Preparing for the field is packing, waiting, training, waiting, and some more packing. The weather forecast indicates that we will be flying out to the sites on Saturday. But all the waiting is not as boring as it sounds. One of the teams that visits the shores for daytrips walked into an archaeological site yesterday. And what did you know, looking at the pictures of the lithics they brought back (the photos, they did of course not collect archaeological artifacts), it appears as if they walked into a large and pretty old site. In only a few minutes they were able to take photos of a number of beautiful bifaces, the kind that is usually assumed to be from some of the first people here. I want to visit that site on the way back! And training is not always boring neither. How could shooting slugs on ice chunks with a repeater Winchester possibly ever be boring?

If you're going to do ancient DNA, you better do it right. No compromise there. A proper ancient DNAer would not even dream of doing any compromises with the equipment, for example. That's why we are bringing more than a metric ton of stuff to northern Greenland, to do it right. If you are a beginner on ancient DNA, or a hobby ancient DNAer, you could get away with some 250kg of equipment, but we are doing the real thing. That's why we need 2000 biscuits of unsweetened Digestives, and 400 Snickers and Mars bars. I wouldn't dream of trying to do ancient DNA without it! Sadly there is a risk that the ancient DNA from Greenland is going to be of a slightly lower quality than most of the ancient DNA out there, as we could only bring half of the 2000 Digestives. The helicopters are not adjusted to proper ancient DNA work and could not bring all of the ancient DNA supplies we need, 1000 of the unsweetened Digestives for example. But tomorrow we are flying out, with over a metric ton of stuff. If we can't make some descent ancient DNA from that, we are not fit to be mentioned as proper ancient DNAers.

So we did finally arrive at Warming on Greenland. And when the helicopters let us off, we were greeted by a curious dog. Only that it was not a dog. Or, as a famous cartoon figure would have expressed it: “It is not a dog, it is a wolf.” I’ve never seen a wolf in the wild before, and certainly not at a distance of 5 meters, but my guess is that it was mutual. The wolf had most likely never seen a human before, and certainly not one from Småland. A wider screening of the area showed us that his pack had just downed a muskochsen and were munching away on it. But basecamp is up now, and it is not a bad one. From here we will be coring lakes, looking for ancient bones, and also contemporary species. And the first lake cores have actually been taken, the first ancient flint core has been found, and the first bones have been sampled.

Finns have it that Santa Claus lives in Finland, but I never believed in that. I always suspected he has got his workshop on northern Greenland. And now I am sure of it. The weather outside, only him and Jenny Nystrom would approve of it. Our helicopter pilots certainly do not like it. So what to do, what do we do with the time when we cannot get out in the field. I hear from my zoology colleagues that when animals are stressed, they start to do something they are used to doing. It is the same with us, we start to write papers. So, here is the land-team, snowed in on Oden, writing papers on what we found on Warming Land a few days ago.

Here we are, at camp Wolf Land. On a big plain, filled with musk oxen (we counted over 40) and surrounded by a mountains in the far distance. We are here to do some serious lake-coring, why we have our tents next to a lake. To get juicy DNA from the lake sediments. This is why we brought equipment to core reasonably deep, we can do down to 15 meters. Impressive, right? So why are we then by a lake that is 26 meters deep? With the DNA we want 11 meters deeper than we can reach? That is a very relevant question. Another relevant question is, who put a musk ox skull on our snow man and turned him into a snow demon? At the moment our camp is overseen by something right out of the movie: "A nightmare before Christmas".

Say that you have a coring problem, say that you want a lake-core full of DNA 26 meters bellow the surface and you only have equipment to core 15 meters down. Then, ofcourse, you call the cavallry. A 200kg coring device swinging in a wire 50m bellow a hovering helikopter. That is what I call archaeology! We are inventing archaeoarctic helicoring here, we are making history. (But I am not going to tell you if it was the helicoring or our own low-tech rubberboat coring in the shallow neighboring lake that got us the core we needed in the end). And I am also very happy that no-one got seriously hurt during the swingcore-operation. I write it down as a successfull day. Even our little musk ox demon, who now has melted down to a cute demon-version of DD8, seems happy.

