{"id":2027,"date":"2019-09-12T03:36:36","date_gmt":"2019-09-12T01:36:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arctrain.de\/?p=2027"},"modified":"2019-09-30T08:10:13","modified_gmt":"2019-09-30T06:10:13","slug":"arctrain-summer-school-day-6-nordicity-what-does-the-north-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arctrain.de\/arctrain-summer-school-day-6-nordicity-what-does-the-north-mean\/","title":{"rendered":"ArcTrain Summer School – Day 6: Nordicity, what does The North mean?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In the boreal forest. Credit: Damien Ringeisen<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Today we hiked the Harfand summit in the Groulx mountain range, a 12 km long loop across altitudes. We started at a low altitude inside a boreal forest, and while walking up, the vegetation around us changed slowly. By the time we reached the summit we were surrounded by an alpine tundra with only mosses and small berries. We visited this summit during its only snow free month, the last snowfall dating of the beginning of August. We could observe a characteristic feature of the tundra landscape, namely frost polygons (common permafrost landscapes). From the summit, little human influences could be seen, leaving us with a sentiment of isolation in the Manicouagan-Uapishka Unesco Biosphere Reserve. Surprisingly given our latitude, this all added up to our feeling of being North. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Alpine tundra at the summit. Credit: Damien Ringeisen<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

As\narctic scientists, friends and family expect us to go North on an\nexpedition. This time however it felt like we went North, but\nactually travelled South compared to home \u2013 for both of us, Bremen\nin northern Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\nthen ask ourselves, what is<\/strong> North?<\/strong> What is the Arctic?\nWhat defines it? Some people would say that it is when it\u2019s cold.\nSome would say that it is when it is not warm in summer. Some people\nwould say that it is when it is in high latitude \u2013 e.g. above the\npolar circle. Climate is much more complicated than just the\nlatitude, it is influenced by many factors, such as topology, ocean\ncurrents, winds… \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Group picture at the summit, with in the background the Manicouagan resevoir and the only road in the wide surroundings. Credit: Damien Ringeisen<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Louis-Edmond\nHamelin introduced the notion of Nordicity[link], and created an\nindex that is used to assess Northerness<\/em>. The feeling of North\nis not only based on latitude or extreme climate conditions, but also\nthe remoteness, the isolation, the economic and human activity.\nAccording to that index, a city like Troms\u00f8 is less North than\nUapishka Station, our home for the 3 next days. Making it a great\nlocation for us to learn more about the North. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However,\nthis \u201cNorth\u201d feeling is highly subjective. This morning several\nInnu families visited the station as they were on their way to the\nprovince of Labrador -Up North! For a member of these communities,\nour North is probably their South, the same way than Netherlands is\nnorth for someone from Spain. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Quentin picking berries at the summit. Credit: Damien Ringeisen<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Next\nto exploring the landscape, we learned how to make bread on the fire\naccording to an Innu recipe, make jam out edible berries from the\nbushes, and made some of the famous labrador tea from freshly\nharvested leaves!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stay\ntuned for what we will learn about the North in the next days, and do\nnot hesitate to leave us a comment or a question!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written\nby Anouk Vlug and Damien Ringeisen.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today we hiked the Harfand summit in the Groulx mountain range, a 12 km long loop across altitudes. We started at a low altitude inside a boreal forest, and while walking up, the vegetation around us changed slowly. By the time we reached the summit we were surrounded by an alpine tundra with only mosses […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"2.12.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["en","de","fr","ru"],"languages":{"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"de":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"fr":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"ru":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arctrain.de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2027"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arctrain.de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arctrain.de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arctrain.de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arctrain.de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2027"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/arctrain.de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2768,"href":"https:\/\/arctrain.de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2027\/revisions\/2768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arctrain.de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arctrain.de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arctrain.de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2027"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arctrain.de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}