From rocky outcrops overlooking modest, brightly painted homes, photographer Dennis Lehtonen captures an astonishing nordic phenomenon. Innaarsuit, Greenland, which sits greater than 430 miles north of the Arctic Circle, units the stage for a collection of pictures highlighting dramatic guests to the realm’s waterways.
Lehtonen moved to Greenland in April 2023 to work in a neighborhood fish manufacturing facility. Fascinated by polar areas, he beforehand frolicked in Lapland, the northernmost area of Finland. The minimal mild air pollution meant unbelievable alternatives for photographing aurora borealis, which stays a steering curiosity as he continues to discover the snowy far reaches of the Northern Hemisphere.
When he arrived in Innaarsuit, he heard about an incident in 2018 when the village of round 160 Inuit residents needed to be absolutely evacuated resulting from an enormous iceberg settling close to the shore. Estimated to have been round 100 meters excessive, its presence threatened folks’s security as a result of risks of items breaking off and inflicting waves giant sufficient to hit a number of the coastal homes. Whereas inherently a tense state of affairs, it was additionally astonishing to see, and Lehtonen couldn’t assist being curious “what it would look like to have a skyscraper made of ice on your backyard.”
A few weeks in the past, Lehtonen and locals noticed an iceberg floating a couple of miles away, and even from the space, he might inform it was giant. Days later, it—really a pair—slid into Innaarsuit, dwarfing the fishing village’s modest wood homes.
The municipality was warned to watch out when on the coast and to not journey in giant teams. Fragments often broke off because the iceberg moved, making a reverberating sound akin to thunder. Many locals additionally documented the phenomenon, regardless of being extra accustomed to icebergs. “They would also tell me that this is the highest they have ever seen an iceberg rise above the houses,” Lehtonen says. “So it was definitely a special event.”
Inquisitive about ultimately documenting distant areas of Alaska, northern Canada, and Siberia, Lehtonen is completely satisfied to proceed exploring Greenland for now, because it nonetheless stokes his curiosity. “The (nomadic) lifestyle doesn’t seem to make sense to most other people, but I feel like it creates the best memories,” he tells Colossal. Discover extra on his web site and Instagram.
