English Audio Request

Curled-up dogs lie in large circles on the hummocky shore ice, their rusty chains leading from a spike frozen into the ice like spokes on an old, buckled wheel. Jaundiced patches of urine and dog faeces decorate the ice, tampering with its aesthetic of purity. Beyond, the newly snow-covered sea ice stretches as far as the eye can see.
The much anticipated nigeq, a strong wind from the east, brought a platonic white carpet of snow and warmer temperatures at the weekend. The appeal of this white wilderness is tangible and I have been exploring it on skis, armed with a rifle and a VHF radio. Today I have the company of a hunter and a full team of 12 frenzied dogs whose fettered anguish is about to be set free. Trying to put harnesses on snarling, hysterical dogs soon degenerates into mayhem, with fights breaking out amid a chorus of high-pitched screams and yelps. The hunters' whip skimming over their cowered heads silences the pandemonium, and then suddenly we are on our way and I am left to sprint after the rapidly disappearing napariaq (the pair of wooden stanchions at the rear of a sledge).
There is something majestic about the sight of a solitary Polar Eskimo driving a dog team across the frozen sea ice, navigating his way around icebergs, sitting contentedly, listening to the crunch of the runners on the snow and reading the wind from the striae on the ice. The appeal is perhaps its primeval simplicity, but also its timelessness.