A bold truth at the start: Greenland’s sled dogs are facing an existential crisis as the ice melts. And this isn’t just a local issue—it reshapes a culture that has moved on frozen highways for centuries. Now, here’s why it matters.
Growing up in a northern Greenland village, Jorgen Kristensen’s closest friends were the sled dogs owned by his stepfather. He stood out among his dark-haired Inuit peers, and his first fishing trips on the ice happened with the dogs by his side when he was nine. Those early moments sparked a lifelong passion, helping him become a five-time Greenlandic dog-sled champion. “I was just a small child,” Kristensen, now 62, told the AP. “But many years later, I started wondering why I love dogs so much.” He remembers the dogs as a steady source of support, lifting him when he felt down.
For more than a millennium, dogs have pulled sleds for Inuit seal hunters and fishermen across the Arctic. This winter in Ilulissat, a town roughly 190 miles north of the Arctic Circle, that long-standing reality has changed. Instead of gliding over snow and ice, Kristensen’s sled now rattles over dirt and rock. Warming temperatures are melting the permafrost, causing buildings to sink and pipes to crack. The impact extends beyond local streets: the region’s Sermeq Kujalleq glacier is among the planet’s fastest-moving, and as temperatures rise, it retreats and sheds ice at an unprecedented pace, contributing to rising sea levels from Europe to the Pacific Islands, according to NASA.
In winter, hunters should be able to push their dogs far onto sea ice. The ice sheets are like vast bridges binding Greenlanders to hunting grounds and to other Inuit communities across the Arctic—Canada, the United States, and Russia. Kristensen describes sea ice as a boundless highway, a place where there used to be no limits on where to go. This January, that entire highway vanished. The loss of ice is a profound blow, he says, and it even forces him to collect snow for the dogs to drink on their journeys since the usual supply along the route is gone.
Greelanders have a long history of adaptation, including experimenting with dog sleds fitted with wheels. Yet the ice loss runs deep, notes Kristensen, who operates his own tourism business. He makes a point of showing tourists how climate change affects Greenland, from dog-sledding excursions to visits to collapsing icebergs, emphasizing that Greenland’s glaciers hold global significance comparable to the Amazon. “If we lose the dog sledding, we lose large parts of our culture,” Kristensen says with emotion. “That scares me.”
Would you like to discuss how climate change is reshaping traditional livelihoods in other regions as well, or hear more about the cultural strategies communities are using to adapt while preserving their heritage?
