Martin Breum - Cold Rush: The Astonishing True Story of the New Quest for the Polar North

MARTIN BREUM is a journalist and renowned Arctic expert. His first book When the Ice Disappears was awarded the Danish Authors Associations award for the best non-fiction work of 2014. It was followed by The Greenland Dilemma, now available in English. In 2016 he produced (with documentarist Jacob Gottschau) a series of TV documentaries on the common history of Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. He corresponds on the Arctic for the media in Denmark, Norway and Greenland, and for the EUobserver. His writing on the Polar region has been published in the New York Times, National Geographic and many other international media outlets.

COLD RUSH

THE ASTONISHING TRUE STORY OF THE NEW QUEST FOR THE POLAR NORTH

MARTIN BREUM

MCGILL-QUEENS UNIVERSITY PRESS

MONTREAL & KINGSTON CHICAGO

2018 Martin Breum

Published in 2018 by McGill-Queens University Press

Published simultaneously outside North America by I.B.Tauris

ISBN 978-0-7735-5363-7 (cloth)

ISBN 978-0-7735-5441-2 (ePDF)

ISBN 978-0-7735-5442-9 (ePUB)

Legal deposit second quarter 2018

Bibliothque nationale du Qubec

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Translation from Danish:

Sara Hollnder Schousboe, cand.ling.merc, translator, project manager

Stina Flecks Gottschalck, cand.ling.merc, translator

Mette Nrgaard Thomsen, cand.ling.merc, translator

Initial translation by Kevin McGwin appeared in The Greenland

Dilemma by Martin Breum, 2015

http://www.fak.dk/publikationer/Pages/TheGreenland-Dilemma.aspx

Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions.

References to websites were correct at the time of writing.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. Lan dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de lart dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Breum, Martin, author

Cold rush : the astonishing true story of the new quest for the Polar North/Martin Breum.

This book is based on selected, widely re-written chapters from two books in Danish: Nr isen forsvinder and Balladen om Grnland both published by Gyldendal. Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. Co-published by I.B.Tauris.

1. Arctic regions Military policy History 21st century. 2. Arctic regions Strategic aspects History 21st century. 3. Arctic Regions International status History 21st century. 4. Geopolitics Arctic regions History 21st century. I. Title.

Typeset by Riverside Publishing Solutions, Salisbury, Wiltshire

Printed and bound in Great Britain by T.J. International, Padstow, Cornwall

CONTENTS

PREFACE

For centuries, the fate of Greenland, the worlds largest island, has been intertwined with that of the greatest powers on Earth. In early times, rumours of metals from meteors that had crashed in Greenland brought prospectors across from North America, seeking their fortunes. Much later, in 1814, as the unrivalled ruler of the North Atlantic, Great Britain wielded decisive powers over Greenlands destiny after the Napoleonic wars. In 1946, on the brink of the Cold War, the United States offered to buy Greenland from Denmark, readying 100 million US dollars in gold in the belief that Greenland was of crucial importance as a buffer against the Soviet Union.

Today, Greenland lies on an Arctic trajectory it is on the route for potential missiles between North America, Russia and North Korea. China and the European Community are mounting efforts to embrace Greenland and its vast mineral resources. They also acknowledge its potential as a hub on new Arctic cargo routes, formed by the melting of the sea ice, which are likely to cut up to one-third of the distance between markets in Asia and those in Europe and the United States. In the Arctic, the landmass and importance of Greenland makes the Danish Kingdom, to which Greenland still belongs, a crucial acquaintance to any state, scientist, tourist or business leader who wishes to engage in the Arctic. This book is an account of events in the Arctic and in the Kingdom of Denmark and Greenland in the ten years from 2007 to 2017. Throughout this decade Denmark and Greenland found themselves at the centre of a tremendous surge of global interest.

I am a journalist. The following is my personal account of what happened and how Arctic developments are changing behaviour in the modern Arctic. Ten years ago, for instance, no one imagined that Denmark and Greenland would dream of claiming the North Pole for themselves but then it happened. The top of Greenland is the northern-most piece of land in the world and its bedrock continues far into the Arctic Ocean. As a result, in 2014, Denmark and Greenland suggested to the UN that the rights to 895,000 square kilometres of ocean floor all the way past the North Pole to Russias territorial waters should belong to the Kingdom of Denmark. This was extraordinary. The claim was to an area larger than Sweden and Norway combined. Russia soon followed suit with its own demands and the two claims now overlap by about 500,000 square kilometres. Soon Canada will add its overlapping demands and the three countries will face a complex conflict of interests.

Does this all matter to people in the United Kingdom, the United States and the rest of the world? My claim is that it does. For a start, the Arctic Ocean is the first ocean in the history of man to change from a state of complete inaccessibility to one of openness and access for human exchange, culture, trade, fisheries and exploitation. An entire new ocean is availing itself to us and our worldview will have to transform in exchange. Imagine if the Mediterranean Ocean was only now allowing us to meet across its expanse, ships to pass, cultures to meet, fish to be caught and commerce to flourish. The Arctic is the worlds most rapidly changing region, as a consequence of climate change. Arctic glaciers are melting, causing sea levels to rise across the world; the oceans have become more acid, making the life of crustaceans precarious. Arctic animals such as polar bears are threatened, suffering and moving. Ocean currents change while polar storms erode coastlines no longer protected by sea ice. Melting permafrost destroys railroads, power lines and housing in the entire Arctic, and these changes are likely to happen on the rest of the planet as climate change speeds up. This is why scientists from the entire global community are travelling to the Arctic. Climate change happens twice as fast in the Arctic as anywhere else, and the changes do not stay in the Arctic. As EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager emphasized recently in Nuuk, Greenlands capital: When you come to Greenland, you cant help noticing how interconnected we all are. The ice sheet is thinning, not because of what Greenlanders are doing, but because of American aircraft, Chinese factories, European cars. And if the ice sheet melted, then much of New York, Shanghai and Copenhagen would be under water. Other visitors in the last few years include UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, US Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and other political luminaries.