Quotes & Sayings About Greenland

Destiny is a funny thing. Once I thought I was destined to become Emperor of Greenland, sole monarch over its 52,000 inhabitants. Then I thought I was destined to build a Polynesian longship in my garage. I was wrong then, but I've got it now. I'm the destined protector of this place. I'm this city's superhero. — Ben Edlund

(Media question to Beatles during first U.S. tour 1964)
"How do you find America?"
"Turn left at Greenland. — Ringo Starr

In fact the Chinese, the Russians, Eskimos from Greenland, and sub-Saharan Africans are all getting fatter, as is every other population when economic conditions improve and there is increased access to cheaper food. — James B. Johnson

Twenty years before, she had sailed west from Greenland off the edge of the known world. She was nineteen, newly wed for the second or third time and pregnant for the first. With her were her husband, Thorfinn Karlsefni, and three Viking crews in clinker-built boats. They were sailing to Vinland, a fabulous land that Leif Eiriksson, son of Greenland's founder Eirik the Red, had washed up on a few years back, when he was caught in a summer storm, sailing west across the icy North Atlantic from Norway. It was Gudrid's second attempt to get to Vinland. She meant to settle in this New World. At — Nancy Marie Brown

I love a mysterious underground and have exploited this in many of my books: the ice tunnels of Greenland, the volcanic tubes of Iceland, the mysterious passageways beneath an ancient African hillside or a Buddhist monastery in central China. And of course, London's famous tube system, setting for my book LONDON UNDERGROUND. It's a funny sort of fixation, especially given my mother's claustrophobia, which I saw her deal with on many occasions. We once lined up to take a tour into the Lascaux Caverns in France to see the ancient cave paintings. My mother didn't make it past the first quirky turn into the depths, and she sent me on by myself. Given her interest in history and archaeology, which she used as the basis for a series of mysteries she published and which inspired my own writing, it always surprised me she still loved to write about places she could never visit. — Chris Angus

The Vikings could have been saved if they had borrowed survival strategies from the Inuit, but the only record we have of contact between the two peoples is the remark from a Viking settler that the Inuit bleed a lot when stabbed - an observation that hardly indicates a willingness to learn from their northern neighbors. — Johnjoe McFadden

I do believe in the Bible as the final word of God. And I do believe that God said the Earth would not be destroyed by a flood. Now, do I believe in climate change? In my trip to Greenland, the answer is yes. The climate is changing. — John Shimkus

The Greenland fjords are peculiar for the spells of completely quiet weather, when there is not enough wind to blow out a match and the water is like a sheet of glass. The kayak hunter must sit in his boat without stirring a finger so as not to scare the shy seals away. Actually, he can only move his eyes, as even the slightest move otherwise might mean game lost. The sun, low in the sky, sends a glare into his eyes, and the landscape around moves into the realm of the unreal. The reflex from the mirror-like water hypnotizes him, he seems to be unable to move, and all of a sudden it is as if he were floating in a bottomless void, sinking, sinking, and sinking.... Horror-stricken, he tries to stir, to cry out, but he cannot, he is completely paralyzed, he just falls and falls. — Peter Freuchen

I can't tell you what I look like. I look in the mirror and see
nothing but space. Space reflecting space, that's what the
mirror shows. It figures because Grandmamma said I was
nothing but dirt. Dirt under her feet she'd say. Dirt she needed
to keep kicking out of the way. Grandmamma said I wasn't
sweeping-up kind of dirt; I was the kind of dirt you needed to
kick and scrape off the bottom of your shoes. — Jan Fink

Sometimes he tries to catch her, wading frantically through earth that has turned to water, or sometimes through air. Sometimes she tries to catch him. They never catch each other, no matter what. — Colin Greenland

He was right; I was amazing. — Shannon Greenland

It was a nightmare. The band had to tour Greenland by bus. — Fred Schneider

[A]s previous studies have concluded, the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are probably thickening rather than melting. — Myron Ebell

