GREENLAND

Advantages: Wonderment
Disadvantages: None

...This year we cruised to Greenland via the Faroes and Iceland and back to Scotland stopping on the north side of Iceland and then the Orkneys. You may say WHY? Iceland was pretty much as you would expect, you know geysers, whales, dolphins, puffins (strange, strange birds whose wings are not very efficient) and a lot of tourist type stuff, but Greenland was magnificent. Great snow topped mountains fall straight into a blue, blue unpolluted sea, and occasionally there are tiny wee inlets with two or three houses, painted such bright colours, only accessible by sea. A sea, littered with icebergs that have broken off the enormous glaciers,that slide gracefully into the sea. Small rivers of water cascade into the sea down the sides of the mountains forging picturesque channels. We entered the iceberg-strewn waters at about five in...

polarbear 08.10.2000 · Read review
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Review of General: Denmark

QAQORTOQ greenland

Advantages: Explore the whole Capital on foot in less than 30minutes
Disadvantages: No night life!!

...Qaqortoq when translated means ?The White Place? and although there are only just over 3,000 inhabitants it is still regarded as ?The Big City?. It is also the hub of life in South Greenland. It is naturally centred around the harbour where you can find trawlers, cargo ships and some yachts belonging to the more adventurous traveller. The fact that icebergs are often found in the harbour is just a reminder of how far North we are and of the hazards of these Arctic waters. The black-tarred log building on the waterfront was shipped to Greenland log by log in 1797. It was designed by the Danish royal architect, Kirkerup and prefabricated in Denmark The blacksmith?s shop, which was built in yellow stone in 1871, now houses the Qaqortoq museum. This is one of the best museums I have seen. It shows Greenland culture right through...

polarbear 09.10.2000 · Read review
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Review of General: Denmark

A Great Holiday

Advantages: Hotel not too large, so you get to know everyone.
Disadvantages: Not by the sea, if the sea is what you're after.

......

lala95 09.08.2007 · Read review
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Review of Greenland Hotel Turkey

Incorruptible Ice (Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow - Peter Hoeg)

Advantages: fascianting, beautiful, fun
Disadvantages: the techno-thriller resolution and action sequences might disappoint some readers

...: originally written in Danish and taking place exclusively in Denmark (Copenhagen and Greenland). It's a strange book, not only because of its subject and the main character, but most of all because it very much straddles genres, or to be more precise, it straddles the border between a genre (essentially a thriller) and so called mainstream. I don't recall any other book I have read that had so many genre ingredients (a mystery death, a lone outsider investigating it, dynamic action sequences of fighting and destruction, techno-thriller resolution) which read so much as mainstream 'literature'. It's beautifully written, with deepish psychological analysis, evocative description and interesting points to make. The combination really worked for me - "Miss Smilla" is an exciting read but it also made me think (I also bought the book and re...

magdadh 29.03.2009 · Read review
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Review of Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow - Peter Hoeg

Save it for a cold chilly winter's night!

Advantages:
Disadvantages:

...I will confess before I begin to having a weakness for Alistair MacLean's novels. However, I do not follow conventional wisdom as to which are the best. I struggled to get into "The Guns of Navarone", which is reputed to be his 'pièce de résistance'. No such troubles with "Night Without End", I'm glad to report. The tension rises like the tide - insatiably, grippingly - before easing off to rise again later. We identify easily with the chief protagonist as the book as been written in the first person. Writing in this way can seem amateurish in the hands of a lesser writer, but MacLean uses it expertly. I do not want to give away two much of the plot, save to say that the narrator is part of a party of scientists journeying through Greenland. One of their number is picking them off and it's a race between time to see if...

