The Story of Greenland’s Rising (and Setting) Sun
If you spend time in Greenland during the winter or summer, you’ll immediately notice the timing of the sunset and sunrise.
During winter, the sun barely rises. In December, you’re lucky to see two hours of sunlight — and that’s if you’re visiting the southern towns and villages. At the height of the summer months, the sun never sets. That means you’re in for an extreme 24 hours of sunlight daily, making it difficult to determine when it’s time for bed.
I spent nearly three months in Greenland, from February to May. When I arrived, the sun rose at a relatively late 9:30 AM, and it was fully dark by 4:30 in the afternoon. Just ten weeks later, the sun was up by 4:30 AM, and dark didn’t set in until nearly 11 PM.
While I didn’t fully experience the true midnight sun or the polar night typical of June and December, it was a shock to my system. A late sunrise was an encouragement to stay in bed under the comfort of warm blankets. When I left in May, I noticed I wasn’t hungry for dinner until late evening. Sometimes I wouldn’t even eat until 10:30 at night.
While science can now explain the reason for the pure darkness of an Arctic winter and the neverending sunlight during the summer months, that wasn’t the case in earlier centuries. Like many other Arctic dwellers, the Greenlanders devised a story to explain the phenomenon.
The “Tilting Disk” Theory
Essentially, the Greenlanders saw the Earth as a tilting disk. During the winter months, the land was closest to heaven’s rainbow. It was an ideal time to travel to the “other world,” as many Greenlandic Inuit shamans believed.
However, during the spring, the land tilted downward. Ancient beliefs were that the extra light could lead to a doomsday scenario, where icebergs calved, creating roaring streams and causing boulders to fall from the mountains. The earth was at its most precarious point, where any slight movement in the wrong direction could cause momentous destruction.
There was a strong belief that maintaining the right balance between the two phenomena was vital to preventing environmental and physical catastrophes. If a person felt they were becoming “flooded” or dreamed of flooding, it was considered a very bad omen and could mean death was imminent.
With climate change an ongoing concern, and Greenland in the thick of it, we modern humans would be wise to consider how our actions impact a very delicate environment, as the Inuit Greenlanders did.
The connection between land, water, sun, and night is a regular topic of Greenlandic myths and stories.
Water isn’t just a cause for concern due to melting snow and ice in summer. The tides change significantly in the southern coastlines of Greenland, nearly doubling in size during the spring equinoxes.
These tide-level shifts would have frightened those living along the coastline in past centuries. If they lived too close to the water, the change in tide could destroy their homes. Someone fishing at the wrong time could find themselves pulled deep into the sea without hope of returning to shore.
The noticeable difference in the tide levels gives credence to the “tilting disk” theory from long-ago Greenlanders. With no other scientific way to explain the tides and extreme changes in sunlight, they came up with a way to interpret it themselves.
Sources:
Sonne, B. (2017). Worldviews of the Greenlanders: An Inuit Arctic Perspective. University of Alaska Press.