THE SPECIALISTS MODEL SPY:
"Sorry," David mumbles right before crushing his mouth to mine.
Oh my God, I'm sixteen, and I've never been kissed. Please let me be doing this right.
Except ... this is it? This is about as exciting as kissing my laptop. — Shannon Greenland

Sometimes I'd like to have a conversation with a friend in a restaurant without feeling I'm being watched. At this rate I will have to go on holiday to Greenland. But maybe the Eskimos would know me. — Fernando Torres

It is a very remarkable fact that the species of shell-fish common to Greenland and Finmark are not all inhabitants of deep or moderately deep water ... That these littoral mollusks indicate by their presence on both sides of the Atlantic, some ancient continuity or contiguity of coast-line is what I firmly believe. — Edward Forbes

Plotting is like sex. Plotting is about desire and satisfaction, anticipation and release. You have to arouse your reader's desire to know what happens, to unravel the mystery, to see good triumph. You have to sustain it, keep it warm, feed it, just a little bit, not too much at a time, as your story goes on. That's called suspense. It can bring desire to a frenzy, in which case you are in a good position to bring off a wonderful climax. — Colin Greenland

Yes, I once was the toast of two continents! ( ... Greenland & Australia). — Dorothy Parker

Many of our problems are broadly similar to those that undermined ... Norse Greenland, and that many other past societies also struggled to solve. Some of those past societies failed (like the Greenland Norse) and others succeeded ... The past offers us a rich database from which we can learn in order that we may keep on succeeding. — Jared Diamond

Plotting isn't like sex, because you can go back and adjust it afterwards. Whether you plan your story beforehand or not, if the climax turns out to be the revelation that the mad professor's anti-gravity device actually works, you must go back and silently delete all those flying cars buzzing around the city on page one. If you want to reveal something, you need to hide it properly first. — Colin Greenland

Globalization makes it impossible for modern societies to collapse in isolation, as did Easter Island and the Greenland Norse in the past. Any society in turmoil today, no matter how remote ... can cause trouble for prosperous societies on other continents and is also subject to their influence (whether helpful or destabilizing). For the first time in history, we face the risk of a global decline. But we also are the first to enjoy the opportunity of learning quickly from developments in societies anywhere else in the world today, and from what has unfolded in societies at any time in the past. That's why I wrote this book. — Jared Diamond

Greenland ice cores show the temperatures there changing by as much as 8 degrees Celsius in ten years, drastically altering rainfall patterns and growing conditions. — Bill Bryson

She raised her sad blue eyes to mine. "It's going to be so boring here without you. And I'm going to have to deal with Grandmother on my own! You need to e-mail, text, call, send smoke signals
whatever
and tell me everything you're doing."
I laughed. "Yes, I know. Every day. I promise. — Shannon Greenland

Canada and Russia and Greenland will stake new claims in once-frozen waters. — Lidia Yuknavitch

I've always been fascinated and stared at maps for hours as a kid. I've especially been most intrigued by the uninhabited or lonelier places on the planet. Like Greenland, for instance, or just recently flying over Alaska and a chain of icy, mountainous islands, uninhabited. — Andrew Bird

He stretched his arm above my head, and my heart skipped a beat. "I've been thinking about this a lot." "This?" David toyed with the hair on top of my head. "This." "K-kissing?" He pressed his body against mine, and I stopped breathing. "Speaking of which." "I haven't brushed my teeth," I blurted, then realized what an extremely stupid thing that was to say. His eyes crinkled. "Hmmm, did you brush them this morning?" "Yes," I croaked. "Good." He tilted his head. "Bu - — Shannon Greenland

The likelihood is that any English-speaking skier has more words for different types of snow than any inhabitant of Alaska or Greenland. — Larry Trask

