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<p class="preamble"><strong>As part of a trip to Qaanaaq, Malene Lynge, head of WWF’s Greenland programme, reflects on the experiences by hunters and families in northern Greenland and what they can teach us about a changing Arctic. Their responses reveal a culture under pressure, but one that refuses to disappear.</strong></p>
<p>The narwhals appeared first as small movements in the distance. Then another pod. And another one.</p>
<p>After 15 hours of waiting on the water near Qeqertat, a settlement near Qaanaaq, it became almost impossible to keep count. Perhaps 10 or 12 pods passed through the fjord—around a hundred narwhals altogether. But the boats did not rush towards them.</p>
<p>Silence is essential to a successful hunt. The hunters in their boats stayed far back. Narwhals are highly sensitive to noise, and the sound of engines can cause them to change direction or move away.</p>
<p>From one of the boats, an experienced hunter slipped into his qajaq and began approaching the animals quietly.</p>
<p>Narwhal hunting from qajaq is extraordinarily difficult. The hunter must read the sea, sun, wind and the animals—their speed and distance to him—simultaneously. Traditionally, the narwhal is first struck with a harpoon before the hunt is completed. The harpoon is attached to an avataq, a hunting float that prevents the animal from sinking.</p>
<p>The whole event took hours, but eventually the hunt was unsuccessful. Perhaps because of that, the experience stayed with me.</p>
<p>It revealed something that can be difficult to understand from more conventional reports about Arctic wildlife management: the knowledge, patience and precision that lie behind a traditional hunt.</p>
<p>Difficult. Beautiful. It is an art passed down through countless generations. Watch the hunt below.</p>
<div style="width: 1920px;" class="wp-video"><video class="wp-video-shortcode" id="video-9866-1" width="1920" height="1080" preload="metadata" controls="controls"><source type="video/mp4" src="https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/Narwhal-hunt-Malene-Lynge-2026.mp4?_=1" /><a href="https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/Narwhal-hunt-Malene-Lynge-2026.mp4">https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/Narwhal-hunt-Malene-Lynge-2026.mp4</a></video></div>


Knowledge is something you do

Panoramic view of houses located by the coastline with mountains and open sea in the background.

<div id="attachment_9871" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-9871" class="wp-image-9871 size-large" src="https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/narwhal-hunt-preparation-1024x662.jpg" alt="Man preparing equipment and kayak for narwhal hunting. Open sea in sunny weather." width="1024" height="662" srcset="https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/narwhal-hunt-preparation-1024x662.jpg 1024w, https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/narwhal-hunt-preparation-300x194.jpg 300w, https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/narwhal-hunt-preparation-768x497.jpg 768w, https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/narwhal-hunt-preparation-1536x994.jpg 1536w, https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/narwhal-hunt-preparation-2048x1325.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><p id="caption-attachment-9871" class="wp-caption-text">Man preparing equipment and kayak for narwhal hunting.</p></div>
<h2>“Don&#8217;t take more than you need”</h2>
<p>Another insight from my interviews with hunters and families in Qaanaaq was about restraint: do not harvest more than you can actually use, or as one hunter expressed it, “do not catch more than there is room for in the freezer.</p>
<p>It is a strikingly practical definition of sustainability.</p>
<p>Several people also spoke about respecting animals, hunting grounds and other communities&#8217; territories. And many wanted the same principle of respect applied to their knowledge. If researchers ask people to share observations accumulated over decades, interviewees want to know what happens to that knowledge afterwards.</p>
<p>Who owns it?</p>
<p>Who can access it?</p>
<p>How will it influence decisions?</p>
<p>And will anything come back to the community?</p>
<p>These questions matter increasingly as interest in the rapidly changing Arctic grows. They also echoed strongly in the workshop in Qaanaaq, where respectful research was described as something that should benefit the community and give local people a genuine role in shaping, correcting or even rejecting research that affects them.</p>
<h2>Less time to learn</h2>
<p>One of the profound consequences of changing ice conditions may be something that never appears on a climate graph: less time to learn.</p>
<p>When families cannot spend the same amount of time travelling and staying at hunting grounds, younger generations have fewer opportunities to acquire knowledge in the way previous generations did.</p>
<p>The danger is therefore not only losing particular hunting opportunities. It is interrupting the process through which knowledge itself survives.</p>
<div class="mceTemp"></div>


The ice no longer follows the old calendar

Small ice berg floating on open sea with mountains in the background.

<h2><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-9879 size-large" src="https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/quaanaaq-resident-920x1024.jpg" alt="Older man sitting by a table with a coffee cup and reading a piece of paper." width="920" height="1024" srcset="https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/quaanaaq-resident-920x1024.jpg 920w, https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/quaanaaq-resident-270x300.jpg 270w, https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/quaanaaq-resident-768x855.jpg 768w, https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/quaanaaq-resident-1380x1536.jpg 1380w, https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/quaanaaq-resident-1840x2048.jpg 1840w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 920px) 100vw, 920px" /></h2>
<h2>Changing an entire way of life</h2>
<p>One elder with more than 50 years of hunting experience described how the ice has changed not just in extent, but in structure and predictability. That distinction matters.</p>
<p>For someone travelling across the ice, a satellite image showing &#8220;ice&#8221; does not necessarily tell you whether that ice can carry a dogsled.</p>
<p>The consequences extend far beyond mobility. One hunter from Siorapaluk described a direct relationship between sea ice, dogsleds, hunting and fishing. As longer journeys on stable ice become more difficult, fewer dogs are needed and maintained. In his view, the chain is clear: changes in ice affect mobility, which affects dogs, which in turn affects hunting, food and an entire way of life.</p>


