Original subtitles

GORDON PINSENT: This is not another tidy story.

This is a journey into a world of contradictions.

We're going to a place far from you

that touches you every day

making your weather crazy...

(INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER)

...raising the level of oceans

and offering us more oil to burn.

You may know the Arctic from Native legends

or sailor's stories,

but today's truth is stranger than myth.

Across the polar sea today,

all certainty is melting

beneath the feet of ancient beasts,

and a remote culture finds itself,

suddenly striding a global stage.

Viewed through many eyes and revolutionary cameras,

this is a journey into a world you have never seen before,

because, until now,

it did not exist.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)

PINSENT: Our journey begins in the port of Vikings.

Our voyager is an unassuming man,

in an ordinary grocery store.

He planned to stay home this summer,

but that is not his fate.

His name is Richard Tegner.

He's 62, an architect from Stockholm, Sweden.

Mix the eggs, water, oil and cake mix...

(SPEAKING SWEDISH)

RICHARD TEGNER: I wouldn't consider myself adventurous.

I live a steady life.

I have my employment and my family.

(INDISTINCT CHATTERING)

I met Kerstin 15 years ago.

Before that I didn't have any kids

so I got my first child at the age of 49

and the next one was a few years later.

PINSENT: Richard's family is in Iceland to see him off

on an unexpected journey with his childhood friend, Martin Sigge.

TEGNER: One day,

my old friend Martin asked me,

"Do you want to come along with me

"to do the Northwest Passage?"

"Uh, wow.

"Uh, no, no, no, no, no, that's...

"That's far out for me. No...

"No, not really."

(SINGING IN SWEDISH)

(LAUGHING)

(ALL TOASTING)

PINSENT: Martin had already recruited an old army buddy,

now a businessman, named Bengt Norvik.

(SPEAKING SWEDISH)

(SPEAKING SWEDISH)

He said, "Think of it

"because it's a one in a lifetime opportunity. And you...

"If you don't do it, I suppose you might regret it

"and if you do it you will have a wonderful experience."

So I talked to Kerstin, and I talked to colleagues

and I sort of slept on the question

and after a few weeks I got back to Martin and I say,

"Okay, I will join you."

I would like to say something about my old friend Martin.

You get this opportunity once in a lifetime to do a trip like this

and thank you very much, dear friend.

Well, thank you, Richard, for your kind words.

TEGNER: I think it's important

to say this because we haven't really...

I haven't really expressed it. But I think...

MARTIN SIGGE: A man's got to do what a man's got to do.

The crew's got to do, what the crew's got to do.

SIGGE: I couldn't ask for any better crew

than Richard and Bengt.

My best...

A few of my absolute best friends.

You should know that there is a line of people

back in Sweden and internationally that all say

"Well if anyone of you

"need to get off, you know,

"I'm prepared to join instead."

Despite the title on your advertisement...

SIGGE: Man wanted for... Yes.

SIGGE: Uh...

What did you say?

"Man wanted for a hazardous journey...

"Bitter cold...

"Bitter cold," and, uh...

"Fame" and something as a reward

if successful coming back.

(ALL LAUGHING) MAN: Yes.

PINSENT: Richard's daughters are not so amused

to think of him in danger.

(INDISTINCT CHATTERING)

TEGNER: I think they are a bit worried.

Inez said when she came onboard the boat,

"It's a small boat..."

SIGGE: The boat's name is Dax,

which is a play on words in Swedish.

It means, it's time now.

My father bought this boat

new in 1976.

It's a 31-foot, ocean-going sailing boat

and it's considered to be one of the few boats

that can go around the world without any special reinforcements.

It's already been designed for that from scratch.

PINSENT: Martin has been sailing his whole life.

His preparations for the Northwest Passage

have taken him 18 months.

SIGGE: It's not a specific climate change

or Arctic interest that I have.

It's the challenge.

If you take 100 people, I'm probably among the biggest risk takers.

PINSENT: He plans to sail Dax

from Iceland to Greenland,

between the high Arctic islands

and around Alaska to the Pacific.

The route is nearly 10,000 kilometers long.

It's a journey

that has only been made by a rare few sailors

in the whole of maritime history.

The great British Navy first started probing the ice

for a passage to Asia way back in the 1500s.

Britain spent 350 years

and the lives of countless men,

only to fail.

