ICE MAN

Ian Wright says the quiet, solitude and otherworldly beauty of the Arctic is cool, but he doesn’t fancy freezing full-time

Outpost: Which Arctic regions have you Visited?

Ian Wright: Northern Canada, Norway and Svalbard, Iceland and a little bit in Alaska. I’ve got a soft spot for Greenland because that was the first time I went above the Arctic Circle. I love the isolation, the views, the people. They’re so resilient, so hard. They wear their hearts on their sleeves and they’ll tell you what’s what.

O: What sorts of things did you do on those trips?

IW: In Yellowknife I saw the northern lights—the aurora borealis. It’s impossible to describe them. It’s like a Star Trek episode ’cause it’s just weird seeing those lights coming up, then disappearing. And we saw them all the time. They’re just sort of hanging there. It’s absolutely bizarre. I think that’s why I like those regions. I’ve got no point of reference for what’s up there, like when I first went to Greenland. I’ve never been anywhere like that. It’s just an ice cube in the middle of nowhere, and 55,000 people live on this thing that’s half the size of Europe.

O: Any interesting stories about Yellowknife?

IW: There were these Japanese tourists up there. The Canadians in town told me, ‘The Japanese come up here because they say that if they make love under the northern lights, it’s good for fertility.’ Everybody in Yellowknife told us that story—everybody. And then when I asked the Japanese the same question, they said, ‘Never heard of it. We don’t even know what you’re talking about.’

O: What were the living conditions like up north?

IW: It depended where we were. Like Canadians say, ‘There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.’ Sadly, that’s true. You have to put on a hundred different layers and it’s like Sod’s Law [Murphy’s Law], as soon as you’re out in the cold in all those cloths, you want to go to the toilet straight away. But, also, it’s beautiful. I thought it would get a bit boring, because it’s just white, but I love it. It’s stunning. The way the mountains change with the light on the snow. The icebergs that look like medieval castles trapped in ice, looming up, towering up. And I’ve never heard silence like that. You know that cliché that it’s so quiet, it’s noisy? It’s true. There’s a hum in the air because it’s so quiet. I can’t quite explain it.

But, to be honest, it’s too cold up there; you gotta’ be a nutter. We were filming in -47 C. We were interviewing one guy and the director said, ‘Pull your scarf off your nose ’cause we can’t see your face.’ After about five minutes, his nose was going black. And we were like, ‘What’s happening with your nose?’ He was getting frostbite, which was just insane. We had to usher him back inside.

O: What’s the worst thing that could happen to a person in the Arctic?

IW: It didn’t happen, but I suppose being in the middle of nowhere and the weather comes in. Then you’re absolutely stuffed. Or if someone’s put a bag of sandwiches in your pocket and there’s lots of polar bears, that would be nasty.

—Compiled by Zalina Alvi
IAN WRIGHT is the host of Pilot Guides (formerly Lonely Planet) seen in Canada on OLN and an artist.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 2:19 pm and is filed under Wright of Way. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. Add to del.icio.us.