Another storm came up, so the ship sailed out to the open ocean to avoid coastal ice. Basically, it slowly chugged north and south, parallel to the shore all night. The rolling ship was very bad. My bunk bed was oriented perpendicular to the length of the ship, so I slid back and forth in the bed all night. During rolls, in one direction my feet and knees took up the shock, but in the other direction it was my head. The life of a sailor is not for me. Luckily, better living through chemistry kept my stomach under control.
View to the east from Mikis Fjord. The slopes on the left lead up to Hammer Top (1065 m). The saddle on the right is made of Tertiary basalts, that include picrites, and total ~2 km thick. The saddle leads up and to the right, where the eastern end of Forbindelses Glacier is barely visible in the mist. Dikes can be seen cutting the basalts. Blue, white, and orange barrels are helicopter fuel.
Looking south, out toward the sea from the ship deck over the bridge. There is more ice in the fjord than the Captain likes.
The rain and winds have let up, so we had an evening Zodiac ride to the Mikis Fjord macrodike, with Hammer Top in the misty distance. The big iceberg is ~100 m long.
The macrodike is up to 800 m wide, 35 km long, and internally differentiated. Ledges on the dike walls host subeconomic platinum mineralization. How in the world do you get macrodikes like that?
View of the fjord from the macrodike. The low, stone ring in the foreground is an abandoned Inuit house, a stone foundation that would have been covered over by skins. This was said to have been abandoned around 1700, having been occupied by “culturally modern” Thule people. I’m afraid I don’t know what that means, though.
Looking down through the doorway passage of the Inuit house in the photo above. The passage points down to let warm air stay in the house. These houses always faced the sea, to keep a lookout for seals and anything else in the water.
View to the southwest from within the macrodike, looking at the ship beyond. Difficult to see in the foreground are three additional houses of a more primitive pre-Thule culture, that were abandoned 3000 to 4000 years ago (so we were told). These people had spear points less specialized for holding prey, and did not use dog sleds. Though much older and on higher ground, these houses were constructed similarly to the younger one, two photos above.
The macrodike heads out roughly in the direction this photo was taken, but it does not appear on the opposite side of the fjord or anywhere else in this direction. Either it heads straight out to sea along the fjord floor, or it is truncated along a fault. I imagine macrodikes must be emplaced at least partly within fault-bounded cavities.
View to the west, with easternmost Forbindelses Glacier visible in the saddle, and Hammer Top partly visible to the upper-left. This is the northern end of Mikis Fjord, though it does extend farther to the east, behind me, where the local iceberg source is. In the foreground there is one of three pre-Thule houses, abandoned 3000 to 4000 years ago.
Close-up of the macrodike interior rock, showing large plagioclase and pyroxene crystals. As can be seen in the photos above, this area has a lot more vegetation than any place on the Skaergaard, and it was hard to find a place to photograph the bare rock.
