Police have taken a helicopter to the hamlet of Nutaarmiut, about 90km from Upernavik in west central Greenland.

“We have been informed by a citizen that three people have been shot and killed in Nutaarmiut and two people are said to be injured,” Claus Risbjerg of the Greenland Central Police Authority said in a Politken report.

Nutaarmiut is home to around 55 people and is one of many small hunting communities in the country that does not have a permanent police presence.

“We have no information on who did this. We have a helicopter due to land up there soon with police, a doctor and nurses. When we have our people on the scene, we will have further information,” Risbjerg said.

Cartographers for the Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, last released in September 2011, have admitted they were wrong to omit around 300,000 square kilometres of polar ice from sea surrounding Greenland.

British Publishers HarperCollins originally defended the accuracy of the map, which was released with promotional material about the fast acceleration of global warming. The blunder was exposed by scientists however, who said that the chart contradicted the most recent satellite images.

Publishing editor Jethro Lennox told the Scotsman, “After publication of the 13th edition of The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, it became apparent that we had not represented the permanent ice cover in Greenland fully and clearly.

“In failing to do that, this section of the map did not meet the usual high standards of accuracy and reliability that the atlas strives to uphold. To correct this, we decided to produce a new, more detailed map using the latest information available,” he added.

The updated section, which will be inserted into any remaining copies, was put together after consultation with a number of experts. Liz Morris from the Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University said, “This was a really bad mapping error. If 15 percent of ice was lost, then sea levels would have risen by one metre, and that hasn’t happened.”

(Photo: Anders Peter Amsnæs)

There has long been a question mark over whether or not the southern Greenlandic climate was warm enough in Viking times to grow grain for beer, mead, gruel and bread.

Now Danish archaeologists have found remains of burnt barley in a dunghill from the time when Erik the Red and other Icelanders moved to Greenland. The find is the first evidence of corn cultivation in southern Greenland a thousand years ago.

According to Jyllandsposten, the archaeologists are very proud of their find and are even shipping 300 kilogrammes of the dunghill home to Denmark for further research.

A deal has been signed for Statoil to acquire a 30.6 percent stake in one of the British explorer’s Greenland licenses, showing interest in the Arctic remains strong despite recent high-profile failures.

“The exact financial terms of the agreement are confidential,” Cairn said, according to a Reuters report. It added, however, that the Norwegian company would be paying some of the past and future exploration costs and a bonus on signing the deal.

Cairn has spent USD 1.2 billion on projects in the Arctic over the last two years, but has so far failed to get any conclusive shows. It is believed that the company hoped to get funding for all future drilling costs, but their lack of success so far has forced them to offer “attractive” partnership terms to investors.

“Arctic specialist Statoil’s early entry into a part of Cairn’s Greenland acreage, on attractive terms, validates the industry’s and Cairn’s long-held belief in the region’s multi-billion barrel exploration potential,” Morgan Stanley analysts said in a note.

Environmental groups have attempted to disrupt Cairn’s activities in the Arctic several times, pointing out than an oil spill in the pristine region would be detrimental to wildlife and almost impossible to clean up. It is thought, however, that Greenland could hold as many as 20 billion barrels of oil, making the semi-autonomous Danish island one the world’s biggest producers.

(Photos: Anders Peter Amsnæs)

Jóhann Straumfjord Sigurdson and David Collette, whose ancestral grandmother was Guðríður Þorbjarnardóttir, the mother of Snorri, the first European child born in North America, will sail from Canada to Iceland along a route that was old before Christopher Columbus was born.

“We’ve named the expedition Fara Heim”, said Jóhann Sigurdson. “In Old Norse, “að fara heim” means “to go home”. We are searching for Norse presence in the Arctic between Hudson Bay and west of Greenland to investigate how far West the Vikings explored”. The team will use non-damaging modern techniques to collect data and do no harm to artefacts or locations found. All information and any discoveries will be digitally recorded and shared with government agencies for formal archaeological investigation.

The expedition will work closely with the Inuit people and Nordic countries as Fara Heim is a story of many Arctic cultures. “We have begun reaching out to everyone we can in the North to ask for local knowledge and stories. Incredible things have been found, like the Viking settlement in Newfoundland, by just asking. We plan to make the Fara Heim website the nexus for information on Viking exploration in North America”, said Collette.

The modern Vikings will voyage via the far travelled “Glory of the Sea”, a purpose-built aluminium polar expedition sailing boat. “Glory” has been to both Poles, circumnavigated the globe twice and travelled the Northwest Passage in 2011. “The deck of a small sailing vessel is the perfect platform to see the Arctic as the Vikings saw it. “Glory” will get us to locations that aren’t normally visited”, said Sigurdson.

Fara Heim’s advisory board includes Captain Norm Baker, the First Mate and Navigator for several of Thor Heyerdahl’s expeditions and a current Director of the Explorers Club, Guy Maddin, film Director and Producer, and Charles Hedrich, global explorer and founder of “Respectons La Terre” a European organisation dedicated to exploration with an environmental focus. Key archaeologists and historians are joining the board to develop the field data collection protocols, aid in historical research and ensure all field investigations maintain the integrity of the site for further field work.

The team and sailing boat will be based on Lake Winnipeg for the summer of 2012 for crew training and boat preparation and depart from Churchill in May 2013. To support the non-profit Fara Heim organisation corporate sponsorships are being developed. “Travel with a purpose” opportunities for individuals to participate on the journey are available in both 2012 and 2013.