<div style="width: 1920px;" class="wp-video"><video class="wp-video-shortcode" id="video-9866-2" width="1920" height="1080" preload="metadata" controls="controls"><source type="video/mp4" src="https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/Quaanaaq-village-boat.mp4?_=2" /><a href="https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/Quaanaaq-village-boat.mp4">https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/Quaanaaq-village-boat.mp4</a></video></div>
<h2>When animals change their timing</h2>
<p>The story is not simply one of animals disappearing.</p>
<p>Several people described more walrus than they remember from earlier decades. Some report more polar bears close to settlements and town.</p>
<blockquote><p>Eider ducks and mussels appear more frequently in some places, while seals are harder to find or thinner than before. Narwhals still arrive in large numbers, but where and when they appear have changed.</p></blockquote>
<p>A younger hunter told me that the shift in timing is perhaps the clearest sign of change. The ice freezes later. Walruses arrive at different times. Narwhals may pass places during periods previously not appearing.</p>
<p>Another hunter, who grew up in Siorapaluk, described an even broader geographical shift. While narwhals were once abundant close to the settlement, he now increasingly forced to travel farther south to hunt, sometimes towards Moriusaq and Narsaarsuk near Pituffik. Other hunters may travel north instead.</p>
<p>“We hunt farther south now,” he said.</p>


<div id="attachment_9886" style="width: 648px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-9886" class="size-full wp-image-9886" src="https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/quaanaaq-greenland-surroundings-map.webp" alt="Map of Quaanaaq and its surroundings" width="638" height="451" srcset="https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/quaanaaq-greenland-surroundings-map.webp 638w, https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/quaanaaq-greenland-surroundings-map-300x212.webp 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 638px) 100vw, 638px" /><p id="caption-attachment-9886" class="wp-caption-text">Map of Qaanaaq and its immediate surroundings (left)/Map of Greenland with Qaanaaq, its municipal head office in Ilulissat, and capital Nuuk marked (right). Credit: M.S Abildgaard (2024), The Satellite at the End of the World: Infrastructural Encounters in North Greenland. In B. Thorsteinsson et al. (eds.), Mobilities on the Margins,Arctic Encounters, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41344-5_11 197</p></div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2>A shared landscape across borders</h2>
<p>Those movements also bring Pikialasorsuaq, or “Ikeq” as it is called by locals, the North Water Polynya between Greenland and Canada, into focus.</p>
<p>One elder described the areas on both sides of the water very simply: “It is shared land.”</p>
<blockquote><p>For generations, people, animals and knowledge have moved across this region. Political borders do not necessarily reflect how the landscape has historically been used or understood.</p></blockquote>
<p>The same is true ecologically. Narwhals, walruses, polar bears, currents and sea ice move across jurisdictions.</p>
<p>For the people who know this landscape through lived experience, Ikeq or Pikialasorsuaq is therefore not only an ecological feature on a map. It is part of a connected geography of hunting, travel, family histories and relationships across the water.</p>
<h2>Knowledge also lives inside the home</h2>
<p>One of the most important lessons from the interviews was that Inuit Knowledge cannot be understood by speaking only with male full-time hunters. Women described environmental change through a different lens.</p>
<p>They notice what comes home from the hunt—and what no longer does. They remember when certain fish arrived, how much was caught, how skins changed, when food was prepared and how supplies lasted through winter. They also hold much of the knowledge around processing skins, sewing clothing, preparing food and maintaining a hunting household.</p>
<blockquote><p>One woman described how the abundance of polar cod that once arrived in spring has declined dramatically. Fish that were once caught relatively high in the water must now be sought much deeper.</p></blockquote>
<p>Her observations begin not necessarily on the hunting ground, but around the household. That is where ecological change becomes food, clothing, dog food, income and family life.</p>
<h2><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-9887" src="https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/quaanaaq-school-building-1024x628.jpg" alt="Red building with playground in front of it" width="1024" height="628" srcset="https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/quaanaaq-school-building-1024x628.jpg 1024w, https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/quaanaaq-school-building-300x184.jpg 300w, https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/quaanaaq-school-building-768x471.jpg 768w, https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/quaanaaq-school-building-1536x942.jpg 1536w, https://admin.arcticwwf.org/app/uploads/2026/09/quaanaaq-school-building-2048x1256.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></h2>


<h2>A culture under pressure—but not disappearing</h2>
<p><span data-contrast="auto">Yet the people I met did not speak as though hunting culture belonged to the past, quite the opposite.</span><span data-ccp-props="{}"> </span></p>
<p><span data-contrast="auto">One part-time hunter, who is trained as an electrician and works with heavy machinery, sometimes goes seal hunting after work. That is why she keeps dogs. From the hunt she processes skins and fills her freezer with the meat.</span><span data-ccp-props="{}"> </span></p>
<p><span data-contrast="auto">She describes education as essential in a changing society, but sees no contradiction between formal education, wage employment and hunting. Her life combines all three.</span><span data-ccp-props="{}"> </span></p>
<blockquote><p><span data-contrast="auto">This is one of the clearest examples of resilience I encountered during my trip to Qaanaaq. The future of Inuit hunting culture depends on the ability to find new ways of carrying its knowledge forward.</span><span data-ccp-props="{}"> </span></p></blockquote>
<p>This means dogsleds alongside snowmobiles. Wage employment alongside hunting. Scientific research alongside generations of local observation. Modern education alongside skills learned from parents and grandparents.</p>


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