From rocky outcrops overlooking modest, brightly painted homes, photographer Dennis Lehtonen captures an astonishing nordic phenomenon. Innaarsuit, Greenland, which sits greater than 430 miles north of the Arctic Circle, units the stage for a collection of pictures highlighting dramatic guests to the world’s waterways.
Lehtonen moved to Greenland in April 2023 to work in a neighborhood fish manufacturing unit. Fascinated by polar areas, he beforehand hung out in Lapland, the northernmost area of Finland. The minimal gentle air pollution meant implausible alternatives for photographing aurora borealis, which stays a steering curiosity as he continues to discover the snowy far reaches of the Northern Hemisphere.
When he arrived in Innaarsuit, he heard about an incident in 2018 when the village of round 160 Inuit residents needed to be totally evacuated as a result of an enormous iceberg settling close to the shore. Estimated to have been round 100 meters excessive, its presence threatened individuals’s security as a result of risks of items breaking off and inflicting waves massive sufficient to hit among the coastal homes. Whereas inherently a tense state of affairs, it was additionally astonishing to see, and Lehtonen couldn’t assist being curious “what it could seem like to have a skyscraper product of ice in your yard.”
A few weeks in the past, Lehtonen and locals noticed an iceberg floating a couple of miles away, and even from the space, he might inform it was massive. Days later, it—truly a pair—slid into Innaarsuit, dwarfing the fishing village’s modest wood homes.
The municipality was warned to watch out when on the coast and to not journey in massive teams. Fragments often broke off because the iceberg moved, making a reverberating sound akin to thunder. Many locals additionally documented the phenomenon, regardless of being extra accustomed to icebergs. “They might additionally inform me that that is the best they’ve ever seen an iceberg rise above the homes,” Lehtonen says. “So it was undoubtedly a particular occasion.”
Enthusiastic about ultimately documenting distant areas of Alaska, northern Canada, and Siberia, Lehtonen is pleased to proceed exploring Greenland for now, because it nonetheless stokes his curiosity. “The (nomadic) way of life doesn’t appear to make sense to most different individuals, however I really feel prefer it creates the perfect recollections,” he tells Colossal. Discover extra on his web site and Instagram.