The Northwest Passage

was not sailed for the first time until 1903.

As recently as 1969,

the summer ice was still so thick

as to block even the mightiest ships.

Now, each summer's midnight sun

melts more and more ice,

turning the Northwest Passage into a new Everest

open even to amateurs.

(SEAGULLS SQUAWKING)

Garbage...

SIGGE: I'm trying not to underestimate anything.

I think we are well prepared.

We might even end up over-prepared.

I think we've thought of everything.

It's going to be interesting to see what we didn't think of

because that's probably something.

Bengt is an extremely competent person

who has the right kind of thinking

on how to manage critical situations of all kinds.

BENGT NORVIK: I'd like to say this was the kind of opportunity

that I couldn't turn down.

To sail far away in foreign waters,

it's exciting.

TEGNER: I'm the least experienced sailor of us three.

I have taken the role of managing the food.

Chickpeas.

Tomatoes

to make tomato sauce

and we can make chickpeas in tomato sauce.

Lemonade.

Full grain pasta.

It's, uh...

It's not very good.

Bengt and Martin, they are more experienced in sailing.

I feel safe with their knowledge on the boat

and I will learn more during this trip also.

I have had a kind of depression for quite some time.

There was sort of something missing.

(MAN SPEAKING SWEDISH)

TEGNER: A couple of times during your lifetime you ask yourself,

"What am I doing here on this planet? And why?"

Your senses, they talk to you.

They want to tell you, do something about your life

and, uh,

here, opportunity knocked on my door.

SIGGE: I often think of what it's going to be like

to look back on your life.

(BOAT ENGINE STARTING)

If you ask people what they regret,

a lot of that is what they didn't do.

SIGGE: Okay...

(INDISTINCT AND INAUDIBLE TALKING)

(INDISTINCT)

(SPEAKING SWEDISH)

(INDISTINCT CHATTERING)

TEGNER: Someone asked me if I had a death wish

since they heard of this trip.

But I said, "No, it's the opposite. It's the...

"It's the wish for life.

"For more intensity in life."

# Ah, for just one time

# I would take the Northwest Passage

# To find the hand of Franklin

# Reaching for the Beaufort Sea

# Tracing one warm line

# Through a land so wild and savage

# And make a Northwest Passage to the sea #

PINSENT: In addition to his duties as cook,

Richard will keep the ship's diary

and chronicle the voyage of Dax.

(KETTLE WHISTLING)

SIGGE: The first day was smooth.

The engine runs as a little sewing machine.

And consumes no oil at all and, uh,

hardly any fuel either.

(RICHARD TALKING)

Well, I would never dream of mentioning that,

but you did it yourself.

(LAUGHS)

So now, I'm expecting a good breakfast from the chef.

(RICHARD TALKING) Okey-dokey!

Been running the engine for 65 hours

and it's time to fill one liter of engine oil.

Remember, this engine is 37 years old.

SIGGE: While the cylinder head covers

take care of loosening the gasket.

It's a calm day. There's no wind.

We are in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, I suppose.

I never thought that the Atlantic could be this calm.

PINSENT: Crossing the Polar Sea,

the sailors will encounter travelers of all kinds,

but for now their only companion

is a nearby Norwegian yacht named Impulse.

(CLEARS THROAT)

(SPEAKING SWEDISH)

(SPEAKING NORWEGIAN)

SIGGE: Okay.

(TEGNER LAUGHS)

TEGNER: Martin is fixing up his appearance.

The Tintin look.

TEGNER: The Tintin look.

(MAN TALKING INDISTINCTLY)

(MAN SPEAKING SWEDISH)

TEGNER: None of us have seen any whales before

in the wildlife

so we were really

overwhelmed by this visit.

We saw them in the distance first

and then they seemed to be curious

and they came up to the boat.

Family by family,

they came up with their kids

and swam with us for a while and, uh, left us.

PINSENT: South of Greenland,

the cold Arctic winds meet the warm Atlantic waters

and brew up a storm.

(THUNDER RUMBLING)

(THUNDER CRACKING)

TEGNER: I was a bit afraid and I thought,

"Well, is this...

"Is this the way it's going to end?"

(WIND BLOWING)

(THUNDER CRACKING)

TEGNER: Martin, he was not afraid.

He was more excited!

