In an unforgettable tribute to the far latitudes, Gretel Ehrlich travels across Greenland, the largest island on earth. Greenland is the largest island on earth. All but five percent of it is covered by a vast ice sheet, an enduring remnant of the last ice age. Despite a uniquely hostile environment, it has been inhabited continuously for thousands of years. Greenlanders retain many of their traditional practices. Some still hunt on sleds made from whale and caribou with packs of dogs; others fashion harpoons from Narwhal tusks; entranced shamans make soul fights under the ice. The modern population lives on the edge of a stone- and ice-age world and has reached a unique understanding of it. Ehrlich mixes stories of European anthropologists who have recorded the ways of the Inuit, with artists who have lived briefly on Greenland's fringe in order to try to capture its extraordinary pure light. Conjuring up Greenland's cruel, beautiful landscape, she shows that it is a land endowed with magical and mysterious properties.