It’s simply above freezing on a late August morning in Itilleq, Greenland. As I peel off my mountaineering footwear and head inside the house of Emma Davidsen, I’m instantly stuffed with a way of aid that I made a decision to put on socks that aren’t solely heat however, extra importantly, matching.

Inside, the scent of freshly brewed espresso, chocolate cake, and crumbly chocolate chip scones hangs within the delicate morning air of Davidsen’s fjord-side kitchen.

“Welcome to my kaffemik,” she says, pouring espresso as heat and alluring as her smile into small ceramic mugs. Derived from the Danish phrase for espresso (kaffe) and Greenlandic phrase for collectively or with (mik), kaffemik is a community-wide social gathering akin to an open home, and it’s one in every of Greenland’s longstanding cultural traditions, Davidsen explains.

Hugging the Arctic Circle, only one mile north of the invisible line of latitude at 66° north, Itilleq is a distant island settlement on Greenland’s central-western coast with a inhabitants of lower than 100. The village, like so many coastal villages I’ve had the possibility to go to on my inaugural journey to Greenland, consists of a sequence of interconnected footpaths that carve their method between 20 or so salt-licked polychrome homes lining the bay and shoreline.

Davidsen says there are not any eating places in Itilleq — not even a hospital. There’s a church and an elementary faculty, in addition to a communal all-purpose retailer for home goods and different requirements that’s solely open upon request. Like most villages in Greenland, Itilleq has no roads or bridges connecting it to every other city. Lower than a 10-minute stroll up a average hill from a small lake on the middle of the village, a white picket fence encircles a serene meadowside cemetery wedged between the mountains and the ocean.

“Do you ever get lonely residing right here?” I ask Davidsen as I take a chew right into a slice of delightfully doughy and nonetheless barely heat chocolate cake. “Generally, within the winter, when it’s very darkish, that’s when we’ve got kaffemik, typically even twice in every week,” she says.

Born in Sisimiut, Greenland’s second-largest metropolis with a inhabitants between 5,500 and 5,600, Davidsen says she moved to Itilleq after marrying her husband, whose household is from the village. Inside their house, her butchery diploma hangs proudly on the wall of their front room, which higher explains the expertly cleaned barrel-shaped ribplate of a seal hanging subsequent to a severed head of a reindeer. Different memorabilia embrace her husband’s hand-painted delivery certificates; images of her in-laws dressed historically in seal pores and skin, fox fur, and huge beaded collars known as yokes; and drawings by her four-year-old daughter.

It wasn’t way back that tourism in off-the-grid villages like Itilleq was restricted to the occasional wayward backpacker or rich backcountry heliskier, says native information Niels Sanimuinaq Rasmussen, Greenland Cultural Ambassador for Viking. That’s modified because the 2024 opening of a global airport within the nation’s capital metropolis of Nuuk, together with shore excursions from small expedition ships like Viking, which introduced me to Davidsen’s kitchen desk for this expertise.

Whereas the phrase kaffemik may be traced again to Greenland’s colonization by Denmark and the importation of espresso, sugar, and different items in 1721, open home gatherings and neighborhood celebrations have lengthy been part of the social material in Inuit tradition, Rasmussen explains.

“In the course of the colonization interval, it [coffee] shortly grew to become a family merchandise in Greenland, and shortly, espresso even grew to become the primary attraction to ask somebody over as a result of that’s what all of the foreigners did; they invited one another over for tea and low, so Greenlanders adopted that into their vocabulary, and as a substitute of claiming, ‘Can I’ve a plate of muskox or a plate of reindeer,’ espresso simply grew to become the factor that you’d say as a substitute, and it’s been that method ever since.”

Whereas each village and metropolis hosts their very own model of kaffemik, the one factor all of them have in widespread is that it’s at all times very informal and open to whoever needs to return and have fun, explains Rasmussen, who was born and raised in Ittoqqortoormiit (pronounced it-ockor-tormit), a distant settlement with a inhabitants of 345.

“Each city has their very own particular custom,” Rasmussen says. “In my hometown in Jap Greenland, for instance, we throw a bunch of cash and a few candies on very particular days that we actually need to have fun, whereas in Western Greenland, they prefer to serve snow crabs and reindeer for kaffemik, as a result of that is the primary animals they should catch. So it is totally different from place to position.”

Whereas the spirit and custom of internet hosting mates, relations, and neighbors at your house for kaffemik hasn’t modified a lot over the centuries, Rasmussen says the preliminary purpose behind bringing folks collectively stems from a darker facet of Greenland’s historical past.

“Again then, Greenland had an excellent excessive mortality charge, so they’d search for a purpose to have fun something, it may very well be a child’s first tooth or 1 / 4 yr of somebody’s birthday, the thought was everybody on the town was invited to return and have some espresso and cake, and simply be collectively and have fun,” Rasmussen says.

At this time, the commonest kaffemik celebrations embrace birthdays, nationwide days, and necessary life occasions. “It may be something price celebrating in somebody’s life, like getting a job, catching your first seal, or catching your first polar bear,” Rasmussen says. “It is vitally necessary that you simply have fun to make sure that you might have a superb hunt for the remainder of your life.”

On the southeastern shore of Disko Bay, Qasigiannguit (pronounced kah-see-ghyah-ni-gweet), inhabitants 952, has seen an inflow of tourism in recent times, which has prompted kaffemik excursions to share “the on a regular basis facet of Greenland.”

“As Greenlanders, we’re often known as a genuinely open and heat folks, possibly as a result of we live in concord with our environment and nature, which is so stunning and peaceable,” says Laila Mikaelsen, co-owner of Mikami Visitor Home, by way of e mail. “Whenever you go to a Greenlander’s house, you’ll get an inside view into how we reside our day-to-day lives, but additionally, you get to style how and what that household prepares so far as their native meals customs, their home made muffins, caribou, a contemporary catch of seal, and naturally, espresso.”

Davidsen confirmed me the herbs and teas that she forages, like dandelion, thyme, and kuannit, which she says are medicinal for winter colds. Vacationers coming to kaffemik should buy any as a memento.

“Kaffemik is one of the simplest ways to get perception into how all the things occurs, particularly all of the smaller issues that you simply may not take into consideration in relation to Greenlandic tradition,” Rasmussen says. “And also you get to see how folks act, how we have fun life as it’s, so should you get the chance to go to 1, completely do it.”