NEWSLETTER

PHOTOS AND TEXT BY CAMILLA STEPHAN

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Irene Danielsen lives at her grandparents’ house because her mother gave birth to her at a very young age and couldn’t take care of her. Her mother now lives in another little town, called Siorapaluk, with three kids and her husband. I hung out with her for a day and she was a lot of fun.

All the trash from Qaanaaq ends up outside the village at a place creatively known as the Dump. Everything from cars to plastic containers to soda cans to kitchen garbage to dead dogs is thrown away here. A lot of people have dogs but they don’t treat them like pets. They’re more like slaves. There definitely isn’t the same sentimentality for a dog’s life here as there is in Europe or America. Sometimes you’ll see a whole pack of dead dogs lying at the Dump for weeks, slowly decomposing until somebody sets fire to the trash and it all goes up in black smoke.

After the party, birthday girl Maja Petersen took a nap in her parents’ bed. Eating raw seal flesh with your bare hands off the floor can really tucker you out.

In the winter, the temperature in Qaanaaq goes down to -40º Celsius and there’s so much snow that vehicles often get totally stranded. In the summertime all the snow melts and temperatures soar up to 12º.

I came across this frozen blood while walking to the hospital to see my dead uncle Jakob. I think it was from either a seal or a reindeer.

TO BE CONTINUED:
SITTIN’ ON TOP OF THE WORLD! | 1 | 2 | 3 | Next>

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