Vintage bag keeps Greenland memories safe
I found this handbag — an exquisitely hand-embroidered Indigenous piece that dates from the ’70s and looks exactly like something from last summer’s Valentino collection — in Greenland, of all places. I say “of all places” because it’s weird that I ever ended up in Greenland.
Whenever I bring up Greenland, somebody immediately starts into how much they loved their trip to Iceland. But they really are totally different: Iceland is green and volcanic, and you can get there directly from almost anywhere (and so many are, it seems); it’s actually Greenland that’s the icy, remote one, even though, aviationally speaking, it’s just a stone’s throw from Newfoundland.
Unless you end up (like lucky me) invited there at the last minute by a friend with a private jet, in order to get to Greenland you have to fly through Copenhagen (to the dismay of many Greenlanders, they are still a territory of Denmark), or via Iceland.
Any way you can swing it, I highly recommend a visit. Particularly one that catches you by surprise. Without any planning or expectations on my part, we were surrounded by icebergs as magnificent as cathedrals, we soaked in mineral pools with a family of Greenlandic hunters, dined on muskox and sashimi of whale skin, and drank our cocktails with chunks of highly oxygenated polar ice that crackled and fizzed like Poprocks as it melted.
On an island called Disko (short for “Discovery” which, story goes, didn’t fit spelled out in full on the first map), we boogied on an icy mountaintop to “Staying Alive,” the only other partiers besides us past the velvet rope some seriously scary sled dogs tied to posts in the snow.
I still remember standing in the brilliant Arctic sun on what’s left of the polar ice cap (even though it’s melting, it’s still impressively vast and crystalline) in my improvised explorer’s outfit of pleather leggings, a cashmere sweater and a pair of city boots, my “day pack” a beach tote (like I said, this was a last-minute invitation). The entire time I was unable to stop smiling, thinking, “OK, aside from giving birth (twice), this is perhaps the most incredible moment in my life.”
I don’t know if it was the rush of oxygen (the air there was so fresh, breathing it in almost felt minty), the burst of energy one feels in near 24-hour Arctic sunlight, or just the thrill of being somewhere so totally undiscovered and remote, but there was something so magical about it that every cell in my body felt transformed. Which is why a wonder like this intricately beaded sealskin bag seemed the perfect souvenir. “This is the real thing,” the owner of the tourist shop in Ilulissat told me when I asked her to bring it down for me from a dusty upper shelf. “You just don’t come across many like this anymore.”
Ditto, Greenland. Karen von Hahn is a Toronto-based writer, trend observer and style commentator. Her new book, What Remains: Object Lessons in Love and Loss, is published by the House of Anansi Press. Contact her at kvh@karenvonhahn.com.