He returned to the cockpit,

"I... I...

"I'm almost high on this!"

I... I saw icebergs.

(INDISTINCT TALKING)

TEGNER: We had read that there used to be

a belt of ice outside Ilulissat

and that you shouldn't be

scared by the look of it because it's

not usually that compact

as it looks from a distance

but it was quite compact

so we had to spend some time getting through it.

I liked that.

It's more of an experience I think.

(SEAGULLS SQUAWKING)

PINSENT: To make port, they must sail a maze of ice

sheered off Greenland's glacier.

The weight of the glacier pushes ice

out through fjords to the sea.

Icebergs were always born this way.

But the glacier has never shed so many, so fast.

It's one of many changes, strange and sudden,

drawing legions of scientists to the North.

(HELICOPTER BLADES WHIRRING)

PINSENT: This is Abbas Khan, an expert in geodynamics.

He works for Denmark,

a coastal country that is worried

about huge flows of ice into the sea.

In the last decade, the amount of ice

breaking off Greenland's glacier has doubled.

Scientists already know

that this is global warming in action.

Dr. Khan wants to understand

the particular mechanisms at work,

their speed and their consequences.

(DR. KHAN SPEAKING)

(CLATTERING)

PINSENT: Every bit of ice

raises the level of the global ocean a little.

So, bit by bit,

the danger grows for all coastal communities,

tiny Arctic villages

and great cities alike.

(DR. KHAN SPEAKING)

(DRILL WHIRRING)

PINSENT: Dr. Khan's work would astonish

the early 20th century's Arctic scientists.

It was only 80 years ago

that they first determined the enormity of this ice.

The pioneering German scientist Alfred Wegener

led the way with four glacier expeditions,

the last in 1930.

Wegener's team

used a new method of bouncing seismic charges through the ice

to learn that it was an incredible

two and a half kilometers thick.

Wegener died on that expedition,

days after this footage was taken.

But Arctic scientists are still building on his legacy.

He was the first to suggest

that land can move and continents drift.

The idea was ridiculed, but proven true

when the invention of GPS

provided accurate measurements.

Dr. Wegener's work is being extended by Dr. Khan,

who tracks how much Greenland's melting glacier

is unleashing the continent beneath.

As the weight of the ice shrinks,

the bedrock below is rising,

the land expanding upward

like an uncompressed sponge.

Dr. Khan calculates

that if all of Greenland's ice melts,

the island will rise up

by another kilometer above the sea.

(DR. KHAN SPEAKING)

PINSENT: What the melting ice means today

is a rush of scientists and explorers

to the villages on Greenland's coast.

TEGNER: Entering this harbor,

it made the same messy impression

as the... The...

All the ice outside

because we couldn't see any order

or any place to go,

it was just like jammed with boats, everywhere,

so we stole a place.

South of Greenland was really jumpy

and lot of wind and we...

We broke our fore-sail and the motor

was not perfect

so we had to change a few things.

PINSENT: The sailors are in a region

unlike any other in the Arctic.

Europeans and Inuit

have mixed here for 1,000 years.

They have created a unique cultural fusion,

seen most easily in their food.

INUNNGUAQ: I have lived here for six, seven, eight years,

and, yeah, you can feel that

every year, it's expanding with the tourists.

It's coming more and more and more

so that's good for the tourism.

Especially because of the...

The global heating, they're calling it.

TEGNER: I am not fat from the beginning

but I have lost four kilos.

(LAUGHS)

I haven't weighed myself but I'm...

My pants keep sliding down all the time.

So we need a lot of fat in the food I think!

So the first dish here...

(CREW SPEAKING SWEDISH)

Oh, I have to!

I normally never do it...

I despise those who must

put pictures of what they eat on Facebook

but this is something special.

INUNNGUAQ: This is a

traditional dish that we have been

making in a new way.

This... Seal soup.

And, uh...

In Greenland we call it suaasat.

And you, uh, make, like, a pot with seal meat.

Usually the tourists

and people from all the places in the world,

when they taste the suassat, they always like,

"Now I try it."

But they never try it again.

Because... (CREW LAUGHING)

(SPEAKING SWEDISH)

SIGGE: This is very intimate food.

Tasty and different.

(SPEAKING SWEDISH)

SIGGE: Hmm?

This dish is muskox,

some peas, angelica.

Ooh!

