THE ICEFJORD CENTRE

PAGE BY PAGE GUIDE –

THE BOOK CREATOR BOOK “THE TOWN OF THE GREENLANDIC HALIBUT”

The students meet the Icefjord Centre in two pictures, showing summer and winter respectively.

In class you can talk about:

• What the Icefjord Centre is.
• What the surroundings around the Centre look like.
• The difference between summer and winter.
• How summer and winter differ where you live.

Talk about the map and about how many people live in Ilulissat. And about how many people live in the town or settlement where you live.

The students see part of a world map.

The task now is to move the red marker down into the map in order to show where each student lives.

The marker is found in the white box and can be drawn into the map.

In class you can talk about:

• Differences and similarities between Ilulissat and your own town or settlement.

The students are to investigate the different immigrations that went on in Greenland during the Stone Age. They can search for knowledge on this website from visitgreenland.com.

Afterwards they answer the questions in the black speech balloons on page 13. They insert their answers as audio files.

Sound recording see instruction 1here.

Now it is time for the students to listen to the podcast The Town of the Greenland Halibut. They find the podcast by clicking on the picture on page 14.

Before listening to the podcast, you can give a short introduction to the contents of the podcast.

1. The story starts with the sound of water and the distant buzzing of a motorboat.
2. Katrine Nyland tells about
   1. that you can hear the distant sound of motorboats on their way out fishing or going somewhere else both day and night.
   2. that it is especially the halibut that makes Ilulissat a thriving fishing town that never sleeps.
   3. that the first Stone Age peoples settled by the Icefjord 4400 years ago and that hunting and fishing has always been the basis of life.
   4. the missionary Poul Egede, who in his diary in 1737 wrote about how proud the inhabitants of Sermermiut (at that time the largest settlement in Greenland) were of their settlement and their good catch; that they could thank their shaman for this.
   5. the legend about the shaman that fell on his bum, and when he got up again said: you must make a hole in the ice here and fish.
   6. that because of the nutritious melting water from the glacier, the halibut are larger and have firmer meat than those caught in other places
3. Palle, the mayor of Ilulissat, tells about
   1. meeting another Greenlander in New York who said: ”There are only two places in the world where the city never sleeps. New York and Ilulissat.”
   2. the Poul Egede quotation
      1. Here I found the largest group of people I have ever seen anywhere in Greenland, about 20 quite big houses, like a small village. They bragged about this and asked whether I had ever seen so many people in one place anywhere else in Greenland. I immediately sensed, from the way they talked and from their behaviour, that they were proud of being so many and of the good catch they were making.
   3. Lisa tells about
      1. once when she at the “Brædtet” in Nuuk asked a fisherman what kind of small fish he was selling and whether you could eat them. To think that capelan could be so small in Southern Greenland.

It is recommended that the students listen in pairs or small groups.

Let the students spend a few minutes discussing what they have heard in the podcast.

On page 15 the students are to record small audio files where they tell about the podcast. The pictures on the page will help them remember what they have heard.

Sound recording see instruction 1 here. 

The recording will now be represented by a small sound icon. This icon can be placed wherever you wish on the page. You can listen to the recording over and over again.

Review in class

We recommend that you have a joint discussion in class when the work with pages 14-15 is finished.

While doing this, it would be a good idea to support the discussion by writing concepts and keywords on the board.

In class you could talk about:

• Why is Ilulissat called the town of the Greenland halibut?
• For how many thousands of years have people lived by the Icefjord?
• What is a shaman?
• Who was Poul Egede and why did he travel around in Greenland?

In the text below you can find inspiration for the class discussion.

For some of the concepts there are pages with tasks in the Book Creator book.

You can add more pages for other topics, concepts and keywords that you discuss.

Concepts and keywords

• The Shaman– also called Angakok, was a very powerful person in Greenlandic society because he was the one to interpret the will of the higher powers. The shaman had to go through many years of training. The teacher was normally an older, skilled shaman.

To become a shaman you would need special gifts. You had to be able to get in contact with different spirits and with the souls of the dead when you made spiritual incantations, when you conjured the spirits up. Find more knowledge here

Are there still shamans in Greenland today?

• Wildlife by the Icefjord – the wildlife of the Icefjord is different from the wildlife of Southern Greenland. This is because the icebergs from the glacier create turbulence that brings the nutrients up into the light for the benefit of the wildlife. All animals need nutrition to live and grow and by the Icefjord there is plenty of nutrition.

How can you know the difference between fish from Southern and Northern Greenland?