Jeremiah 23.06.2000 · Read review
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Review of Night Without End - Alistair MacLean

Snow, ice, boats, more snow and more ice

Advantages: well-written; detailed story
Disadvantages: dull sections; ambigious ending

...and details build up slowly. Many of the characters are interesting and it takes a while to get a real sense of who they are and what motivates them. In this sense, the novel works as a mystery. However, personally, after the first 200 pages, I was battling to complete the story as the action moved from land to a boat and the focus shifted from Smilla's relationships to espionage and violence. Knowing very little about boats and Danish/Greenlandic history certainly didn't help, but I found that the most frustrating element was the lack of clarity in events. Miss Smilla never expresses what she is doing to the reader; you see her doing it and create your own ideas regarding her motives. To me, this made the character too opaque. The other characters seemed to slide between being extremely violent and patiently allowing Smilla to roam the ship...

brokenangelkisses 13.01.2009 · Read review
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Review of Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow - Peter Hoeg

Ice, Ice, Baby

Advantages: Beautifully fuid prose, well crafted plot
Disadvantages: Deprived me of sleep for a couple of days!

...I’m still not quite sure why I started reading this book, strangely enough. I had seen the trailer for the film of the same name a while back, but it didn’t appeal to me – and then out of curiosity, I read the back cover of the book when I saw it lying on the table at a mate’s flat not long ago. It might not have sounded too auspicious, being the story of Smilla Jaspersen, a single lady of Greenlandic descent who lives in Copenhagen and investigates the mysterious death of Isaiah, the boy who lives in the flat above hers, but the critics’ comments made me take a closer look. All the reviews I have read of ‘Smilla’ praise the fluid prose style of Peter Hoeg, and it is only rarely that you can say that a really magical sense of the original text has been retained in a translation. Seems strange...

JVL 16.10.2001 · Read review
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Review of Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow - Peter Hoeg

Chasing memories on the Atlantic shores

Advantages: a easy paced and informative read
Disadvantages: none

...roots in both these places. With that the gauntlet is laid down and the whole raison d`etre of the book is summed up. The opening statement of the book comes in the form of a confession. Many years previously Mowat wrote a book called "Westviking - The Ancient Norse in Greenland and North America" which supported the then current ideas that the Norse were the first Europeans to cross to the New World. Any good researcher will adapt their ideas and theories in light of new information and the fact that Mowat has written a book that by design supersedes his previous work, speaks volumes for the fact that he has the right attitude, to many authors these days are overly precious about their work. Academic research is by its very nature a fluid and malleable science and Mowat understands this only too well. Without giving too much away...

steerpyke 30.04.2006 · Read review
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Review of The Alban Quest - Farley Mowat

More inspiration from Lonely Planet

Advantages: Great for ideas, choosing best time of year to travel
Disadvantages: Limited information, some of the dates may be slightly inaccurate

...there's an extra double page "the missing week" to make up the number of weeks to a total of 52; this features a variety of topics such as continents, summits etc. There's a wide range of ideas and experiences, which tend to be more on the adventurous side (and there's a few that 99.9% of people will never do - such as surfing a dangerous break in China, or Bell's Beach, Australia - think Point Break!). A lot of them are very active, some require specialist experience - e.g. rock-climbing. But it's good for bringing up ideas I'd never have thought of, such as dog-sledding in Greenland or visiting Chernobyl (not convinced about the latter!). Each idea is rated by fitness required. One slight flaw in the book is the limited information - while it aims to tell you the best time to travel somewhere, it's difficult to gain an idea with some...

cathy_m80 23.05.2008 (19.05.2008) · Read review
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Review of A Year of Adventures (Lonely Planet General Reference) - Andrew Bain

Vikings, pirates, adventures and mystery all in one book.

Advantages: A really good old book - a forgotten classic
Disadvantages: Quite a long book at 522 pages

...could with the limited opportunities for self-expression permitted by a notably patriarchal age and location.. Those interested in superstitions and the occult will focus on Norna and the awe in which islanders recognize the old Norse powers she claims. Historians are reminded that, like Greenland, Iceland and the Faroes, the Shetlands, Orkneys and Hebrides of Scotland were once ruled by Vikings. The book salutes a dying Viking way of life on Scottish territory. Fans of Vikings and buccaneers will find plenty of pirate action in this novel. Finally, geographically, we are introduced to the wild seas surrounding the island, the winds and the waves, the treeless Orkneys and Shetlands, the island ponies, the almost barren soils and a world of grinding poverty enriched by the spoils from shipwrecks. The writing is wonderfuland...

oldchem 13.11.2009 · Read review
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Review of The Pirate - Sir Walter Scott