"In 2001, a vast gas field, christened Blacktip, was discovered 70 miles offshore from Wadeye. Development of this priceless resource is now under way. The gas from the Blacktip field will be piped to Yeltherr Beach, just south of Wadeye, where an offshore gas planet will be constructed and the gas piped east to Ban Ban Springs on the Adelaide River to supply Darwin. Work on the pipeline began a few weeks ago and is expected to be complete by next August; 130 Northern Territory companies will be involved in the works, including the construction of the pipelines, the oil wells, the offshore platform and the onshore gas plant, but not one word has been said about the involvement of the inhabitants of Wadeye. As most of them have not completed primary education, and can neither read nor write nor speak English, it is hard to see how they could be involved. An earlier deal that would have provided Aboriginal groups with equity of $250 million in recognition of the pipeline crossing their land was abandoned, when the client, the aluminium giant Alcan, found a cheaper supplier in Papua New Guinea..."

In other words, imagine if Greenland had turned out to be a little Iceland or another big Faroe Islands? Wouldn't that have been cool? That said, Inuit Greenland has turned out pretty swinging in its own way, and there is a creative music scene there. But I can't help myself from thinking: imagine if the Vikings had survived, imagine what Greenland would be like today? And I start to wonder to myself: maybe the green days of Greenland are on their way back, after the long Middle Ages winter? Spring is dawning in the Far North of the planet, and I intend to be part of the action, when all the glaciers start to melt. It is time to buy some property, or at least erect some property online! +++++++++++++++++++
Hotel Restaurants

It might not be politically correct to say this, but let me state things blunt: If Global Warming is a fact, the greening of Greenland could be on its way. If the Inuit retreat with the ice, will Greenland be colonized by Europeans again, en masse? If Germany and Britain are destined to become the new Mediterranean, it seems logical that Iceland and Greenland will become the new England and Germany.

I wonder to myself: "Why aren't developers buying up real estate in Greenland in expectation of the Great Thaw? Why aren't I buying real estate there?"

Perhaps it is because Greenland has fallen off the radar of the world, unless we are talking about the radar facilities of the American Military and Missile Shield, in which case, Greenland matters a lot. On Nordic Literature Jon Michelet wrote (in an article tellingly titled Greenland's Gold): "Old and modern Norsemen have tended to see Greenland in terms of conquests and adventures. The adventure I was reporting was taking place a thousand years after the Viking overlord Eirik Raude colonized the place, and a good century after the first crossing of the Greenland icecap by Fridtjof Nansen and his expedition, and I wanted to write with a certain ironic detachment.

"Only in glimpses does my book take up ordinary lives and politics on Greenland. Which left me with a permanent bad conscious and is why I've been trying to follow what's happening in the part of the Danish realm that is Greenland, the progress towards self-government and Copenhagen's hold on power, and arguments with the US about the immense military base at Thule run by the Americans.

"To take an example. When I started to write this feature, local elections were due in Greenland. Norway's state radio, in one of its rare Greenland reports, did brief us on the impending elections. But we were left in the dark as to the outcome. Our ignorance about Greenland and our lack of interest in it have something to do with no longer needing what Greenland has to offer -- which, for most the twentieth century, we did, not to mention exploit. Sealing along the western ice shelf is no longer a mainstay of local economies in western and northern parts of Norway, and the once prosperous shrimp trawling industry has declined.

"At the same time, Norwegians at the turn of the millennium are involved in fresh activity on Greenland, and the reason is something I originally heard on that boat trip in 1996 around the southern reaches. I thought it was a pretty flimsy rumour at first, like the spontaneous rumours unpopulated places everywhere give rise to, feeding into a Klondyke-like frenzy. Apparently, gold had been discovered at Nanortalik. D'you hear, traveller from afar? Gold! Possibly enough of the noble metal to warrant commercial mining..."

From I Climbed On the Back of a Giant Albatross: "Forget Columbus or the Spanish or the Vikings or the Chinese or even the Welsh. It was the Irish who "discovered" America ! Excerpts follow from http://farshores.org/a03giine.htm. Sorry about the length but I don't like to hide posts under a cut. These are just the real interesting bits: "In the year 795 A. D. fierce sea-rovers of Danish origin made the first recorded Viking raid on Ireland and other parts of the British Isles. The piratical invasion extended from the west coast of Scotland and the isles west of Scotland, such as the Isle of Iona, the foundation of St. Columba's ministrations to the Picts, the Isle of Man, the Isle of Skye and others; along the Welsh coast and possibly the coast of Cornwall and the island and mainland of Lambey, north of Dublin, Ireland.

"Driven from their monasteries by the raiding Vikings, Irish monks called Culdees sought peace and quiet in Iceland, settling mostly on the island of Papey. Their history is related by Ari Thorgilsson, the Icelandic historian, writing in 1026. Earlier than this, the tale of the raids had been told by Ducil (Ducilius) the Irish Monk, writing in 825 in a monastery in Bohemia. References to these Culdees run all through early Icelandic history, but these religious colonists did not remain long in Iceland for soon there came to its shores the "black strangers" (Vikings from Norway) and the Culdees fled again.

"They had come in their own wooden ships, and evidently were accomplished voyagers in an age when puny wicker boats were the principal vessels of the Britons. They left Iceland in their own ships - but to what port they sailed or what became of them, neither Irish nor Icelandic history, saga or legend says. But, again, Ari Thorgilsson, in the oldest Icelandic historical work, the "Book of the Icelanders," tells a tale which, when connected with other sagas and circumstances, and with recent astonishing discoveries in America, points to the probable landing of these Culdees, or at any rate, of some Irish voyagers, in America prior to 1000 A.D.

"The North Salem, NH site of Mystery Hill (aka "America's Stonehenge") and other finds in New England offer material evidence of the remarkable accounts of these ancient sagas.

"To those who slowly and painstakingly attempted to restore the "weird housings" found at Mystery Hill, the site in general seemed, beyond question, to have been a sacred center for comparatively few people. Further, it was a semi-fortified place in which the actual uneven ground level on which it stands was taken full advantage of so as to render it a secret hideout against hostile and more numerous enemies. (The Norse sagas speak of the difficulty of rooting out the inhabitants of these underground houses or souterrains along the Irish coast and of finding swords and spears of iron or bronze, which the Vikings valued highly.)

"It was clearly to be seen from the first that the first comers to this New Hampshire hilltop visioned the work ahead of them with wonderful sagacity and keen minds as to what eventually developed as it is seen as a whole today. In other words, those who erected this prodigious Village were master-builders, craftsmen with culture and a plan..."

++Santa Claus visits Skógfellavegur++++Grindavik Photos++ ++Hafnarfirði Photos++++Gay Iceland++Icelandic SUVs++++Reykjavik++++Reykjavik Nightlife Guide++