IT WAS the ship’s whistle that woke me. I knew it wasn’t the emergency sound, just a weather warning. I sleep poorly aboard cruise liners, even though I have been presenting classical music concerts on them for the past dozen or so years. This sound sent me to the balcony of my cabin. The morning was hazy, even foggy. We were at sea between Dublin and Greenland, on a trip around Viking capitals. First stop had been Cobh, where hours had been spent in the wonderful Titanic museum, followed by a short train journey to Cork to do “Pana”. (That’s walking up and down Patrick’s Street with the addition that Cork people abbreviate everything and then add ‘na’ so Patrick becomes Pa and the rest is obvious.) This is a Saturday ritual. Some of the ship’s passengers who came with me immediately fell in love with Cork.
Then Dublin, on a glorious day with not a cloud in the sky and a trip with friends to Johnny Fox’s pub high in the hills looking over the city. (Why did I ever leave this place?).
Now looking out to sea I could just about glimpse icebergs. They were not Coleridge’s “Ice mile-high .... floating by as green as emeralds”, but they were impressive even in the mist. The ship’s log reported increased manning on the bridge as a precaution, and regular sounding of the ship’s whistle — specifically one long blast every two minutes.
Traditional paper charts had to be used as the ship, Aurora, even though sophisticated beyond belief, in these waters didn’t have available to her ENCs – electronic navagational charts. Electronic wizardry doesn’t operate reliably here. As I watched us slither through the sea in what one officer told me was a “slight sea with a confused swell”, I recalled that during dinner earlier another officer had told me to stay awake while we see “the bergy bits”.
By early the next morning we were in a fjord heading closer and closer to Greenland and now we were in serious iceberg territory. They were all around and, yes, you can hear them crack and now even more hands were on the bridge, because as we got closer to our anchor point the fjord offered us what the sailors delicately refer to as “reduced sea-room”.
It didn’t make for easy manoeuvring.
I couldn’t get back to sleep, not that I wanted to because the experience was nothing like I’d ever met before. I did, however, recall that we’d left Cobh a few days earlier and so, once, had the Titanic. I know, I know, it’s a daft thought but you can’t account for the thoughts that flick in and out of your brain at any given time. Then I thought of Fr Francis Browne SJ.
Why? Because Fr Browne, who spent his last days as an elderly Jesuit priest at my old school, Belvedere College, and who taught my brother Joe geography, was the man who took nearly all the photographs we now have of the doomed Titanic. He had been given a gift of a ticket from Cherbourg to Southampton to Queenstown (Cobh) where he left the ship. His hobby was photography, a radical not to say new-fangled pursuit in 1912. He snapped everything he could on the Titanic and when he died a vast collection of his negatives were discovered. Most had never been published. Next year, I understand, all Fr Browne’s photographs will go on a special display in Cobh.
So now here I am and Greenland is in sight, a vast expanse of ice with but two points of landing, Qaqortoq with about 3,500 inhabitants and Nuuk the capital with 15,000 people, whose earliest inhabitants were the Inuit who crossed from North America maybe, according to scientists, as early as 2200 BC. Their descendants can be seen today, selling fish by the harbour, taking tourists whale-watching and driving across glaciers with people who, petrified by the global-warmists, are glad to get back to dry land before the glaciers melt. As if! My own view is that Greenland’s tourism boom will take off only when their infrastructure develops to take the thousands who want to see this glorious land. For example, it takes an hour for the cruise passengers to queue for tenders to go ashore and the same to get back aboard.
So many memories crowd in after 18 days touring these wonderful places that here, for now, I can but offer a few small sketches. Going to Iceland and leaving on a tour from the capital Reykjavik to the Thingvellir national park. Our guide, a soft-spoken man who had been, before his retirement, as he said with a grin, “the mean man controlling the money in our national health service”, took us through a narrow gorge in a volcanic valley, originally the site of Iceland’s open-air parliament, the Althing. Here we stood open-mouthed as he explained that if we put a hand on the left side of the gorge we were touching the North American crustal plate and if we turned right and touched the other side of the gorge we were touching Europe’s equivalent. It was only when I got back to the ship I realised what I’d been privileged to see.
For lunch we had salmon – what else – in a local hotel which managed to deal with nearly 600 people at the same time with no fuss. Afterwards I wandered across the road to where the geysers spout. Signs tell you not to go beyond the ropes that guard the warm land where the eruptions take place, nevertheless even a few yards away you’re not prepared for what happens. With little or no warning huge jets of water shoot into the sky, a hundred, maybe even more, feet into the air. As the water falls back you get what I called Irish rain on your arms and face, like an early morning mist walking in the Burren in Clare. Icelanders turn these geysers into energy but, as it was explained to me on a visit to their geothermal plant, the energy they produce is economically not worth exporting though it remains the largest geothermal heating operation in the world. It helps, of course, to be living where tectonic plates wobble side by side.
Had I been three days later in Iceland, I would have been able to enjoy Irish Days in Akranes, a town of about 6,000 people just north of Reykjavik. Each July the townsfolk celebrate the fact that the original settlers were two Irish brothers. It seems the locals go very, very Irish: they deck the whole town with Irish flags and banners and there’s a competition for the Icelander with the reddest hair.
With a decade and more of experience and enjoyment on cruise ships (don’t mock it if you haven’t tried it), I have a notebook for “overheards”. These have in the past ranged from: “Is it safe for the ship to travel in the dark” and “Do the crew sleep on board over night?” to: “Do these stairs go up as well as down?”.
Two from this last trip have now moved to the top of my list. As we headed towards Greenland, a lovely Corkman was pointing out the beautiful sunset to his wife as we stood side by side: “Look, love, look at that wonderful sunset coming up over there”. And as I helped a lady from the ship’s tender as we had rocked our way from the ship about a mile to a small pier she thanked me and added: “Thank God, we’re back on terra cotta”.