A taste of Greenland

WHICH COUNTRY, having recently liberalised its licensing laws, is now having a national debate about the moral decline caused by increased alcohol consumption?

Here's another clue: it's a country where an increasing number of city-centre drinking venues has led to media scare stories about the bad habits of the nation's youth.

Can you tell where it is yet? Its bars and restaurants are putting aside formula menus to focus on rediscovered traditional recipes and local specialities, often matched to locally-brewed beers.

If you think you know the answer, you may need to think again after the next clue - it's a country where an unexpectedly harsh winter has recently caused problems with polar bears moving south from the ice floes and wandering a little too close to town centres for comfort.

This is Greenland, far out in the North Atlantic. To put it in some context, it's a land mass bigger than Europe with a population of around 55,000, roughly a third that of Swindon.

I joined a media group from the UK and Germany on a tour hosted by Branding Greenland, a new body put together to open Greenland up to increased trade, tourism and cultural exchange.

One reason for my invite was that there is already a little piece of Greenland in many UK pub freezers.

Royal Greenland, the national fishery and the country's biggest employer, is the world's largest supplier of coldwater prawns, and would like even more pubs to appreciate its high-quality produce from the seas around the country.

The company is increasingly developing added-value products targeting the pub market, including snow crab, smoked halibut and marinated salmon steaks for barbecues.

Royal Greenland is owned by Greenland Home Rule, the governing body which gives Greenland semi-autonomous status while still remaining part of the kingdom of Denmark. Profits are ploughed back into social projects, and the Greenlanders are justifiably proud of the schools and hospitals built with fishing income.

Frozen years

The first thing anyone asks when you mention Greenland is "how cold was it?".

There's a helpful temperature gauge in the passenger area of Greenland's international airport at Kangerlussuaq, which is hovering at around -25ºC when we arrive. A fortnight previously, as many people are very keen to tell us, the gauge recorded Greenland's official lowest-ever temperature, -46ºC. While the difference between temperatures at that level might seem a bit academic, it's vitally important to the country. Greenland is at the sharp end of climate change, and the very cold winter of 2007/08, coming after a decade of relatively mild winters, is being closely analysed.

Changes in temperature also have implications for the fisheries - prawns will migrate across the seabed to seek out suitable temperatures, and there are also signs that cod - which has not been found in commercially fishable numbers around Greenland for some time - is returning.

As well as affecting the fisheries, changes in temperature and snowfall have major implications for winter sports and other tourist-friendly pursuits.

Hunting high and low

Greenland was populated by both Danish and Inuit hunters, and is proud of this tradition. While it may seem strange to us, seals, whales and polar bears are all fair game to the Greenlanders. International quotas are observed and, as they point out, every piece of the animal is used - which means not only whalemeat in the supermarkets, but sealskin seats at the airport and ornate jewellery carved from teeth and bone.

With no roads connecting towns, a visit to the remote hunting community of Itilleq meant a boat ride. Around the harbours the sea, rather than being liquid, has the consistency of a slush puppy. We travelled on an ice breaker, the Sirius, although our large and muscular skipper, Captain Bo, looked as though he could easily break ice without the aid of a reinforced hull, quite possibly while wrestling a whale at the same time.

In Itilleq itself, a polar bear hide was displayed outside a house. Two weeks previously, we were told, the bear had wandered too close to the village, and had paid the price.

The original Viking settlers of Greenland - a previous attempt at colonisation rather than direct ancestors of the current population - sent polar bear hides to the Vatican as a tribute, so the hunting's been going on for quite a while.

Whale meat again

While prawns don't put up much of a struggle, the Greenlandic hunting tradition means everything is, quite literally, fair game.

Danish chef Jeppe Ejvind Nielsen, who now runs the Nipisa restaurant in Nuuk, took us on a morning visit to the local market. The hunters' haul includes reindeer and muskox - a kind of wild sheep - as well as seabirds such as guillemots. "Fishy" was Jeppe's response to the inevitable question "How does seabird taste?"

There was also plenty of fresh seal on offer. The traditional cooking method is to boil the meat and blubber until it's tender enough to bite off in chunks. And how does it taste? "Very fishy," said Jeppe. "It's probably something you have to grow up with to enjoy."

Strange brew

Until two years ago, producing alcohol of any sort was illegal on Greenland. While Denmark's state brewer Carlsberg still ships in lager by the container-load to its bottling plant, liberalisation of the alcohol laws has seen a couple of local brewers set up shop.

Greenland Brewhouse brews a range of beers, including an English-style ale, using melted inland ice - which it stresses it only takes from icebergs, making no contribution to climate change. The Brewhouse beers certainly taste pure, although to my palate that meant they lose some of the complexity of European beers. The ale goes very nicely, though, with a reindeer steak.

In the capital, Brewery Nuuk produces more conventional beers including lagers and dark beers, which are served up in local restaurants, a nightclub, and an English theme pub set up next to the brewery.

Brewmeister Alfons, a Danish expat, has made a career of setting up breweries in new territories, including India. "I've been here 18 months," he confessed, "And I fancy something a bit warmer next. Hopefully someone wants to set up a brewery in South America."

Football crazy

Greenland loves its football, and has had its share of players in the Danish national team. The Greenland team has played against a number of other countries similarly unrecognised by FIFA, including Tibet, and there are some Greenlanders lobbying for the Home Rule government to invest in an all-weather pitch and apply for a FIFA ranking.

Given that their closest neighbour is Canada, a place in FIFA's North, Central America and Caribbean group would more or less guarantee Greenland a place in most World Cups.

Not bad for a country whose entire population would only fill around two-thirds of Wembley Stadium. And we wouldn't bet against them outranking England, given their can-do spirit.

Beware the frisky huskies

In Sisimiut, on the west coast, we went on a traditional dog sled ride. Huskies are the only breed of dog Greenland allows north of the Arctic circle, in order to protect the purity of the breed. The dog teams live outside, close to their owners' homes.

Being fed almost entirely on the parts of the fish that no one eats, husky breath is, I can confirm, pretty rank. However, there is also strong evidence that a raw fish diet is good for the libido, since it turns out huskies get amorous with each other at the drop of a sealskin hat.

With three of us sitting on a sled and the owner at the helm, we travelled for about an hour, roughly five kilometres out of town, in a steadily worsening blizzard. We stopped for a drink from our sled-owner, a beverage which tasted suspiciously like hot Ribena. The huskies took this pause