Two interesting things happened today. Both on Wulff Land (there you go, I finally got the spelling of the place right!). First, we found the second known archaeological feature on the peninsula (the already known one is so far to the southeast so it almost does not count). A Thule site it was, a small one with only one tent-ring, but a massive one. Quit similar to a feature in another part of northwestern Greenland (on Stjernborg). Naturally, people must have been here since there are archaeological remains both east and west of Wulff, but this is the first traces we find of them here (if we do not consider the know southeastern Thule site so far to the southeast on Wulff so we should not consider it). Second, Adam found a message in a bottle. Some people belonging to some Bright-eyes expedition in the 70-ies left a partly readable note in a bottle. Archaeology and recent history, what more do one need? And now I have The Police song "Message in a bottle" playing in my head over and over again.

Ancient DNA field work, is that training for potential serial killers, or is it rehabilitation for serial killers who are quitting their thing? As it was too windy to fly today, we spent the day on Oden, organizing the samples we have already collected. Bones of all different types and sizes, and from all different kinds of species. Yesterday we flew and did some serious field archaeology though, and discovered a new site again. From previous excursions we already have two unknown sites; one Thule site, and one paleo-Inuit site. Not to mention proof from a beautiful flint core indicating inland usage of Warming. The site from yesterday was also precisely dated with typology. The tent-rings of stones was not paleo-Inuit at least, that was obvious already from the air. Not older than the Thule period I would say, for sure. When looking over the site for artifacts, I dated it to about 1975+-10, based on a metal tent-spike Christian found!

Archaeology comes in many shapes. Today when we flew in to Hall Land I had the opportunity to investigate two different sites. First I spent some time at Rode Enkesaede, an Independence I site, probably about 4000 years old. A breath taking place, right by a fjord and on a high terrace. I would not mind eating my BBQed muskox entrecote here if I was a paleo-Inuit. Many structures were still intact even though parts of it had been excavated, and it was simply an archaeological Christmas. Later in the day I also had the opportunity to visit a more recent archaeological site. A very different site. Some kind of semi-abandoned (or in semi-use), meteorological station with cups and chocolate from the 70ies, porn on the walls, rusty gas containers, and matrasses that seemed to be older than me. With a faint smell of butane in the air. Both sites left standing impressions, very different types of impression, but nonetheless standing impressions. Archaeology comes in many different shapes.

Something I really love is the creative madness that accelerates when several scientists are brought together. You know what I am talking about if you have been part of it, and you have no clue if you have not. Instant ideas building upon ideas building up on ideas by people who are professional idea-cultivators. And if there is no sensible person around, it will just take off, since nothing is impossible if the idea is just original enough. Well, here we are, some 45 scientists on the icebreaker, and with only captain Erik and his crew and helicopter pilot Sven to stop us from going all the way out. We want lake cores and lake cores we shall have, no matter what. If we do not get enough cores by Dan and Christian balancing upon a chair in a small (really small) rubber-zodiac on a cold arctic lake while handling heavy iron-rods, then we bring in the helicopters with monster-coring equipment which we built down in the workshop. If the helicoring does not give us what we want, then we stick professor Love Dalén in a survival suit and send him off swimming in a clod lake in northern Greenland in which no one has never even thought about swimming before, to find us the perfect spot for coring!

We visited the Besselfjord today. Sunny, bellow 0, mountains and glaciers, and totally quiet. Out of all the places and sceneries I have seen, I judge it to be among the 25 most beautiful. But, as one of my officers in the army used to say 30 years ago, we were there to work, not to enjoy the place. Sadly, I could not stop enjoying my work on the location. My work was to check out, measure, and take photos of a recently discovered paleo-Inuit site, and check the vicinity for more. And what a site it was! More or less an amazing flint-knapping workshop. Flakes, cores, knapping-stones, flint, someone had been making tools here thousands of years ago. And close to it we found a dwelling site of similar age, and also a butchering site. Being from an area where anything older than a few decades is buried under the surface, it is pretty cool to see stuff made 4000 years ago just sitting on the surface, as if they were left there yesterday.

Eigil Knuth was the pioneer of archaeology in northern Greenland. He excavated up here for half a century. Him and only him. And boy did he excavate! During the latest weeks I have visited some of the sites he worked on. Actually, in some cases I may be the first to visit some of these sites since he was here 50 years ago. Eigil would certainly have approved of our helicoring. He was most likely not a friend of the finer instruments or delicate techniques. Yesterday I visited one of his premium sites, Solbakken. The dump-piles were visible already kilometers away, and it was obvious that he had done a thorough boulder-breaking job on all the structures on the site. But no matter what excavation technique Eigil Knuth used, it is thanx to him we know as much as we do about the prehistory from these areas. When I was a teenager, doing teenage stuff, he was in his 80-ies and still up here uncovering this fascinating prehistory.