• The halibut – is an arctic fish from the North Atlantic. It has a big mouth and quite large teeth. Its maximum size and weight are 120-130 cm and 45-50 kg.

The halibut does not just live at the bottom of the ocean like other flatfish. It lives in the depths of 200 to 2000 metres in the arctic oceans.

The halibut spawns from May till August in depths of about 700 to 2000 metres. When it is 9 to 10 years old it starts spawning. When the young fish are about 20 cm long, they become coloured on their underside and are ready to move towards deeper water.

The halibut eats fish, for example small codfish and shrimps.

How does the halibut differ from other flatfish?

• Missionary – A missionary works to propagate a religion by converting people who are not part of the missionary’s own religious group. You see missionaries in connection with the missionizing religions that have as an ideal that their followers should recruit others to become followers. Poul Egede was a missionary.

Christianity is a missionizing religion. Do you know of other religions that are also missionizing?

On these pages the students write sentences or small stories using the keywords and concepts that you have been through. They can write them, record them as an audio file or make a drawing and insert the picture. Their products will be used in the further work with the podcast.

Sound recording and insertion of pictures see instruction 1 and 2 here.

The students read the texts on the pages. On page 18 there is a text about the shaman and on page 19 there is a text about Poul Egede.

They are now to record a conversation between a group of Greenlanders that are together with their shaman and Poul Egede. The conversation is about Poul Egede’s attempt at missioning, in other words his telling them about Christianity and why they should convert. The shaman and the Greenlanders want to continue with their own religion, the Inuit religion. 

If you need to know more about Christianity or the Inuit religion you can find more knowledge on these websites: The Inuit religion and What is Christianity?.

The students record their conversation and insert it into the Book Creator book.

Sound recording see instruction 1 here. 

The students are to imagine that they have been contacted by a restaurant that would like them to create 3 posters to exhibit in the restaurant. Here is the text that the students see in the Book Creator book:

You have been contacted by the restaurant “Halibut”. It is a newly opened restaurant that would like to specialise in serving halibut from Greenland.

They would like to get three posters to display in their restaurant. But they have some requirements for the posters:

1. The three posters must contain knowledge about:

                      halibut as food

                      its food and habitat

                      its life cycle

2. All three posters must contain facts and pictures.

On pages 20-21 there is information about the task. On page 20 there are links to two websites: royalgreenland.com and natur.gl.On page 21 there is an image of a halibut with a speech balloon and two pictures of halibuts. These are meant as inspiration for the students.

On pages 22-27 you find the titles for the three different posters. A frame has been inserted that the students can use and adapt as they wish. The students decide for themselves how the posters are to be designed.

Here are some suggestions for frameworking if the students are having difficulties:

1. The halibut as food

• In what dishes do you use halibut?
• Which colour is the meat of the halibut?
• Does it contain important fatty acids?
• How much of the fish can you use for food?

1. The halibut and its food and habitat

• What does the halibut eat?
• Where in Greenland does it live?
• How deep in the ocean does it live?

1. The halibut and its life cycle

• How old can the halibut become?
• Where and when does it spawn?
• Does it wander?

Tip: if you search on “greenland halibut” in Book Creator, more pictures emerge than if you search just on “halibut”.

Insertion of pictures and text: see instruction 2 and 3 here.

The students show their products to the class. 

Make sure that the framework for feedback is positive criticism.The students should be supported in assessing what is good – and what might be done better. Find more inspiration  here.

Not specifically with a view to making new products, but foremost to let the students discover and work with this kind of constructive and positive criticism.

If you intend to work with some of the other podcasts from the Icefjord Centre, it might make sense to save the students’ Book Creator book, so the work they have done with it can be used again.

If you wish to let the students make use of the feedback they have received from the class, you could reserve time for them to continue their work with their products. So that they can use the feedback they have received from each other to change things in their product.

The podcast The Town of the Greenland Halibut has been created by the Icefjord Centre in Ilulissat.The teaching material for the podcast The Town of the Greenland Halibut has been developed by Lotte Brinkmann and Daniella Maria Manuel, Anholt Læringsværksted with feedback from Leg med IT.

The student’s book in Book Creator has been developed as part of the project Nutaaliorta from Kivitsisa.The template was designed by Rikke Falkenberg Kofoed and Daniella Maria Manuel, Leg med IT.

The teaching material The Town of the Greenland Halibut is published under a Creative Commons crediting licence CC:BY.

The texts, assignments and pictures can be shared, reproduced and adapted, with the proviso that “The Town of the Greenland Halibut by The Icefjord Centre Ilulissat” is credited as the source.