Angmagssalik

Angmagssalik is a district of the east coast of the Greenland to a latitude close to the polar circle, and comprising approximately 5000 inhabitants.

The principal village is called Tasiilaq. The name ammassalik comes from an Arctic fish name resembling a sardine (or capelan) named Ammassat. The inuits consume it with delight in dried form.

Tasiilaq is a village at the edge of a small gulf surrounded by mountains. located slightly at the east of a very broad fjord named Sermilik where many Glacier S vèlent of very large Iceberg S.

A very particular phenomenon, the Piterak regularly takes place in this village and this district. It is about a wind very violent Catabatique which can reach more than 300 km/h which descends Icecap. It is the zone of Greenland where this type of wind is most frequent. It is foreseeable several days in advance and is prevented by a headlight on one the heights of the village. In the Seventies it destroyed many dwellings because its power is able to project stones torn off with the mountain on the houses.

This village is very insulated and was a long time the only zone inhabited of the east coast. Indeed, the ice-barrier thaws out very tardily on this coast. Also no industry of fishing could sy develop and the village vegetates. Tourism however brings a little world in summer and winter for exceptional excursions.

The inhabitants thus were a long time preserved modern civilization and Paul-Emile Victor, during two winterings in the years 1930 to study the inuits, could describe a very primitive civilization in the " civilization of the phoque". These inuits in fact is isolated from their own people since hundreds of years. Thus their brothers of the east coast do not understand their language. It is so different that the " oui" or the " non" do not resemble absolutely!

Since modernity arrived very brutally and the inuits live with European in houses out of wooden coloured of Scandinavian type. But the inuits badly find their place in this company more especially as it lost in this cultural shock much of their traditions. Unemployment is very important and alcohol, the suicide pose even more problems than in the remainder of the country.

It is in Tasilaq that one finds the center philatelic of Greenland charged to design the various stamp collections from the country, that it dispatches with the collectors of the whole world.

An airport exists on an island close to the village named Kulusuk. One goes there in 15 minutes in the helicopter. It connects the west coast and the Iceland only.

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