We are now in the Sherard Osborne fjord and the data acquisition has started! The oceanographic team has been collecting information regarding the salinity, temperature and the density of the sea water in the fjord (CTD). The coring team was taking sea floor sediment cores in order to reconstruct the climatic conditions of the past – Greenlandic fjords are keeping good record of the extension of the Greenland Ice Sheet and its dynamics.

Fjord itself is vast and has two entrances. Mountains surrounding it are high, we can spot waterfalls on their faces, curving their straight lines into the sea. Today sea was calm and covered by light fog, making every iceberg look as mystical creatures. Its not too cold, sometimes it is so pleasant to take a cup of coffee and go to the deck outside, enjoying the fresh breath of the Arctic salty, dry air.

The land team was taken back to Oden by the helicopter today (for some rest and shower). They have been on the shores of this fjord for a week, working on ecology, biology and archeology. And the coolest thing, they have seen greenlandic wolves! Wolves are totally white, about a size of a Shepard dog; there were puppies as well! Wolves were very curious about people, whom they haven't met before, and even followed them a bit. I must say I was a bit jealous :D! Such a unique encounter with a totally wild nature.

Even if it is always a lot of work - as the multibeam shifts & different stations – it is always so rewarding to just go on the deck and look at the surrounding mountains, icebergs and the sky, constantly changing its colours, preparing now for the long, northern winter.

We arrived to the entrance of Bessel Fjord at about lunch time. This is the fjord just due south from Petermann Fjord where we worked with Oden in 2015. It has taken us a third of the time it took four years ago to get here from Thule since the ice conditions have been much lighter this year. Oden has been able to go in 10 knots instead of the 2–4 knots that are possible keep in a couple of meter thick ice with a few open leads here and there. One of the main point in the plan of today consisted of testing the small “EchoBoat”. Larry Mayer’s team from UNH are the specialists onboard on these kind of remotely controlled mapping devices.

Our plan is to take the small EchoBoat to the Sherard Osborne Fjord Entrance where Ryder Glacier drains. We will bring the boat with helicopter and then map a large enough part of the entrance so we can enter. There is small island in the fjord entrance where we plan to land there and drop the Echoboat in the water, if it is possible and the shores are not too steep. This will be a challenge!

While we made the helicopter recognizance flight, station work was completed on Oden. So far we have taken 2 gravity cores, 3 CTDs and plankton sampling stations. After all work at the station was completed, we begun the route towards Sherard Osborne Fjord. It turned out to be a shaky and noisy night because Oden had to work very hard to get through the heavy ice on the way.

The “Land Team” as we call them, has now been camping for nearly a week close to two lakes on Warming Land. This piece of land is located west of Sherard Osborne Fjord where the Ryder Glacier drains and where we are working with Oden. One of their missions is to take sediment cores from one of the lakes. The cores will be analyzed for DNA-content with the idea that different sediment layers will provide time snapshots of information on the fauna and flora. This is possible if samples are taken at different levels in the sediment cores that later are dated. If for example muskoxen walked down to the lake to drink, they likely used the area around the lake as a toilet or left some wool on the ground. DNA from their remains will spread to the lake and end up in the sediments. Analyzes of DNA in sediment samples have an enormous potential to provide new information. Love Dalén and co-workers are setting up a brand new facility at Stockholm University for analyses of ancient DNA. We have also discussed collaboration on our marine sediment cores. Ships are the best catalysts for cross-disciplinary collaboration!

I was asked by the lake coring operation group, led by Dan Hammarlund who has lots of experience from coring lakes, to come up to the camp with my small portable sub-bottom profiler and survey the lake. In addition, the remotely operated EchoBoat could be brought along to also map the lake bathymetry. Larry Mayer, Kevin Jerram and Sam Reed from UNH agreed that this was a perfect application for the EchoBoat and decided to take on the mission. All of us flew up with the helicopter with our equipment for a “Lake Mapping Mission”.