To be sure, Wegener made mistakes. He asserted that Greenland is drifting west at about 1.6 kilometres a year, a clear nonsense. (Its more like a centimetre.) — Bill Bryson

This ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors
Many a frozen night, and merrily
Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores:
"At Mrs Greenland's Hawthorn Bush," said he,
"I slept." None knew which bush. Above the town,
Beyond 'The Drover', a hundred spot the down
In Wiltshire. And where now at last he sleeps
More sound in France -that, too, he secret keeps. — Edward Thomas

Saving Greenland is both a metaphor and a precondition for saving civilization. If its ice sheet melts, sea levels will rise 23 feet. Hundreds of coastal cities will be abandoned. The rice growing river deltas of Asia will be under water. There will be hundreds of millions of rising-sea refuges. The word that comes to mind is chaos. If we cannot mobilize to save the Greenland ice sheet; we probably cannot save civilization as we know it. — Lester R. Brown

For me the most important issue is climate change because it in some ways trumps every other issue. Everything else we care about falls by the wayside if the Greenland ice shelf falls into the sea. And if suddenly sea levels rise 21 feet, everything we hold near and dear ceases to exist. — Moby

I was the toast of two continents: Greenland and Australia. — Dorothy Parker

To reach Greenland, turn left at the middle of Norway, keep so far north of Shetland that you can only see it if the visibility is very good, and far enough south of the Faroes that the sea appears half way up the mountain slopes. As for Iceland, stay so far to the south that you only see its flocks of birds and whales. So, ROUGHLY PARAPHRASED, run the navigational directions in an Icelandic manual of the Middle Ages, — Peter Heather

The close relationships between the abrupt ups and downs of solar activity and of temperature that I have identified occur locally in coastal Greenland; regionally in the Arctic Pacific and north Atlantic; and, hemispherically, for the whole circum-Arctic, suggesting that changes in solar activity drive Arctic and perhaps even global climate. — Willie Soon

Some would think the leader of a people should be a model of what to strive for. But maybe God knew trying to be perfect is just not healthy, or maybe God could not find any perfect human beings. Maybe it's just not possible to be perfect. — Seth Greenland

Turn left at Greenland.... — John Lennon

People travel and hunt on the sea ice - in Alaska, they hunt in skin boats for bowhead whales; in Greenland, they hunt with dogsleds. The ice is their highway. The ice is also the ecosystem in which marine mammals and terrestrial animals such as polar bears exist. — Gretel Ehrlich

More concerning, the decade to 2010 was the warmest that Greenland has seen - at least in the 120 years for which records have been kept. Furthermore, the Arctic summers of 2010, 2011 and 2012 were the warmest since at least the 1400s. — Richard Starks

Nearly 90 per cent of the planet's ice is in Antarctica and most of the rest is in Greenland. — Bill Bryson

If this ice melts in Greenland it can shut down the Gulf Current. — Jay Inslee

I am involved in making measurements in polar oceans, and they are changing more than anything else. I think we have to be prepared for major changes associated with the melting of floating ice and the melting of the Greenland glacier. — Walter Munk

Then humming thrice, he assumed a most ridiculous solemnity of aspect, and entered into a learned investigation of the nature of stink...The French were pleased with the putrid effluvia of animal food; and so were the Hottentots in Africa, and the Savages in Greenland; and that the Negroes on the coast of Senegal would not touch fish till it was rotten; strong presumptions in favour of what is generally called stink, as those nations are in a state of nature, undebauched by luxury, unseduced by whim and caprice: that he had reason to believe the stercoraceous flavour, condemned by prejudice as a stink, was, in fact, most agreeable to the organs of smelling; for, that every person who pretended to nauseate the smell of another's excretions, snuffed up his own with particular complacency... — Tobias Smollett

Was it because a lot of the heat went into melting Arctic sea ice or parts of Greenland and Antarctica, and other glaciers? Was it because the heat was buried in the ocean and sequestered, perhaps well below the surface? ... Perhaps all of these things are going on? — Kevin E. Trenberth

