journeys by dogsled and gives the reader a most fascinating viewpoint - right behind the dogs. We experience the hard but thrilling life of the skilled Arctic hunter as described by an articulate passenger in the sled, and in that way we come to know the people of the north country in a most sympathetic way.I recommend this book to anyone who loves beautifully written adventures. They are here.

My fellow Wyo resident Gretel Ehrlich has never been a personal favorite of mine - I have found her writing a bit bloodless and strident. This Cold Heaven is no exception. Fortunately in this case, bloodless not only works, it is preferable. The native residents of Greenland are a hardcore bunch of seal-eating, dog whipping, communal living Last Best Men and their stories rival any on the planet for sheer toughness. Ehrlich packs her book with tales of ice explorers like Peter Freuschen and Knud Rasmussen, who make the cowboys, Marines and murderous I have known seem as simpering as Boy George and Anne Heche off their Wellbutrin. The author weaves their tales cleverly among her own personal accounts of more modest contemporary adventures, although we never really get to see what drives Ehrlich to this place. Maybe that doesn't matter. Ignore the Luddite whining that stains books like these and you're in for a treat.

You felt you were right there in the author's exploits through Greenland. Her imagery and expression of her feelings and those of the indigenous people were vivid and drew you in. Gretel Ehrlich is not a tourist in her travels. She is brave, hardy, absorbing the culture, explaining it to us. Inspirational.One exciting chapter after another.You're certainly learning a lot, but you are also on the ride! Sometimes its on a dogsled packed 7 ft tall driving across the accordian style, frozen-in-place waves of the extended shoreline!

I read this book over the past two months or so, and found almost all of it to be very interesting. I wanted to find out what life is like for ordinary people in Greenland, and the author definitely painted a vivid picture of daily life, community customs, traditions, folklore, language, and food. Life there is completely different from life in America, and I was amazed at how people were able to live in the harsh Arctic environment. The author also addresses how modern technology and global climate change are affecting the people's lives. My only complaint is that it did start to feel a bit repetitive towards the end.

I very much enjoyed this book. It was a fascinating look at a land steeped in tradition and culture, and I feel I got to know the people and their lives.Ehrlich is a wonderful writer who knows how to turn a phrase. But...but....but--why I am only giving this three stars? It's because I felt the book was too much of a good thing. While the stories of the people she met and the Inuit ways are fascinating, do I really need to read 356 pages of how beautiful the ice was over and over and over and over? How many times do I have to hear that "ice is chaos", "ice is time", "the ice was like newly shampooed hair", "the sun was like a flashlight", "the ice was like broken dishes", etc. This gets tiresome very fast. Enough already! I get it-the ice is beautiful and it's cold. Too much of the same thing and too many metaphors detracts from the power of the whole. I wish Ehrlich would have put the metaphor-theasurus away for at least two consecutive pages.I'm sure that to Ehrlich all of her endless trips across the ice are individual, but to me, they all sound the same. She could have cut out the descriptions of about 10 of the trips she made on the ice, which would have cut the book by 50-100 pages, and had a much more powerful account. Although I loved most of the book, I finally couldn't wait for it to end. She made something that was fascinating into an account that was, ultimately, boring and endless.

Gretel Ehrlich's wonderful book has been a nightly treat, savored at the fireside. Since the lives of the Greenland Inuit are so remote from daily experience, it takes quite a bit of adjustment to enter into their perspective. Ehrlich accomplishes this through an obsessive, recurring immersion, reminiscent of her hero Knud Rassmussen. She went back to Greenland seven times, for goodness sakes! The focus she achieves through these revisitings, and our chance to re-encounter characters and experiences, builds a powerful emotional bond. I felt a real loss when I had to say goodbye to these characters for the final time. This is a deceptively beautiful, powerful book.

Really interesting book regarding the Greenlander Inuit and one woman's journey through the region. I particularly like the inclusion of previous author's and explorer's interwoven in the story, as well as the raw authenticity of the author in terms of her experiences with the people, land and culture.

I read this book to learn about the land (and ice!) of Greenland before we go there next year. And I learned a lot, from a lady who's spent time with the native Greenlanders in their villages and on their excursions in summer and winter. The book is well-written and kept me involved in her experiences all the way through. Now we know more of what we will see next year.

Very informative juxtaposing Rasmussen and the present

It was well written and with great insight regarding the people, lives and traditions. Also capturing the last of the changing or even dissappearing way of live. It was not an easy read as it lacks structure, but a stream of anecdotes and diary flow that goes from one idea or event to another, with only chronological link. Great as a historical recording, not as an entertaining read.

amazing and eminently readable review of a very different world and a different way of living. Both highly informative and thought provoking, built around the journeys of an early Danish explorer and also making clear the future challenges for the Inuit of the overspills of the rest of this world (global warming, alcohol, etc).

Most people understand implicitly why someone may love Italy,or France, or India, say.But someone who goes to Greenland, not just once but again and again and again, not because they have to but because they want to , is a much rarer commodity. Gretel Ehrlich is such a person.And in her criss-crossings of Greenland, in all weathers-usually cold!-she meets other such people.Danes who are disenchanted with the rat-race and want a cleaner, purer environment for themselves and their children. A Japanese who came thirty or so years ago and just didn't want to leave. What is so compelling ? The strangeness and near-pristine nature of the landscape itself. The nature of the Inuit lifestyle, basic at times, but bound up with nature , very rich in stories, very authentic. And to be in a place where, even now, watches and clocks don't matter very much and where television is an occasional and rather surreal experience. Ehrlich weaves a spell with her writing-alternately lyrical and prosaic. Maybe in the end she doesn't even know herself quite why she keeps going back. . .she just does.Greenland speaks to some inner need. I'd give this 5 stars were it not for the over-lengthy text, which could have done with some editing without ruining the flavour. A particularly attractive feature is the way Ehrlich intersperses her own experiences of Greenland with those of Knud Rasmussen, who travelled to Greenland in the Twenties and whose ethnological research into the Inuit lifestyle has stood the test of time.

A present for my father in law. He really liked it.