We setup the systems at the lake shore. It did not take long time until both the sub-bottom profiler and EchoBoat were in operation. I used a rubber boat to tow the sub-bottom profiler behind me mounted on my “home-made” towing device. It was most likely a rater funny sight to see me rowing, sitting on the floor of the rubber boat with all electronics around, or at least they laughed a lot on the shore and filmed. After rowing four ca 450m long profiles along the lake, I was rather exhausted, specifically since I tried to row in a steady pace. By the time I regained breath after the fourth profile, they called on the radio that the small 2hp outboard motor was now working. Since there was no space in the small rubber boat to sit in front of an outboard motor, we decided to launch the second rubber boat they had available in the camp with Larry as an operator to tow me behind. This worked fine, except for that it was rather difficult to steer, even more amusing for all looking at us. We circled around each other for a while until we got the caravan going. At the end of the Lake, Larry could not turn and fiddled with the throttle so we run into the shore. Luckily they did not see this from the shore on the other side, they might then have fainted from laughter. We accomplished two things, 1) logging some absolutely stellar sub-bottom profiles 2) entertaining all that watched us from the shore. I suspect the film of the rubber boat operation will be shown at some department party sometime in the future so all can get a good laugh, I must admit it looks ridiculous, but we gathered data.

The word ice tongue is typically used for floating extensions of tidewater outlet glaciers in fjords, while ice shelves commonly are wider and unconstrained by fjords, like in Antarctica. A floating ice tongue or ice shelf can extend for tens of kilometers. It thins from the point where it becomes afloat, which is called the grounding line. When they calf (release icebergs), large chunks of them break of. These icebergs are more like floating ice islands with a low and relatively regular relief compared to the irregular icebergs calved from an ice cliff. In Sherard Osborne Fjord we have currently 5 really big icebergs that calved from the floating ice tongue of Ryder Glacier, one of the largest is now located by the present ice tongue margin. It has a length of about 8.6 km. This iceberg was on its way to leave the present margin and float northward in the fjord. But just as it was time for us to map in front of the present ice tongue, it changed the direction and moved back again to cover the entrance to the ice margin. We have placed to gps transponders on this big iceberg so we can keep track of its movement. Yesterday, it began rotating and we saw that opened up a gap between the iceberg and the present ice tongue margin. Getting into to map in this gap would give the information we wanted to have, but taking the icebreaker to this location must be done with highest caution incase the iceberg change direction and begin to close the gap. Erik decided the gap was large enough to enter, and we go in and could map right in front of the ice tongue margin, which was one of the prime goals of this expedition!

Back again the next day to core the nearby lake which was only 5m deep. I began by running a few sub-bottom profiles, which by now felt like routine work. Not much sediments in this lake, far from the nice sediment layers we saw in the first lake. But we had to try the modified corer. It was blowing much harder, more than 10 m/s at base level, gusts reached gale force. This proved to make it much more difficult for Sven to keep the helicopter along a vertical line while descending with the corer, and the risk now was that it hit the lake floor with an angle. It came back up with some sediments, which again fell out, or at least most of it. We recovered some 30 cm very loose organic rich mud, completely different from the sediments in the first lake. One more attempt, and this time we made a loop and attached it in the release hook of the sling so the corer could fall free for 4m before hitting the lake floor. Sven flew over to the nearby 25m deep lake and tried there. The concept worked, but not much sediments recovered. Enough for now, Dan Hammarlund cored the 5m deep lake manually from the rubber boat during the late afternoon-evening with a so called “Russian corer”. He could not use this corer in the 25m deep lake, but managed to get a short core in the shallow lake, which proved that we dealt with very difficult sediments. An upper layer of unconsolidated organic rich, nearly pure gyttja, over sand, which will stop any gravity corer with only a few hundred kilo weight like the one we used. I believe helicopter coring has great potential for remote lakes. But one need to make sure the corer does not hit the lake floor with an angle so perhaps some steering is needed, like the wings of an arrow. It is also critical to be prepared with specific core catchers that prevent loose sediments from falling out of the corer.