Like there's actually a need for Greenland. You can get ice at 7-Eleven. — Steve Kluger

I once saw a lump of Greenland breaking off into the sea and moving south, which of course will affect the atmosphere and us generally, and it'll happen more and more. — Ralph Steadman

The monks' response was to climb into their curraghs and row off toward Greenland. They were drawn across the storm-racked ocean, drawn west past the edge of the known world, by nothing more than a hunger of the spirit, a yearning of such queer intensity that it beggars the modern imagination. — Jon Krakauer

Hadn't I wanted this? I had actively participated in every moment of the creation of this life. So why didn't I see myself in any of it? The only thing more impossible than staying was leaving. I didn't wanna hurt anybody, I wanted to slip quietly out the back door and not stop running until I reached Greenland. Instead I made a decision: to pray.. you know ... like ... to God. And it was such a foreign concept to me that I swear I almost began with: I'm a big fan of your work. — Elizabeth Gilbert

On his last voyage he had seemed on the brink of success and had stood in the prow reciting a grand poem of his own composition to a dim blue promontory in which he recognized one of the capes of Greenland. But it is idle to deny that the general feeling was dampened somehow, when they discovered it was the Cape of Good Hope. In short, the admiral was one of those who keep the world young. — G.K. Chesterton

When you have seen the whole world, the old words said, there is always Greenland left. — Claire North

Where will that be?' 'Either Greenland or Iceland.' 'How shall we know which is which?' 'If it's green, it'll be Iceland. If it's icy it'll be Greenland. — Ernest Schofield

The truth is a stranger...Not always welcome by daylight. — Colin Greenland

By December an elastic skin of ice reached out hundreds of miles into the sea, rolling with every wave. — Will Chancellor

In front of us, the ocean stretched for eternity. Around us, reggae mussy floated through the air. In our drying clothes and still-damp hair, we ate junk food and talked.
At some point we finished and went for a long walk in the sand. We picked up shells, laughed, and talked. Before I knew it, the sun was going down and we went back to the van. We lay side by side, stretched out on the blanket. When the sun dropped completely below the horizon, we let the moon illuminate us. — Shannon Greenland

Were I laid on Greenland's Coast, And in my Arms embrac'd my Lass; Warm amidst eternal Frost, Too soon the Half Year's Night would pass. — John Gay

Blue-shirt (Blauserk in Inuktitat, the Inuit language), or Mykla Jokull, now known as Gunnbjorn's Peak (12,500 feet)
the great metaphorical centerpiece in William T. Vollmann's saga-like novel The Ice-Shirt
is the great glacier in Greenland used as a landmark by Erik the Red in sailing west from Snaefellsness. — Alexander Theroux

According to Inuit culture in Greenland, a person possesses six or seven souls. The souls take the form of tiny people scattered throughout the body. — Annie Dillard

I believe that Greenland will achieve independence during the time I am still active in politics. — Aleqa Hammond

I'm quite happy trekking around Greenland on my own, but those big book tours in America or the Far East are the only time I ever really feel lonely. — Michelle Paver

I didn't want to destroy anything or anybody. I just wanted to slip quietly out the back door, without causing any fuss or consequences, and then not stop running until I reached Greenland. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Although there is a human settlement at Jakobshavn, Greenland is an inhuman landscape of never-ending wastes. — Richard Davenport-Hines

From Greenland's icy mountains,
From India's coral strand,
Where Afric's sunny fountains
Roll down their golden sand;
From many an ancient river,
From many a palmy plain,
They call us to deliver
Their land from error's chain. — Reginald Heber

Greenland is a wonderful country. — Frederik, Crown Prince Of Denmark

The most remote place I've been to was in Greenland. I remember setting out for a solo hike from a small cabin, itself several hours' boat ride from the nearest settlement. — Michelle Paver