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April 21, 2006
Greenland to get own currency
SIKU CIRCUMPOLAR NEWS
Starting in 2008, Greenland will have its own currency.
This means Greenland will enjoy a privilege that the Faroe Islands, also a self-governing Danish colony, has enjoyed for nearly 60 years.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark, and Hans Enoksen, the premier of Greenland, struck an agreement on a new Greenlandic currency in collaboration with Denmark’s national bank.
Greenlanders are to form a working group. This group will look at designs for the currency, which will be made by artists in Greenland, said Torben Nielsen of the Danish national bank.
Josef Motzfeldt, Greenland’s finance minister, told the newspaper Sermitsiaq that Greenland’s new money would be accepted everywhere in the nation.
Since 1949, the Faroe Islands have had their own currency, featuring local designs and the Faroese language.
April 21, 2006
Barrow whoops it up
SIKU CIRCUMPOLAR NEWS
Barrow, Alaska’s 4,500 residents were out earlier this month for their 22nd annual Piuraagiaqta Spring Festival, which included a parade through the community’s streets.
The festival’s theme was “Let’s go whaling.” One truck was decorated with a model bowhead at the front fender and an umiaq on the top of the cab.
A parade participant threw a plastic bag of mattak to the crowd, reported the Anchorage Daily News.
The festival kicked off with a three-day scavenger hunt, where teams of three have to search around town for various items. A tug-of-war between Inupiat women and non-native men was scheduled on an ice-covered lagoon, but the event turned out to be a bust when only one man showed up, said the ADN.
Other events included a walking tour of the “Farthest North Scale Model of the Solar System,” which runs more than a kilometer from a three-foot sun out to Pluto.
Ice golf, harpoon throwing contest and ice bowling with frozen chickens were also on the festival agenda.
April 21, 2006
North Pole close for some, far for many
Some walk, some ski, some go by dog team, some have it easy and some don’t.
Despite continually warming weather, the North Pole was still the objective last week for many trekkers, even royalty, as Prince Albert of Monaco traveled a short distance by dog team from the Borneo ice camp to the North Pole.
The YES Consultancy, handling media for Conrad Dickinson and Richard Weber’s unsupported North Pole Classic trek, wrote an article about Prince Albert hitting the ice, called “A tale of two expeditions”.
“The Prince and his team of seven will enjoy twice-daily hot meals prepared from the kitchen of world-famous chef Alain Ducasse, while Conrad and his trekking partner, Canadian Richard Weber, 46, have to rely on modified dog food rations that have now been contaminated by fuel that is carried in the same sledge.”
Communicating via the Northgate North Pole web site, Dickinson said, “The taste is unpleasant, but just palatable. However, the worst effect is that it makes you belch with a fuel-tasting burp? Disgusting!”
Weber and Dickinson must achieve a daily mileage of at least 18 km to reach the North Pole by their scheduled finish date of April 29.
“We had six consecutive days of near whiteout and the surface conditions of soft snow and perilously thin ice have slowed progress. Richard has over 20 years’ experience of the Arctic Ocean, and he has never seen such bad conditions and such thin ice. The April weather is more similar to May, which rather worryingly could be the effect of global warming,” Dickinson reported.
“The top of the world is melting right in front of my very eyes!!!!” is what David de Rothschild of the Top of the World Expedition wrote this weekend.
“You can call it whatever makes you feel comfortable, climate change, global warming, a cyclical trend, green nonsense, solar flare, wobbly axis — whichever side of the fence you sit on, there is no denying something is amiss, when for the last two days the temperature here has only got down to –6 C.”
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