Join in the adventure by visiting http://www.faraheim.com.
“Like” the project on Facebook at http://www.facebook/faraheim

No applications from Icelandic organisations or individuals were received by the Nordic Council to meet with its council members before their own meeting which begins in Oslo today.

The public in all the Nordic countries were invited to meet council members to press them on important subjects or get them on board with their causes or points-of-view.

A total of just four meeting requests were received; mostly from Norway. The meetings held were mostly about transportation between Norway and Sweden and citizenship rights in the Nordic countries.

This was the first time the public were invited to interact directly with the Nordic Council in this manner and among the stated goals is to stimulate open debate within the Council and to open the Council up to the people.

Tina Bostrup, an employee of the Nordic Council, told Vísir.is that she hopes Icelanders show the meeting initiative more interest when the Nordic Council meets again in Iceland at the end of March.

Casual research indicates that today’s first attempt failed primarily because most people did not know about it. That is unlikely to be the case next time.

The areas for which search licences are being offered lie in the high Arctic; far north of Iceland and not too far from Svalbard. They are north of Scoresbysund between 75 and 79 degrees north. The areas are being offered in two stages; the first in 2012 and the second in 2013. Applications from oil companies to be permitted to take part must be received by the 1st March and for specific location licences, by the 15th December. The exploration licences will last for 16 years, with the option for extension up to 30 years.

It is now ten years since oil exploration licences were first offered off western Greenland and the country has since offered a new area for exploration on average once every two years, Vísir.is reports. There are some 20 licences currently active, which are held by companies including Statoil, ExxonMobil, BP, ChevronTexaco, Shell and Japan Oil. Canada’s Husky Energy has announced it will drill two test wells in Greenlandic waters in summer 2013.

The first company to find oil and gas in Greenland was the UK’s Cairn Energy in the autumn of 2010 off Disko Island, 200 km north of Nuuk. The company put its programme on hold this winter, however, after drilling eight holes at great cost, without finding enough evidence of fossil fuels to make it worthwhile.

This disappointment does not seem to have dampened the spirits of other oil companies. The head of Greenland’s oil and minerals directorate, Jörn Skov Nielsen, told reporters that all of the world’s oil giants are interested in the east Greenland prospecting auction. Norway’s now-successful oil industry had a similarly disappointing start and the idea was nearly dropped after three years of expensive and fruitless searching.

There is strong opposition to Arctic drilling among environmental groups who say the fragile Arctic ecosystem is less able to cope than other regions and that a major oil spill would be next to impossible to clean up.

The ten-month-old hooded grey pup, known as Eve, most recently paid a visit to Skegness after previously being spotted in Germany, where she was fitted with a GPS tracker, followed by Scotland and the south of England.

The Natureland sanctuary in Skegness is now caring for the intrepid pup and appealing for donations to help pay for her flight back to the Arctic region. Seals from Greenland, Iceland and Canada rarely make it as far as the North Sea.

“No one knows why Eve got lost and travelled so far,” said Cheryl Yeadon from Naturland in a Daily Mail report. “She is still a baby and we think she hasn’t learnt how to cope on her own away from her mum.

“Seals only feed on their mother’s milk for four days before they have to learn to fend for themselves. We are keeping Eve with other seals to teach her about competition for food. Our best option is to get her closer to where she would come from in the wild.

“It is not unusual for seals to travel long distances, but we have never known one to travel as far – and in the wrong direction – as Eve,” Ms Yeadon added.

The organisation hopes that the commercial hunting of the animals, a practice common in Greenland and Canada, will effectively be halted by the agreement.

The decision was made to protect sea mammals, with seal hunting categorised as a particularly harsh form of hunting. Russia is the biggest buyer of seal skins and whale calves skins, which are mainly supplied by Canada.

Maria Vorontsova, the director of the Moscow IFAW (International Fund for Animal Protection), said the ban was urgent due to the inhumane treatment of animals, particularly in Canada.

“Canadian seal hunters catch and kill [pups] under one year old, to be more exact, from 2 weeks to 3 months old,” Vorontsova told the Voice of Russia. “Thus, there’s reason to believe that seal hunting is cruel and inexpedient. Canada keeps saying that 90 percent of the seal skin market is in Russia.”

“And I’m very happy to say that Russia, which banned seal hunting in 2009, made another step and imposed a ban on the import of seal skins. Thus, the Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, which have joined the countries, where a ban on the import of seal skins is in force, has made a very important step,” Vorontsova added.

A ban on the sale of seal products has also been approved by the European Parliament, although there will be exceptions for certain small indigenous communities in Russia, Greenland, Canada and Alaska. European visitors will still be able to purchase souvenirs made from the animal products as long as they are not for resale.

From Nuuk to Helsinki and from Reykjavík to Copenhagen – and not forgetting Tórshavn, Stockholm, Oslo and Marienhamn – New Year’s is a time for fireworks and fun, when people gather with family and friends to eat, drink, explode things, and reflect on the year gone by. Whether it was a good year or a bad year, there is always plenty to talk about — and there are always resolutions to be made and the hope that next year (which is now called ‘this year’) will be the best, most successful and happiest yet. Here’s hoping.

People in Iceland, and indeed around the world, claim that the New Year’s fireworks in Reykjavík are the best in the world. IceNews is far too impartial and upstanding to assert that as fact; instead we ask you to judge for yourself. The live webcam feed website will feature a recorded and edited highlights video for at least the next few days — and possibly all year long.

Wherever you are in the world and however you chose to celebrate the arrival of 2012 (if at all), we at IceNews wish you all the best.

(Photo: New Year’s celebrations in Nuuk, Greenland. Taken a few years ago.)