(SPEAKING SWEDISH)

Mmm. Hmm!

Wow! Where is he?

It's so good!

It's the food that

makes you want to be a better man.

It's the main city of halibut here so...

In the summer there are, like, 200...

Two hundred fifty boats coming here so...

Because there is so many halibut here,

so they are like "Wow, let's get those fish".

So...

PINSENT: The crowd in Illullisat's bustling harbor

is also filled out with many groups of scientists,

which is lucky for the Dax crew.

Their communication gear was damaged on the voyage,

but here, they have met people who can fix it.

GILBERT KLEIN: We do have a little problem with the internet connection

for the radio phone

and so I am trying to fix it.

Gilbert is here to make

investigations about the gravity.

In fact we're trying to see how Greenland,

the rock of Greenland, is upcoming,

due to the disappear of the ice.

So the mass of Greenland...

The mass of the ice disappear,

and so the rock comes up and we are measuring that.

And what about the coast area?

The coast...

Yeah, the coast area is coming up. It's going down?

Uh, yes.

Well, it's a little bit more complicated.

You have movements, different movements.

Movements from the past and movements from today.

But the main thing, what you see today,

is that it's coming up.

PINSENT: Part of the reason scientists

are now rushing to Greenland

is the expectation

that its newly exposed lands

are wealthy in minerals.

OLIVIER: This is, um,

what we call an

Absolute Gravity Meter. Yeah.

So we will measure the acceleration

due to the earth.

So basically it is different from place to place.

It depends on the altitude.

The further you are away from the earth,

smaller is the attraction.

And so basically you can use this instrument

to measure the crust's motion.

The reason we have that here is because the ice is melting...

Mmm-hmm. ...and if the ice is melting, the crust will go up.

And so basically we would time the position

and we would know the exact position

because we have a laser that would tell you...

All the way? All the way where you are.

(BEEPS) KLEIN: Yeah. And what is the

main change?

OLIVER FRANCIS: The main change is we started

to detect a huge signal since 2002.

When I speak about a huge signal,

it's one centimeter per year

of uplifts.

(OLIVIER SPEAKING FRENCH)

(DR. KHAN SPEAKING)

(OLIVIER SPEAKING FRENCH)

PINSENT: In fact, Greenlanders are divided

between those who want heavy industry

and those who fear it.

Nive Nielsen

is a prominent Inuk singer

who is urging Greenlanders

to question industrial development.

NIVE NIELSEN: I want people to think about

what could be the consequences

once you start digging for oil and...

And mining in Greenland.

We are an indigenous people

who's been living on and very close to the land for so long.

It's just such a big part of our culture

to be in this nature

and we are so proud of this nature

and the cleanness of it

and it's so integrated, a part of us,

it seems contradictory to me.

We go fishing every summer,

um, since I was a kid so...

I'm not an expert at fishing

because you don't need to be very good to fish here.

(LAUGHS)

I never understood why

people said that it was boring to fish

but that's before I knew that

people didn't catch much fish in other places.

Here it usually doesn't take very long...

(SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE)

I caught two!

(BOTH SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE)

We'll put away the little ones.

(BOTH SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE)

(SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE)

(WOMAN SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE)

(TUNING THE GUITAR)

NIELSEN: I decided to write a song

'cause I wanted people in Greenland

to have a discussion and a debate

about the future prospects

of digging oil and mining

with uranium as a by-product

or just mining in general.

(GUITAR PLAYING)

(SINGING IN NATIVE LANGUAGE)

NIELSEN: Our main industry, or economy in Greenland

is based on fishing

and that would be contaminated

and that's the livelihood of a lot of people.

That is actually an economy

that is based on something that reproduces.

If you are careful with it, can be continual.

But oil, it will run out at some point.

We are accustomed to having a clean nature

and I think people have a hard time imagining

what it would...

What it's actually like once you've ruined nature,

but it's hard to come back.

The people here should

decide what kind of country we want to be

and what kind of people we want to be.

(CONTINUES SINGING IN NATIVE LANGUAGE)

PINSENT: Nive's plea echoes across the Arctic,

as people realize that change is now inevitable

and nothing is any longer quite what it seems.

TEGNER: It was on my wishing list

to come here, to this place

since I heard about it.

Now I understand why people talk about it.

It's amazing.

It's really something.