It was now time to launch Skidbladner again in Petermann Fjord. This time our target was the Belgrade Glacier and its calving front close to the eastern side of Petermann’s ice tongue margin. The day was perfect, low wind and only a few scattered clouds. The launch from Oden went smooth. Our objectives were to map the seafloor at the calving front to see if there were traces from enhanced positions of the glacier in the past. We also aimed to collect echo sounding data from the water column to see if we could identify signs of meltwater from the glacier in the ocean with the acoustics. For the latter purpose, we had placed two split beam echo sounders on the towing device I had made for the sub-bottom profiler used in lakes earlier during the expedition. Using acoustics to detect sediment suspension and freshwater is part of Liz Weidner’s PhD thesis project. Liz, Lars Lehnert, technician from Swedish Polar Research Secretariat and I went with Skidbladner to map the area in front of Belgrade Glacier. The data we collected were amazing. We could clearly see fresh water plumes, appearing like it was pressed out of the seafloor. It may sound weird, but it could be water that is escaping from the seafloor due to so called artesian pressure. That is when the water infiltrates the sediment or bedrock strata from a higher level flowing below the ground-surface downwards. This will build up pressure if there is a seal above the flowing water preventing it from escaping.

When we were mapping I thought I saw a blow some hundred meters ahead of us, and I immediately shouted out that I saw a whale. But I was not sure, so the whale was soon downgraded to a seal. But shortly thereafter, we saw five backs coming out of the water ahead of us, definitely whales! They were swimming towards us in a coordinated fashion with a near collision course. We were close to the shore and just at the southern edge of the glacier. It was narwhals. I had the camera close by so I quickly grabbed it and first filmed, then took some photos, and finally filmed again. One came just a meter way from our boat, which did not seem to bother them at al. It appeared like they were very focused on their mission, whatever it was, but most likely looking for food. This was some perfect day, good data and narwhals on top of it!

Oden is now in the Sherard Osborn Fjord which is truly spectacular and filled with ice bergs some of which are nearly 10 kilometers long and over 200 m thick. Tidal currents move these islands of ice erratically around in the fjord and they could potentially trap Oden inside the fjord. It has been an unusually warm summer on Greenland, which has resulted in exceptionally warm surface water temperatures in the ice filled fjord. We have measured water temperaturs up to 4 C in the upper 10 meters of the fjord. Warm ocean and air temperatures drive strong melting of the ice, causing smaller ice bergs to disintegrate and roll over, sending waves across the fjord.

Not only unknown depths are challenging for Oden's captain and his crew, some days the fog is so thick that it is almost impossible to see ahead of the ship. Large icebergs are also moving around in the fjord, and could potentially block our way out, and so their movements are closely followed via satellite images. There are many challenges with an expedition in this environment, and I am very impressed by everyone involved in making this a safe journey for all of us onboard.

The first cores that were retrieved have been analysed in the multi sensor core logger (MSCL), which measures petrophysical characteristics such as gamma-ray density, magnetic susceptibility, and resistivity. They have also been split and detailed descriptions have been made. Some interesting layers have been found in the sediments, and it will be very interesting to hear the interpretation once more results as dating etc are available.

The land team came home yesterday after almost one week out in the field. I have not had an opportunity to speak to them myself, but I've heard that they had a close encounter with a wolf pack, three grown-ups and a couple of puppies. There are more than polar bears to watch out for in this barren landscape, that’s for sure! Next week I hope I will have the opportunity to join the land team, more about that in my next blog!

We flew over two groups of muskoxen, but there were no wolves in sight (which I guess was good considering that the camp was situated nearby, even though I had hoped to get a glimpse of them). After landing I helped the land-team to collect willow plants. Their growth rings will be analysed and used as climate proxies. While I was collecting willows, another group was trying to deploy a gravity core in a lake close by – from a helicopter! The skilled(!!) helicopter pilot deployed the core with an amazing precision. The manoeuvre was just stunning to see!

A giant iceberg has been blocking our way to reach the glacier front, but in the beginning of the week it rotated slightly, and we could just make our way past it. We were thus able to map in front of the glacier tongue, which of course was a big success!! I think the captain was a bit nervous though, and I bet it was a relief when we finally went back to the safer side of the iceberg! Almost the entire fjord has now been successfully mapped, and we will soon be heading out of the fjord to Lincoln Sea. Our hope is to continue mapping and do more coring outside the entrance to the fjord, but in this area the sea-ice is particularly heavy and might hinder us. This evening the helicopter will fly out to do ice-recognisance, with the aim to find the best way forward. Every step forward must be thoroughly planned, but the weather and ice-conditions might force us to abandon the plan and find another one – you must be flexible to be able to succeed in these conditions!