The Fading Ways of Indigenous Arctic Hunters

During springtime in the far, far north—when the sun breaches the horizon, after months of total darkness—indigenous Greenlandic hunters head out to frozen inlets and get lost in ice and time. By day, the hunters might move miles in one direction, while the ice under their feet floats gently in another. By night, detached floes drift about, shifting the landmarks as the hunters sleep. For many of the past thirty-five years, Ragnar Axelsson, an Icelandic photographer, has joined these expeditions, clutching his Leica against the Arctic winds. “In the vastness of Greenland there are places to be found where one gets the distinct impression of being alone in the world, places few people have ever reached,” Axelsson says. “The stillness is overwhelming. The emptiness seems boundless.”